Barrel of a Gun

by Al Venter

  The system that the Portuguese Army employed to clear mines was basic, though clearly not without risk. A number of trained soldiers – black and white – would spend several minutes assessing the situation on the road ahead. If they felt that the surface might conceal mines, a stick of four would disembark and walk slowly ahead, using their steeltipped wooden lances, about the length of a golf club, to probe the soil. Soft, recently disturbed soil would customarily indicate mines.

  The lances were named picas, after the Portuguese bullfight probe, a curious anomaly at a time when there were any number of electronic mine-detecting devices available. Yet I was to see that throughout all of Lisbon’s conflicts in Africa, these primitive handheld staffs were always regarded as the most reliable means of detecting those insidious weapons that remain as much of a threat in the new millennium in some parts of the globe as they were 30 or 40 years ago.

  It was interesting that the convoy had on board a variety of electronic gear for the purpose, all with NATO designations. However, this equipment was rarely unpacked from its bulky, suitcase-sized containers, one of the officers explained, because it was all but useless along roads where huge amounts of metal debris lay about. That included cans, tin foil, spent cartridge cases, spare parts and the rest – all discarded over the years by minor armies of transients like us.

  It took our group about 90 minutes to find seven mines: a large antitank bomb surrounded by six anti-personnel mines. All the latter were PMD-6 mines; rudimentary pressure-activated blast devices, each in its own little wooden box.

  We were aware that the PMD-6 had already been widely used in Cambodia, but because of Mozambique’s vast distances, the insurgents had taken to manufacturing some of these devices themselves. The forest provided the wood, while explosives and detonators were brought into the war zones from Tanzania on peoples’ backs.

  Not all landmines deployed by the guerrillas were primitive. The insurgents soon imposed significant losses among government troops by using larger TM-57 anti-tank mines. Also deployed were PMN ‘Black Widow’ mines and the deadly POM-Z, both anti-personnel devices already well blooded in Vietnam.

  In the final stages of these heady African colonial conflicts – as in Rhodesia and South-West Africa afterwards – RPG-7s had begun to supersede the more ubiquitous RPG-2s.

  Midday brought us the short distance to the Portuguese Army paracommando camp at Muxoxo. For at least an hour before we reached the base, the unit’s pair of helicopters provided air cover against further insurgent forays. Camouflaged Alouette gunships would move at a fair pace above the bush, sweeping low and often doubling back to previous sites, their heavy machine-guns strafing suspect positions. The pilots would sometimes wave as they passed.

  Muxoxo offered few surprises. The dilapidated building at its centre had once been a farmhouse and was surrounded by neat rows of army tents that housed the garrison. We welcomed the opportunity to buy warm Manica beer at five times the going rate in Lourenco Marques. In the milieu of the Portuguese shopkeeper in Africa, passing trade has always been lucrative.

  The men at the camp had a fairly large area to patrol, at least by today’s counter-insurgency standards. They were backed by their handful of helicopters, which air-lifted small units to wherever intelligence reports indicated the guerrillas might be working, or possibly concentrating assets. The unit averaged about four operations a week, mostly when road convoys were expected.

  Muxoxo was strategically placed and responsible for security on that section of the rail link between Moatize and Caldas Xavier and these activities often took heli-borne sorties long distances towards the south east. These were short, swift ‘search and destroy’ hits which sometimes offered unexpected surprises.

  It was a dirty, dusty, sometimes dangerous experience travelling in much of Mozambique during wartime. Generally though, the convoys got through without too many problems, though they were constantly sniped at. (Author’s collection)

  During our brief stay, two captured Frelimo insurgents were brought in. One was an old man hardly able to walk, obviously malnourished and definitely no belligerent. Yet both admitted they’d been linked to a rebel sabotage unit that had been operating near the rail town of Goa. They had been taken while preparing food for their compatriots in the bush, men, whom they admitted, had been responsible for a spate of attacks on the railroad that winds its way to Beira at the coast.

  Ultimately, it had been a squad of Portugal’s crack Commandos Africanos who had scored and subsequently dealt with a larger group of insurgents who had been spreading mines about in the region. Several hundred anti-personnel mines were seized, but curiously not a single anti-tank mine.

  The two captives were first interrogated, then fed. More interrogation followed before they were flown to Tete for a more professional session, after which they would probably be transferred to one of the prison camps in the south, Chagas reckoned. After doing some independent news-gathering of his own, the lieutenant told us that the men would probably be of some use to the security forces.

  ‘They claim they were shanghaied. Had they offered any resistance they said they would have been shot’ he explained. ‘Trouble is’ he added, ‘they all claim that… but the truth is they probably would have been killed had they not cooperated…’

  It was late afternoon when we finally made contact with the southbound convoy at the road junction to Caldas Xavier. The crossroads were marked by a primitive wooden signpost on which none of the directions were discernible.

  We were again warned that the area had not been cleared of mines and that we should be circumspect. Spent cartridge cases littered the area and its approaches.

