Someone Wishes to Speak to You

by Jeremy Mallinson

  Before Simon and Anna’s visit, the press reported what they described as the most audacious and successful raid of the Bush War to date. This had been a raid carried out by the Selous Scouts against Nyadzonya, one of the insurgents’ main camps about 80 km east of Umtali.

  After news of the raid was broadcast, Jim Prior visited Mathew to bring him the newspaper reports and tell him all he knew. ‘Apparently it was thanks to the Selous Scouts having captured and carried out a detailed interrogation of a ZANLA fighter, a “turned” terrorist, that they gained a great deal of invaluable information about the Nyadzonya camp. It was estimated to contain up to around five thousand people, who were all connected with the insurgents and potential terrorists. The ZANLA captive had only recently passed through the camp and was able to provide the Scouts with a detailed description of its layout, command protocols, and the fact that the camp contained military recruits who had been indifferently trained and were largely unarmed. The Selous Scouts Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Ron Reid-Daly, found that the information the ZANLA captive gave fully endorsed that which he had previously received from his men, who had been monitoring the camp for some time. As Reid-Daly was now sure that the Nyadzonya camp was a major terrorist training and operational centre, he decided that it would have to be put out of action at the earliest opportunity.

  ‘Because of the political process that is currently underway between Ian Smith’s RF Government, the British Government and a number of African leaders toward all-party talks in October, the country’s Special Operations Committee were reluctant to give their permission for the raid to go ahead. It was only after Reid-Daly made use of his direct confidential line of communication with Lieutenant General Peter Walls, who had personally appointed him to head-up the Selous Scouts, that permission was granted.’

  Jim Prior went on to explain that the independent nature of the Selous Scouts’ clandestine operations caused a number of major misunderstandings between them and the RLI, as well as between the Special Branch of the Scouts and that of the BSAP. Reid-Daly’s direct communication with General Walls was tempered by a degree of professional jealousy and also frequently aggravated by the top-secret nature of the Scouts’ operations, and their practice of not wishing to confide in others. Although reconnaissance work represented a prime ingredient of the Selous Scouts’ record of success, such achievements were also due to the men’s qualifications of physical discipline and single-mindedness of purpose. All these qualities, said Jim, had contributed to the esprit de corps of the regiment, and to the total dedication of their chief objective; to destroy the insurgency operations of ZANLA and ZIPRA.

  As the raid had to be kept top secret for as long as possible, in order for the operation to come as a total surprise to the ZANLA combatants, their cross-border operation had been put into effect almost immediately. The Scouts were concerned that from their previous reconnaissance recces into Mozambique, there was clear evidence of cooperation between FRELIMO and ZANLA. If ZANLA had full access to the local FRELIMO transport and logistic infrastructure, the secrecy of the raid was imperative.

  The Rhodesian vehicles of the Scouts’ task force were given FRELIMO number plates and insignia and the manpower disguised in their uniforms, in order for them to be easily accepted as a detachment of the Mozambique security forces. The task force crossed the border along a little-known smuggler’s route under the cover of darkness, soon after midnight. At one point they had to pass by a FRELIMO sentry box; the sentry received an authoritative command and greeting from one of the African Manyika Portuguese-speaking Selous Scouts and merely waved a desultory greeting in response.

  On approaching the gates of the camp, the convoy had gained access to it after a sharp command delivered in Portuguese by one of the Scouts’ Special Branch members, to two startled ZANLA guards, who were quick to lift the boom and salute the vehicles as they roared their way past them.

  Once the camouflaged trucks had rolled into camp and come to a halt, the Portuguese-speaking operative, wearing the fatigues of a FRELIMO major, stood up and with the help of a megaphone, delivered a short speech, proclaiming the imminent fall of the illegal régime of the radical leader of the white settlers in Rhodesia. He invited his assembled comrades to gather around for more detailed news about some of ZANLA’s glorious successes.

