Someone Wishes to Speak to You

by Jeremy Mallinson

  c) A sum of £2,000,000 was paid to the Imperial British Government in return for the new government obtaining ‘all the unalienated lands’ in Southern Rhodesia, other than native reserves.

  1953 – Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was formed by the British Government, as it had been convinced that such a federation between Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland was the only practical means by which the central African territories could achieve security for the future and ensure the well-being of all their peoples.

  1957 – 6 March; Ghana became the first African country to gain independence from European colonial rule. Kwame Nkrumah was soon to establish a one-party dictatorship.

  1960 – a) 3 February; Harold Macmillan gave his African ‘Wind of Change’ speech in Cape Town: ‘The wind of change is blowing through this continent and whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account of it.’

  b) 30 June; the Belgian Government gave independence to the Congo, which caused a sudden influx of refugees into Rhodesia.

  c) October; the Monckton Commission suggested the component territories of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland be allowed to secede as a prelude to gaining independence.

  1961 – a) February; Rhodesia was administered under a new constitution with a revised electoral formula, together with a Bill of Rights. The publication of the Commons’ White Paper on the Rhodesian Constitution increased the power of the Crown, granting it a veto over all legislation.

  b) 1 May; Tanganyika became Tanzania under Julius Nyerere, and immediately adopted Leninism and a one-party state embracing laws suppressing basic human rights.

  1962 – a) Summer; Sir Roy Wellensky dissolved the Federal Parliament, leading to the break-up of the federation.

  b) December; Rhodesian prime minister, Edgar Whitehead lost the general election to the Rhodesian Front (RF) party.

  c) 9 October; Uganda became independent under Milton Obote.

  d) Britain agreed the secession of Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia. The fate of Southern Rhodesia left in limbo.

  1963 – a) 1 February; Dr Hastings Banda returned home to Nyasaland to lead the country to its independence.

  b) August; Ndsbaningi Sithole formed the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU).

  c) Internecine fighting broke out in Rhodesia’s African townships.

  d) 1 November; a new constitution for Southern Rhodesia came into force.

  e) 10 December; Zanzibar gained independence under the constitutional monarchy of the sultan.

  f) 12 December; Kenya gained independence under President Jomo Kenyatta.

  g) 31 December; Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was dissolved.

  1964 – a) 12 January; after an uprising in Zanzibar which overthrew the sultan and his mainly Arab government, Abeid Karume became president and head of state.

  b) 13 April; Ian Smith became Rhodesia’s prime minister, charged with securing independence as well as with restoring order in the African townships.

  c) Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo jailed for being identified as the primary source of the troubles.

  d) Ian Smith insisted that the 1961 constitution must be the basis for any settlement, and not London’s preference for immediate black rule.

  e) Labour won the general election in the UK and Harold Wilson said he desired an amicable settlement in Rhodesia, but majority rule was non-negotiable.

  f) Rhodesians were warned, should a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) be declared, to expect sanctions, abandonment, citizenship-stripping, non-recognition and expulsion from the Commonwealth.

  g) 6 July; Nyasaland gained independence and Dr Hastings Banda became president.

  h) 24 October; Northern Rhodesia became Zambia and Kenneth Kaunda became president.

  1965 – a) Nine heavily armed Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) saboteurs, under direction from Lusaka, were arrested in the south-east part of Rhodesia from information supplied by local Africans.

  b) 11 November; Ian Smith declared UDI. Governor Humphrey Gibbs went through the motions of dismissing Smith and his Cabinet, which was predictably ignored, and Harold Wilson recalled London’s high commissioner.

  c) More than ninety per cent of Rhodesia’s white electorate supported the government, and prepared to take up arms.

  d) Harold Wilson had the BBC install a broadcasting post in the neighbouring Bechuanaland Protectorate.

  e) In the Congo, General Joseph-Désiré Mobutu forcibly removed President Kasavubu and began to rule by decree.

  f) After a coup in the Central African Republic, Jean-Bedel Bokassa came to power. Bokassa, having been fascinated by Napoleon, went on to declare himself ‘Emperor’ and establish one of Africa’s most brutal regimes.

