THE RHODESIAN ARMY:

COUNTER-INSURGENCY, 1972-1979

By Ian F. W. Beckett

Modern counter-insurgency is rarely a purely military problem for a government and its Security Forces. Of this basic truism, the experience in Rhodesia between 1966 and 1979 affords a significant example. Not only were the efforts of the Rhodesian Security Forces frequently directed towards particular political goals, but their ultimate failure to contain insurgency at an acceptable level derived to a large extent from external political pressures over which they had little control.

In a real sense, Rhodesia was the creation of private enterprise rather than the British government, the British South Africa Company of Cecil Rhodes annexing Mashonaland in 1890 and Matabeleland in 1893. The Company continued to run the administration until, following a referendum of the white settlers which indicated their long-standing disillusionment with such control, Southern Rhodesia as it was then known became a self-governing colony in 1923. Far more prosperous than either Northern Rhodesia or Nyasaland, Southern Rhodesia effectively dominated the Central African Federation into which it entered with these neighbours in 1953. The Federation collapsed in 1963, with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland becoming the independ­ent black states of Zambia and Malawi respectively in the following year. The larger white settler population in Southern Rhodesia rejected the concept of majority rule, a determination reinforced by the spectre of chaos in the Belgian Congo in 1960 and by the urban unrest in Southern Rhodesia itself which followed the rejection by the growing black nationalist movement of the proposed 1961 constitution, despite its greater participat­ory role for the African.

The war that evolved in Rhodesia thereafter has to be seen in the context of continuing political and diplomatic activity aimed at securing Rhodesian acceptance of majority rule and the end of rebellion against the Crown. The British rejected the use of force, although they did resort to largely ineffectual economic sanctions, including the so-called Beira Patrol off the coast of Portuguese Mozambique from 1965 to 1974, when the latter became independent. Similarly, British troops were stationed in Bechuanaland (later Botswana) from 1965 to 1967 to guard a BBC transmitter at Francistown from possible Rhodesian sabo­tage. In December 1966 Smith met the British prime minister, Harold Wilson, for talks aboard HMS Tiger and there were more negotiations aboard HMS Fearless in September 1968. The subsequent Conservative government sent the abortive Pearce Commission to Rhodesia from January to May 1972 to test the acceptability of new Anglo-Rhodesian proposals on a constitution.

These complicated political events between 1965 and 1980 inevitably affected the conduct of the war inside Rhodesia and across its frontiers, although large-scale conflict did not occur before December 1972. Thus Security Force operations could be undertaken to put direct pressure upon the guerrillas in order to achieve political results in the wider diplomatic field. In October 1976, for example, the Rhodesians frustrated guerrilla attempts to launch an offensive coinciding with the Geneva Conference by themselves striking deep into Mozambique. Similarly, the highly successful Rhodesian attack on New Chimoio (Operation ‘Miracle’) in Mozambique in September 1979 put pressure on the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) during the Lancaster House Conference. Moreover, there was a whole series of attacks on economic targets in both Mozambique and Zambia, designed to compel the guerrillas’ hosts — Kaunda and Samora Machel, President of Mozambique — to ensure that their clients adopted a more positive approach to the negotiations. In September 1979, for example, Rhodesia suspended Zambian maize shipments on Rhodesian railways, Zambia having been forced by economic pressure to reopen its frontiers with Rhodesia in 1978. In October 1979 Zambia’s own railway system came under Rhodesian attack, while it has been estimated that Mozambique suffered over 26 million dollars’ worth of damage in 1979.1 In February 1979 Angolan targets had been bombed by the Rhodesian Air Force to frustrate any guerrilla build-up prior to the internal elections.