  After the major had announced a further day’s holiday to the one they had only just had, and the jubilant cheering and ululating crowd had started to move forward and assemble in front of the vehicles, one of the ZANLA operatives noticed a white soldier on one of the vehicles, manning a machine gun. He took a wild shot at him. The task force burst into life, maintaining a steady and disciplined controlled fire which resulted in an estimated death of over 1,000 camp followers, including both women and children.

  The official government report on the raid subsequently recorded that the Selous Scouts’ column had succeeded in reaching ZANLA’s Nyadzonya terrorist camp undetected, and the whole operation had gone like clockwork. The great success of it had done great credit to both the skill of its architects and the brave soldiers, both European and African, who managed to inflict such a significant wound on ZANLA’s terrorist forces. Also, the report stated that a small party of the Scouts had successfully destroyed the bridge over the Pungwe River, and had blown up a number of road bridges on their way back. The conclusion was that the whole operation had been a triumph, ‘Without a scratch to man or vehicle’.

  After Jim had finished giving Mathew as much information he had on the raid, the two men sat in silence for several minutes, each deep in their own thoughts. Finally, Jim got up and bade Mathew goodbye, adding, ‘Remember, keep your eyes and ears open. You can always come and stay with me if it starts to feel uncomfortable out here. Take care.’

  Although horrified by the raid, Mathew wanted to read as much as possible about it to try to exorcise the anguish that he felt. After Mathew had read all the newspaper reports Jim had brought, he reflected on how the mass killing of so many human beings had taken place just downstream from the tranquil surroundings of Inyanga’s Pungwe Falls. He and Addie had spent such a memorable time together relaxing by the Pungwe River close to where its waters plunged over the rapids and into the gorge below, watching the feeding antics of some of the remarkable bird life.

  The very thought of such crystal-clear waters having been discoloured and swamped by the blood of the dead and wounded, and the river claiming the lives of so many of those camp followers who had attempted to swim its fast-flowing waters only to drown, could not have been more repugnant to Mathew. It brought home to him that he was living in an environment that had become a focus of terrorist insurgency. The occasional cross-border sorties of the Bush War had turned into an outright conflict between the Rhodesian security forces and the liberation fighters of ZANLA.

  Ian Smith was later to record that only about 500 terrorists, and not over 1,000, had been eliminated. He also reported how the success of the Selous Scouts operation against insurgents had reverberated around the world, and how congratulatory messages had been received from far and wide.

  Perhaps as a direct result of the Nyadzonya operation – it was certainly almost immediately after the raid – a new phase of terrorist activities by ZANLA and FRELIMO began. From the ridge of mountains that straddled Rhodesia’s border with Mozambique, a thirty-minute mortar attack was launched on the southern suburbs of Umtali. The attack concentrated mainly on the suburbs of Greenside, Palmerston and Darlington and, although there were no casualties, it showed that the citizens of Umtali were totally unprepared for this new development. An article in the Umtali Post subsequently highlighted accounts of how some residents had stood in their gardens watching what they thought to be a ‘display of fireworks’, prior to becoming panic-stricken when they realised they were under attack.

  The residents of Umtali had to face a steep learning curve with regards to their personal safety and the security of their properties. Mathew attended a meeting o
rganised by Umtali’s Civil Defence in order to raise levels of preparedness. Soon after a senior BSAP superintendent called for silence, Mathew experienced for the first time the depth of patriotism that existed among the European community, the ‘Spirit of Rhodesia’. The gathering had launched into a spontaneous rendering of ‘We Are All Rhodesian’, with its chorus:

  We’re Rhodesians and we’ll fight through thick and thin;

  We’ll keep our land a free land from the enemy coming in.

  We will keep them north of the Zambezi till the river’s running dry – (Here, the local community had added: And we shall throw the terrorists back into Mozambique and listen to them cry)

  This mighty land will prosper, for RHODESIANS NEVER DIE.

  Mathew was later to learn that man who wrote the song, Clem Tholet, was Ian Smith’s son-in-law and that his composition was being increasingly sung at such meetings. It was almost Rhodesia’s unofficial national anthem.