  1966 – a) 7 February; twenty-four Moscow-trained ZAPU terrorists were brought before the Salisbury High Court, charged with sabotage and attempting to overthrow the government.

  b) 10 April; Britain received UN permission to enforce sanctions and to forcibly intercept vessels suspected of violating sanctions. At the same time, the UN surprisingly declared Rhodesia ‘A threat to world peace’.

  c) 30 September; the British Bechuanaland Protectorate gained independence. Sir Seretse Khama became Botswana’s first president.

  d) December; Harold Wilson invited Ian Smith to hold ‘talks about talks’ aboard the cruiser HMS Tiger off Gibraltar.

  1967 – a) 30 May; the oil-rich Nigerian state of Biafra seconded from Nigeria’s ruling junta in Lagos.

  b) September; retrieved documents identified African National Congress (ANC) operatives in Rhodesia linking them with South Africa. The news alarmed South African intelligence and they began to deploy police on its borders with Rhodesia.

  c) An international incident was narrowly averted off the coast of Beira, when a Royal Navy frigate fired warning shots at a French tanker making for port in violation of the British blockade.

  1968 – a) 6 March; three Africans were hanged at Salisbury’s Central Prison. Two had been convicted of the political murder of an unarmed white farmer.

  b) The movement of hundreds of terrorists was detected in the Chewore Wilderness Area in the Zambezi Valley. No previous incursion of this magnitude had taken place. Troops from the Special Air Service (SAS), Rhodesian Light Infantry (RLI), and the Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR) were immediately mobilised. The terrorist camp was located, and for the most part successfully liquidated.

  c) April; Kenneth Kaunda commenced seizure of white-owned farms and businesses in Zambia.

  d) October; renewed settlement efforts between Harold Wilson with four days of talks aboard HMS Fearless at Gibraltar, with the British insisting that Rhodesia renounce its current constitution and abandon power.

  e) Suspected influx of British intelligence agents in Rhodesia.

  1970 – 2 March; Rhodesia became a republic.

  1971 – a) January; General Idi Amin toppled the Ugandan government of Milton Obote.

  b) 21 November; an agreement was signed between Britain’s foreign secretary, Alec Home, and Ian Smith that included an immediate increase in black representation in Parliament, and the principle of majority rule was enshrined with safeguards ensuring that there could be no legislation which could impede this.

  c) Enoch Powell warned that uncontrolled immigration into the UK would lead to conflict and ‘rivers of blood’. Resulting from this statement, he was promptly sacked from government by Britain’s new prime minister, Edward Heath.

  1972 – a) 12 March; The Pearce Commission, formed to carry out the test of acceptability of the agreement of both the African and European communities, completed its work. When the report was published in May, it recorded that while the majority of Europeans were in favour of the proposals, most of the African people were not.

  b) Fighting by insurgents in Rhodesia intensified when tactics changed, moving the majority of forces
from the Zambezi Valley east to Mozambique to give them easier access into Rhodesia.

  c) Samora Machel’s Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) welcomed the new combatants, whilst fighting their own liberation war.

  d) December; two white-owned farmhouses were attacked by rockets and machine-gun fire in the Centenary district of north-east Rhodesia. The farmhouse was damaged, a farmer and his two children were wounded and a RLI trooper who had gone to their aid was killed by a land mine.

  1973 – While war in the east of the country was escalating, tragedy struck at Victoria Falls with the murder of two Canadian girls on holiday, when they were shot by drunken Zambian soldiers firing across the river.

  1974 – After South Africa’s President Vorster stopped a shipment of munitions and supplies going to Rhodesia, Ian Smith reluctantly agreed to an immediate ceasefire and to the release of political detainees, including Robert Mugabe. The quid pro quo guaranteed by Vorster was to be that Zambia and Mozambique would bring to an end their armed incursions. But this undertaking was never honoured, and the incursions were to continue.

  1975 – a) 25 June; Mozambique given independence by Portugal and immediately proclaimed a republic by President Samora Machel’s Marxist regime, with houses and businesses declared state-owned.

  b) 11 November; Angola achieved its independence from Portugal and Agostinho Neto (MPLA) became the country’s first Marxist president. Just prior to this, over 300,000 people left Angola after having experienced the devastation of the civil war between UNITPA and MPLA (1961-1975), which claimed millions of lives.