The fact that the ZANLA guerrillas and those of the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) operated from sanctuaries in other countries, resulted in further political complications. In January 1973 Rhodesia closed its frontier with Zambia, with the exception of copper shipments, as a direct result of the escalation of guerrilla activity in the north-east of Rhodesia. The Rhodesians subsequently reopened the frontier but, as indicated above, Zambia then declined to do so until 1978. Similarly, Mozambique closed its frontiers with Rhodesia in March 1976 and by the end of the war only the 222 km (138 mile) frontier with South Africa out of a total frontier length of 2964 km (1841 miles) was entirely free of infiltration. The Rhodesians had, in fact, begun operating up to 100 km (62 miles) inside Mozambique in co-operation with the Portuguese as early as 1969. The first large-scale cross-border raid was not launched, however, until August 1979 (Operation ‘Eland’). Such raids occurred frequently thereafter, often coinciding with the imminent approach of the rainy season in November and hitting the guerrilla concentrations that would have attempted to infiltrate under favourable climatic conditions that restricted Rhodesia’s monopoly of air power. Physical difficulties as well as political restraint precluded large-scale raids into Zambia until October 1978, when the first took place in direct response to the shooting down of a Rhodesian Viscount civil airliner a month previously by ZIPRA, who had then massacred the survivors. A second airliner was shot down in February 1979, eliciting the air strike into Angola although, as already indicated above, the operation fulfilled other requirements as well. There was also an attempt to kill Nkomo in Lusaka in April 1979 while, earlier in the same year, Rhodesian forces had sunk the Kasangula ferry which was Botswana’s only link with Zambia. But, just as the neighbouring black states were to some extent dependent upon Rhodesia’s railways for their survival, Rhodesia itself after UDI was equally dependent upon external sources.

Vorster had feared the consequences of any escalation in the war between Rhodesia and its neighbours and there were inevitably clashes between Rhodesian forces and those of the black states. On one notable occasion in September 1979 during the attack on New Chimoio, Rhodesian Eland armoured cars, a version of the Panhard, engaged Soviet-supplied T-34 tanks of the Mozambique Army (FPLM). On such raids the Rhodesians invariably had two Hawker Hunter jets armed with 68 mm rockets avilable as an anti-tank reaction force.³ Curiously, the Rhodesians themselves also had some Soviet T-55 tanks, which had been landed in South Africa instead of the intended destination of Uganda when Idi Amin’s regime fell in 1979. But incursions into neighbouring states also carried the possibility of clashing with the wide variety of foreign nationals — Chinese, Russians, Cubans and so on — who advised the guerrillas. In the case of the struggle for New Chimoio, for example, East German advisers fought with ZANLA guerrillas. The guerrillas were, of course, also sustained by many other external organisations, including the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the World Council of Churches and the Third World lobby in the United Nations.

ZANLA also briefly considered a conventional assault in 1979 to establish a provisional government inside Rhodesia, but for the most part the approach of the two groups was markedly different. This made co-operation between ZANLA and ZIPRA difficult and there were further break-aways such as that of James Chikerema, who left ZAPU to form the Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe (FROLIZI), forcing a hasty and temporary junction of ZIPRA and ZANLA in a Joint Military Command in 1972. Bishop Abel Muzorewa, who had emerged during the Pearce Commission as a nationalist of some authority, and his United African National Council (UANC) was recognised by the OAU in 1974 as a means of uniting the disparate guerrilla struggle. Muzorewa ‘joined together with Nkomo, Sithole and Chikerema to form a Zimbabwe Liberation Council in 1975, while ZIPRA and ZANLA were forced by their black African hosts to create a unified army in the shape of the Zimbabwe People’s Army (ZIPA). This unity quickly faded, the subsequent union of ZAPU and ZANU in the so-called Patriotic Front for the purpose of attending the Geneva Conference in 1976 never resulting in any actual military unity between ZIPRA and ZANLA. Within ZANU, Sithole was by now being out­manoeuvred by more radical elements and, after his release from detention inside Rhodesia in 1974, Robert Mugabe became the dominant figure. Thus Sithole, still heading a group he called ZANU, came together with Muzorewa’s UANC and Chief Chirau’s insignificant Zimbabwe United People’s Organisation in aceepting the internal settlement in 1978. Their three parties contested the internal elections in April 1979, all seeking the Shona vote rathcr than that of the Ndebele. Subsequently, Chikerema deserted the UANC to form yet another faction the Zimbabwe Democratic Party. Throughout the war, therefore, there were divisions among the nationalists that could be successfully exploited by the Rhodesians as the internal settlement indicated only too clearly. On occasions there were clashes between rival guerrillas and a number of major internal upheavals such as the ‘Nhari Rebellion’ in ZANLA in December 1973 and the assassination of one of ZANLA’s leaders, Herbert Chitepo, in Lusaka in March 1974 which led to ZANLA’s virtual expulsion from Zambia.