  While approaching the intersection, we’d crossed a small river that had been prominently signposted in both languages: Zona Armadilhada: Minefield. This deterrent was Portuguese and had been laid in a bid to prevent the guerrillas from setting charges at the base of the bridge and possibly destroying it. As somebody mentioned, the measure was decidedly two edged since it also prevented anybody travelling in our convoy from getting water at a time when stocks were getting low. Water shortages on board the buses, we knew, were already critical, especially among the children.

  The oppressive heat which had followed us across Africa from the Zambezi Valley hardly made matters any easier. Even so, a handful of passengers did make an effort. In a small column, some of the men and boys traipsed single file down a path towards the river, each one stepping carefully in the imprint of the man directly ahead.

  One of the older soldiers later told us that the week before, a civilian had tripped a mine. He hadn’t been killed, but it did underscore some of the privations that those who had few resources faced when moving across this corner of East Africa.

  ‘He needed water very badly – not only for himself, but also for his family. So he set out on his own in spite of warnings from the troops. As he stepped near the water his foot triggered something that shot a small mine about six feet into the air.’ It was later determined that the device was similar to the notorious South-East Asian ‘S mine’, or what the Americans liked to call the ‘Bouncing Betty’. Lisbon used these munitions to good effect throughout their colonial conflicts.

  Apparently, the man who had tripped the mine while going for water was lucky that eventful day. The mine detonated almost within touching distance of where he stood, but it was apparently facing the wrong way. The victim was concussed by the blast, but not a single shard of shrapnel penetrated his skin.

  We waited an hour for the oncoming convoy to arrive. From the start we could see that conditions were much harder in their sector than in ours and a number of times we heard detonations.

  Chagas came back not long afterwards to tell us that the approaching column had taken a casualty. He wasn’t specific, but said something about a mine. Moments later an evacuation helicopter veered over our heads and prepared to land in open ground near the crossroads. Ours was the first convoy the pilot reached and he had no way o
f knowing which of the two columns had triggered the bomb.

  Having established that much, the chopper lifted off again, leaving a dense cloud of dust whipped up by its rotors. We watched as the helicopter sped northwards barely a yard above the tree-tops. A minute or two later he was on his way back to base, this time at a higher altitude and making directly for Tete Military Hospital.

  When the oncoming convoy eventually did reach us, the word went out that a man had been killed. He’d been second in the line in the unit’s main pica squad, his point man having apparently stepped over an antipersonnel mine. The soldier behind was not so lucky and he took the full impact of the blast.

  Three other members of the pica squad were lightly wounded, but they were able to continue with their duties even though their leader was limping badly from a large cut on his thigh. In Vietnam, a wound like that would have meant immediate evacuation to the base hospital. With the Portuguese Army in Africa, such matters were accepted in the line of duty.

  Portuguese troops weren’t awarded Lisbon’s version of the Purple Heart because there wasn’t one.

  We travelled halfway through the night to reach Mussacuana. The road had been cleared by the oncoming convoy and it was essential to cover the prodded ground as quickly as possible before the insurgents laid more mines. The same held for the convoy that passed us and was heading in the opposite direction. They’d want to cover as much of the ground that we’d cleared.

  However, we weren’t quite fast enough. A heavy monsoon-like downpour provided the drivers with the almost impossible task of following exactly in the tracks of the vehicles ahead and, within an hour, two more vehicles were blasted. These were heavy trucks, one from Johannesburg, the other from Salisbury, and both carried cargoes destined for the mines in Zambia. What made it ironic was that the insurgent groups who’d laid the mines were actually using Zambia as a base. The mines that had destroyed the trucks had actually originated from there. Now these same guerrillas were helping to disrupt the economy of one of their allies…

  There were no more incidents that night. The mines had been detonated by the back wheels of both trucks, giving credence to reports that the insurgents where using a more sophisticated type of landmine that had recently been brought in from South-East Asia following the deescalation of American military involvement there. Only much later were we to learn that these were ratchet mines.

  A curious name, ratchet mines used by the Viet Cong were usually set to detonate after a pre-determined number of wheels had passed; sometimes 10 or 12, often double that. The fact that the trucks involved were well down the column when they were blasted, underscored this development. It could have been us.

  One of the vehicles was travelling in our column barely 100 yards ahead of us. The blast happened about a mile out of the village of Capirizanje, our next stop on the long road north. A heavy downpour was pelting down when the blast ripped through one of the open windows of the Land Rover and the column halted.

  For a long time we sat in silence, accepting that it would have been foolish to get out and see what was happening. Only when the convoy started to move again and we carefully followed neat rows of new tracks created through the bush around the stranded vehicle, could we see that a set of back wheels on one of the low-loaders from South Africa had been shredded.

  Not long afterwards we passed a quarry alongside the road, illuminated by lightning as we passed. We were experiencing one of those African thunderstorms for which the Zambezi Valley is known, the water sometimes coming down in spurts big enough to fill a bucket overnight. Three or four flashes of lightning told us that the area had long ago been abandoned. Some of the trolleys that had probably been part of the facility lay on their sides. A few yards away, a wheelbarrow without its wheel rested upside down in the mud, more reminders of a conflict that had already spanned half a generation.