  1976 – a) In Mozambique, an estimated 50,000 inmates filled concentration camps. The Roman Catholic Church was driven underground and baptism was banned. The country’s legal code was abolished and replaced by military tribunals.

  b) 3 March; the British Government gave £15 million aid to Mozambique, which was followed almost immediately by Samora Machel declaring his country on a war footing with Rhodesia.

  c) Mozambique deported an estimated 28,000 Portuguese residents and incarcerated 150 Catholic priests in concentration camps.

  d) 27 April; Ian Smith announced the inclusion of black ministers in the Rhodesian Government.

  e) 16 June; an estimated 20,000 students staged an uprising in Soweto, South Africa, for better education. The police responded with tear gas and live bullets, killing 176 rioters.

  f) Rhodesia’s Selous Scouts carried out a raid, disguised as FRELIMO, on a camp in central Mozambique, killing an estimated 2000 insurgents.

  g) December; a large group of African workers at the Honde Valley Tea Estate in Rhodesia’s Eastern Highlands were brutally shot and bayoneted in front of their families. They were told it was their punishment for working for the white man and that their wages were so low, they were better off dead.

  1977 – a) In March, Cuban troops marched into Zaire’s (Congo) Katanga Province, having previously fought UNITA forces in Angola.

  b) In Uganda, a British newspaper reported more than 90,000 dead in ongoing genocide with Idi Amin directing and participating personally in the slaughter.

  c) 31 August; Ian Smith went back to the polls, once more sweeping all seats for his RF party.

  d) The British Government demanded the immediate handover of the Rhodesian security forces to the Patriotic Front, and wanted a British Field Marshall to take command of all ‘security matters’.

  e) 23 November; Rhodesia’s Combined Operations undertook two huge strikes in Mozambique. Two hundred soldiers attacked a ZANLA base and two days later, hit a secret terrorist camp, with approximately 3,000 insurgents killed and a few thousand wounded.

  1978 – a) 4 March; the 50-50 black/white transitional government was sworn in with Ian Smith becoming joint prime minister with Sithole, Muzorewa and Senator Chief Chirau.

  b) 23 June; eight English missionaries and four children were slaughtered at Elim Mission in the Eastern Highlands, close to the Mozambique border.

  c) 14 August; Ian Smith held meetings with Kenneth Kaunda, Joshua Nkomo, the Nigerian foreign minister and others in Lusaka. Smith returned to Rhodesia with a feeling of optimism but a few days later, Tanzania’s president, Julius Nyerere, vetoed the budding plan by repeating his ‘absolute prerequisite’ that the Rhodesian Army be disbanded prior to any further talks.

  d) In August, Samora Machel admitted holding 20,000 religious dissenters in camps in Mozambique but refused to bow to pressure for their release.

  e) 29 August; grand-scale terror came to Rhodesia with the downing of Viscount passenger plane by a SAM-7 missile. Of the fifty-six who started the flight from Kariba, only eighteen survived. Twelve ZIPRA insurgents soon arrived at the scene and shot and bayoneted the majority of the survivors, with the commander shouting, ‘You have stolen our land, you are white, now you must die’. While the country mourned, another mortar and rocket attack took place on the eastern border town of Umtali.

  f) P.W. Botha replaced John Vorster as South Africa’s prime minister. At the same time, Rhodesia’s CIO arrested three American CIA agents accused of counter-intelligence activities and of undermining Bishop Muzorewa.