  8

  Change of Direction

  During the latter part of 1976, Rhodesia became the target of Washington’s ‘shuttle diplomacy’, with President Gerald Ford considering that an American-driven solution in Rhodesia would aid his presidential re-election campaign by gaining him additional support from the ethnic minorities. It was his diplomatic troubleshooter, Henry Kissinger, who managed to persuade South Africa’s President, John Vorster, to cut supplies of fuel and munitions in the hope of bringing Ian Smith nearer to a negotiated settlement with his African opponents.

  In order to encourage the insurgents to arrive at a peaceful solution, Kissinger visited Tanzania and Zambia to assure Julius Nyerere and Kenneth Kaunda that Ian Smith would concede his authority and power after a short but phased transfer period. After Nyerere and Kaunda had sanctioned the plan, Smith was summoned to Pretoria to discuss the agreement with Kissinger and John Vorster. Although Kissinger told Ian Smith that he fully recognised how desperately he wanted the best for his people, and understood why he was fearful of black majority rule, he was emphatic in his belief that the deal on the table would be the best he could expect to receive.

  Soon after Ian Smith broadcast details of the Kissinger Agreement to the nation, any hopes that had been mustered from the deal were dashed. Some members of his RF party thought it represented the ‘death rites’ of the country. Such future negotiations had to be abandoned, for five of the Frontline African leaders had rejected the proposals outright. Due to the collapse of the Kissinger Agreement, Vorster decided to continue with the deliveries of war materials from South Africa, as he was well aware that its failure had been no fault of Ian Smith’s government. It was also confirmed that the South African loan of $20 million to Rhodesia’s Ministry of Defence, which was previously held back, had now been made available.

  Due to the ramifications of this international political debacle, Ian Smith came to recognise that whatever future internal agreements could be arrived at between his government and ZANU/PF and ZAPU, there could be no finality without the approval of the OAU. A final settlement might even have to be sanctioned by their communist supporters in China and Russia.

  So, after Mathew had read as much as possible about the political stalemate which had resulted in the majority of Rhodesians, black and white, having to suffer its implications, he was thankful that he was at least able to redirect his mind from the political tragedies that surrounded him to the continuation of his observations on the complex social interactions of monkeys.

  When Simon and Anna Vaughan-Jones arrived at the Leopard Rock Hotel with the equipment that Simon had arranged for the museum to supply, Mathew could see that the taxidermist had done an excellent job in making the caracal lynx as lifelike as possible. The lynx looked very much as if it was in the process of stalking its prey. It had been mounted and fixed onto a small trolley, so that it could be pulled out in front of the monkeys as they scampered through the long grass. The 2-metre African python was mounted and prepared in a similar lifelike fashion so that when it was put before the monkeys, it would be sure to cause the maximum amount of alarm, the expression of which Anna had come to record.

  During their five-day stay at the hotel, the Vaughan-Joneses visited Castle Beacon each day, arriving at the camp soon after the strong rays of the rising sun started to evaporate the early morning dampness of the foliage. After Simon had helped Anna to position the caracal and the python and set up her three high-frequency tape-recorders, they waited for the monkeys to descend from the trees before pulling one of the ‘predators’ into their midst. The caracal was the first to come out, which succeeded in creating instant pandemonium among the group. There was a crescendo of alarm calls, ideal for Anna’s recording. Similarly, when the python was introduced to a group of vervet monkeys, she managed to capture the sound as they screamed their specific alarm calls to warn the remainder of their troop of the presence of a predator.

  The vervets appeared to be far more vociferous with their alarm calls than the more reserved and sedate Stairs’ monkeys. As soon as one of them spotted either the caracal or the python, it would stand up on its hind legs, bob to and fro and screech its alarm calls, which would be immediately taken up by the rest of the group as they made a rapid escape from the long grass of the clearing and returned to the security of the trees. However, by the final day of Anna and Mathew’s observations, although the monkeys still showed various degrees of suspicion at the mounted specimens they continued to run through the tall grass of the clearing to the forest below instead of returning to the safety of the trees. They just hoped that should a live predator put in an appearance, the monkeys would stop this complacency and head for the forest.