  Mussacuana arrived unheralded. We’d climbed steadily in the mud and muck and suddenly, just before midnight, there were lights ahead. The rain had lifted minutes before and as happens so often in a region only a few hundred miles from the Indian Ocean, the settlement in the mountains above Capirizanje lay swathed in mist. The ground was sodden, for it had poured here as well.

  A soldier on guard in an improvised machine-gun turret shouted a greeting. We replied in English and he turned his back on us.

  At least the beer would be cold…

  CHAPTER TWENTY - FIVE

  Serengeti Must Not Die

  Serengeti is one of the great natural treasures of our time. Yet it is threatened by poachers. One of Africa’s great national parks is menaced by groups of well-armed paramilitary groups who murder game guards, as well as the occasional tourist found in the wrong place at the wrong time. Each night they target large numbers of animals. The so-called ‘cullings’ are ongoing because there are simply not enough rangers to counter what some have already termed ‘a mini-invasion of illegals’.

  SADLY, IF THIS SITUATION IS allowed to go on, the unthinkable might happen; this wonderful animal reserve, one of the best-known game parks in the world, will die.

  The scenario is fraught with imponderables. Involved are poachers, bandits, a bankrupt government, corrupt politicians as well as an inept and badly trained army. There is no air support to speak of and the legal system is not beyond coercion whenever ‘incentives’ are offered. The bribes come in heavy manila envelopes stuffed with American banknotes.

  The situation is linked to a level of bureaucratic obfuscation that, to the average Western mind, simply defies description. As one expatriate observer tartly commented, ‘that’s unfortunately the way it goes in these parts’. This imbroglio not only involves Serengeti. Other Tanzanian game parks – like the Selous National Reserve – are similarly affected.

  A generation ago it was Kenya where poachers – many of them Simba rebels from Somalia armed with automatic weapons – killed all the rhinos. They had already set about destroying large herds of elephants, a considerable task and it is sobering that they almost succeeded.

  For those parts of Africa that still have rhino, killing them for their horns is largely a cyclical process. The authorities take action, the poachers back off, somebody imports more rhino from South Africa and the process starts all over again. By mid 2009, the number of rhinoceros in East and Southern Africa was the highest for almost two decades. A year later their numbers were decreasing again at an alarming rate.

  Yet it was not always so. In the mid 1960s I would regularly travel between Nairobi and Malindi by car, often taking the shorter route through parts of the beautiful Tsavo National Park. Along the way, we’d often encounter elephant herds, so vast that we’d have to stop at the side of the road until they’d crossed, an exercise that could sometimes take five or ten minutes.

  These days, only small herds of elephant remain, the ivory of their predecessors long ago shipped to India or China. In both Kenya and Tanzania, the smoke and mirror swindles of ‘allowing’ poachers access to herds of elephant so that they can be shot for their ivory tusks stretches all the way back to their respective capitals and the crooked politicians who control them.

  Dar es Salaam, the beautiful and ancient tropical city on the fringe of the Indian Ocean, first mentioned by Pliny the Elder, lies at the heart of much of it. As in most countries in Africa, Tanzania’s leaders have proved to be corrupt, which is also why it has followed the same route as Kenya: almost all of its rhinos have been poached. The majority were slaughtered for their horns, which were bought by Chinese parties, ground-up into a powder and used as a primitive form of Viagra.

  Caught between these vagaries in the country’s national reserves is a tiny, but resolute, band of conservationists and game guards who regularly match their wits against the poachers. They are a dedicated, illequipped and chronically underpaid band of veterans, but they are willing to put everything on the line, including their lives, in their often futile attempts to stop the killings.

  Justin Hando, head of the T
anzanian paramilitary Anti-Poaching Unit in the Serengeti National Park, was the man in charge the last time I visited East Africa. Responsible for some of the most spectacular concentrations of wildlife in the world, he was emphatic: ‘Our animals are being killed in great numbers and if these people are not halted, then it won’t be long before the process becomes irreversible.’

  He encapsulated his argument with a simple analogy. If poaching were allowed to go on, the word gets around. Soon everyone and his uncle comes running to get a share of the booty. The perception among many of these illegal hunters, he stressed, was that an almost unlimited supply of fresh meat was available. It was there for the taking, and if a game guards got in the way, they did the necessary…

  Security arrangements within Serengeti remain primitive, largely due to budget constraints. While the poachers are armed with Kalashnikov AK-47s, the Tanzanian game guards ‘make do’ with leftovers from earlier wars. This scene shows morning parade at one of the camps. (Author’s collection)

  Moreover, if successful, the illegal hunter would then be able to add another firearm to his already-substantial illegal armoury.

  According to Hando, criminals poached between 150,000 and 200,000 wildebeest each year in Serengeti. ‘Never mind what they end up killing in the rest of the country… Serengeti is the worst, because there is such an exceptional multiplicity of wildlife to be found here… we count our losses in the millions’, he declared.

  That is only part of the story. Apart from wildebeest, poachers kill tens of thousands of other animals in the park. That tally includes elephant, zebra, antelope, gazelle, buffalo and just about every other form of wildlife in this East African region.

  ‘If it’s edible,’ he says, ‘they kill it. Or the poorer people who come across into the park will trap it… and they’re not concerned about how this business goes down.’