  1979 – a) January; a ‘bug’ was discovered on the phone of the officer commander of the Selous Scouts.

  b) Eighty-five per cent of the white electorate approved Rhodesia’s new constitution.

  c) 12 February; a second Viscount was shot down after leaving Victoria Falls. Joshua Nkomo triumphantly accepted responsibility.

  d) 12 April; a company of the Rhodesian SAS drove brazenly into Lusaka and attacked Nkomo’s home, which caused considerable embarrassment to Kenneth Kaunda who was hosting an OAU conference in Lusaka at the time.

  e) 26 February; Rhodesian Air Force Hawker Hunters carried out a retaliatory strike on a ZIPRA base near Livingstone. At the same time four Canberra bombers hit a garrison of ZIPRA forces in Angola.

  f) Soon after the raids, Abel Muzorewa was elected in a seventy per cent turnout.

  g) 31 May; Ian Smith finished his last day in office.

  h) 1 June; Bishop Muzorewa became prime minister in Rhodesia’s Government of National Unity, but only South Africa was to recognise the new government.

  i) 10 September; the Lancaster House Conference took place in London under the chairmanship of Lord Carrington, with the Rhodesian delegation led by Bishop Muzorewa and a delegation from ZANU/ZAPU headed by Robert Mugabe.

  j) 12 December; Lord Soames was installed as governor, with the British Government still technically referring to Rhodesia as the Colony of Southern Rhodesia.

  1980 – a) 27 February; voting (one man, one vote) commenced.

  b) 4 March; after an election marred by gross intimidation, Robert Mugabe was declared winner.

  c) 17 April; Zimbabwe became an independent state with Mugabe as prime minister and Canaan Banana as president.

  1982 – a) July; South African Special Forces raided Zimbabwe’s Thornhill Air Base in Gweru. Thirty Zimbabwe white air force officers were immediately arrested on suspicion of conspiring. All were brutally treated while in detention.

  b) December; Mugabe formally presented Colonel Perence Shiri with the colours of the North Korean-trained 5th Brigade with the task of resolving the ‘Ndebele problem’, which resulted in the deaths of 20,000-25,000 tribespeople in rural Matabeleland. (A record of this ethnic cleansing was to be later recorded at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, Rwanda.)

  c) Joshua Nkomo fled the country and two former ZIPRA generals were both arrested and detained without trial.

  1987 – Unity Agreement to merge ZANU and ZAPU, and Zimbabwe effectively became a one-party state with Nkomo as Mubabe’s vice president.

  1989 – 18 January; F.W. de Klerk became President of South Africa.

  1990 – Nelson Mandela was released from prison on Robben Island and the journey to majority rule in South Africa commenced.

  1993 – The dreaded process of eviction of white farmers began. At the same time, a parliamentary report indicated t
hat ‘corruption was so pervasive and civil servants so venal’ that virtually no service was now provided without a bribe.

  1994 – 10 May; Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa.

  2000 – Robert Mugabe lost a referendum that would have given him dictatorial powers. Furious at its failure, he played his political trump card and commenced the seizure of 4,000 commercial white-owned farms that had provided the economic mainstay of the country. The Zimbabwean economy became the fastest collapsing in history with at least four million citizens fleeing the country. Those that remain seem to be condemned to a life of abject poverty, with the country being effectively a failed state.

  2008 – Results of the country’s general election were subsequently found by the team of election monitors to not represent the wishes of the people. ZANU/PF intimidation was rife, with over 200 murders having taken place. Although after the disputed results of the election, a coalition between ZANU/PF and the MDC was established with MDC’s leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, becoming Zimbabwe’s prime minister. During the following years there have been many incidences of political corruption, human tragedies and economic catastrophes.

  2013 – a) April; Britain’s Ambassador to Zimbabwe reported that there were now some general grounds for optimism, with the coalition government having had in some instances achieved success. For since 2008, when life expectancy was less than forty years, it had now risen to an average of forty-eight, and the coalition has established a Commission on Human Rights. Also, it announced that free and fair elections were soon to take place on a referendum for a new constitution, which both ZANU/PF and MDC have agreed upon.

  b) 27 May; South Africa’s Sunday Independent recorded that Robert Mugabe considered that Nelson Mandela had been ‘Too soft on whites’ and had been ‘Too saintly, too good, and too much of a saint’. It was also reported that at a rally, he had referred to Mandela as a ‘coward and an idiot’.

  c) 15 June; President Robert Mugabe unilaterally set 31 July as the date of the general election, a move which directly violated the new constitution and a requirement of the Global Political Agreement.