  (The experiment was a success. Listening to the tapes in her office in Salisbury, Anna could detect the difference between the vervet’s alarm calls when confronted by the caracal and the python. At this time, very little observational material on the reaction of primates to predators had been recorded or published.)

  Simon and Anna invited Mathew to have a farewell dinner at the Leopard Rock Hotel, to thank him for all the help he had given them during their time at his Castle Beacon camp. As he usually led a relatively solitary life, Mathew was thoroughly enjoying the company of friends who shared the same interests as him.

  ‘I remember a paper that was presented at a symposium called “Captive Propagation and Conservation of Primates”,’ said Mathew. ‘Quite fascinating. A Dutch field worker studying chimpanzees in West Africa had filmed a scene in which he pulled a mounted stuffed leopard into their midst. While they all jumped up and down and screamed hysterically at their number one enemy, an alpha male broke off a sturdy branch from a nearby tree, then appeared to use it as a weapon, beating it repeatedly on the ground in front of the predator. As far as I know, chimpanzees have been recorded using tools, such as twigs to poke into the holes of trees to extract termites, but they’ve never been seen selecting something to protect themselves with. I think that’s the first time an anthropoid ape has been seen using an implement for either defence or attack.’

  ‘I’ve heard about that piece of footage . . . Oh, Mathew – I’ve just remembered something. I’m so sorry not to have given it to you before,’ Anna said rather sheepishly. ‘It sounds awful but to tell you the truth, I’d quite forgotten about it. I just came across it while repacking my equipment! Here, Jan asked me to pass this on.’ Anna handed him an envelope.

  Mathew was relieved that he was in a dimly lit environment as he felt himself blushing slightly. He just hoped that neither Simon nor Anna noticed his reaction as he tucked the letter into his pocket to read when he was back at his camp.

  After the friends had said their farewells and Mathew was driving the short distance back to Castle Beacon, he reflected that in all probability Simon had reminded Anna about the note and insisted that Anna should pass it on to him. On one occasion, while Simon and he had been walking by themselves on one of the mountain paths above the hotel, he had said, ‘To tell you the truth Mathew, I can’t stan
d the way Paddy Bushney treats Jan much of the time. It’s almost as if he merely regards her as some type of trophy, the consequence of a successful military campaign; one which provided him with the possession of such an obedient, faithful and beautiful young wife. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but on one of Jan’s visits to the museum she told me how very much she hopes that when you next visit Salisbury, she will have the opportunity to meet you again. She told me that she not only very much enjoys your company but would love to have you as a close friend, a confidante. In fact, she almost made me promise to arrange a reunion with you.’

  When Mathew opened the envelope, under the light of his hissing paraffin lamp, he found attached to the two-page neatly written letter a colour photograph of Jan with her arms around the neck of a sub-adult cheetah. She was wearing a powder-blue cotton dress that hung loosely over her shapely body and, impulsively, Mathew could not prevent himself from kissing the photograph. The beaming smile on her face seemed to mirror her very happiness in being in the company of such an endearing creature, and she had written on the back of the photograph that while she had her arms around the cheetah and gently stroked and caressed him, he had maintained a continuous purr as if in appreciation of her attention.

  Dearest Mathew,

  This photograph was taken at the Imire Wildlife Reserve, which I recently visited with my sister, Mariette. It’s around 150 km to the east of Salisbury, at Marandellas. Mariette lives nearby with her husband, Willie Smoelke, on a farm that he manages at Macheke. It was thanks to an introduction that Simon and Anna had given me to Norman Travers, the founder of Imire, that I was given the privilege of being introduced to one of his many pets, this young male cheetah that he calls Peter. I mentioned that I am a friend of the British primatologist carrying out post-doctorate studies on the Stairs’ monkeys in the Vumba, and Travers told me how very much he would like to be introduced to you. He said that although he had listened to your lecture at the university last year, he was yet to meet you in person.