At the time when insurgency first began, the complicated nature of the divisions among the nationalists was not apparent and the nature of the insurgency itself was limited. The first white man was killed by a so-called ZANU ‘Crocodile Commando’ in July 1964, but the first systematic attempt to inifitrate guerrillas into Rhodesia did not occur until April 1966, when a group of 14 ZANU guerrillas crossed into the country from Zambia. Over the course of the next two years a variety of guerrilla columns from ZANU, ZAPU and, on occasions, ZAPU guerrillas co­operating with the South African branch of the African National Congress, were comfortably contained and successfully elimin­ated by the Rhodesian Security Forces to such an extent that virtually all insurgency ceased for the next four years. The ease with which the guerrillas had been defeated did, however, have subsequent repercussions since it was largely seen as a police action and was controlled by Rhodesia’s British South Africa Police (BSAP). The Rhodesian Army was rarely used, even though the BSAP was frequently operating as a conventional military force with patrols, sweeps and supported by helicopters.⁴ Similarly, the BSAP Special Branch was especially prominent, its network of informers working well since the local African population of the Zambezi valley had little sympathy for the guerrillas. In any case the valley was an inhospitable environment and few guerrillas penetrated beyond it. Where military support had been required, temporary brigade areas were established with a Joint Operations Centre (JOC) involving military and police representatives as well as civil commissioners from the Department of Internal Affairs.

When insurgency developed once more, with the opening of ZANLA’s new front in the Centenary district of the north-east in December 1972, there was a natural tendency to persist with previous practices. Beyond the local JOCs, the chain of command therefore stretched upwards through provincial JOCs, a Joint Planning Staff (JPS), and a Deputy Minister in Ian Smith’s office (from 1974), to the Security Council of the Rhodesian Cabinet. In September 1976 a War Council replaced the Security Council and in March 1977 a Combined Operations Headquarters (Comops) replaced the JPS. In theory the creation of Comops should have enabled the Security Forces to develop a well coordinated strategy for the prosecution of the war. In reality, the command and control system failed at a number of levels. For one thing, there was increasing friction between Army and Police as the escalation of the war led to the replacement of BSAP personnel by the military in positions of responsibility on JOCs. In 1973 the JOC in the northeast was converted into a permanent operational brigade area — ‘Hurricane’. This was followed by the establishment of ‘Thrasher’ and ‘Repulse’ in 1976, ‘Tangent’, ‘Grapple’ and ‘Splinter’ in 1977, and ‘Salops’ in 1978. With the exception of the latter, which remained a largely administrative creation under BSAP control, the other JOCs were now chaired almost as a matter of course by the Army.

With division at the top of the system, it is not unlikely that this will be magnified at lower levels and such was the case in Rhodesia. There was, for example, an attempt to co-ordinate the Rhodesian Special Air Service (SAS) and the Selous Scouts with the establishment of a Special Forces Headquarters in July 1978. However, this fell foul of inter-unit rivalry and was eventually confined to administering the black Security Force Auxiliaries (SFAs) that came into existence after the internal settlement. The rivalry between the Army and the BSAP was also apparent in the attempted co-ordination of intelligence. Prior to 1972 intelligence was firmly a BSAP responsibility and of its Special Branch in particular, as was so frequently the case in British or former British territories. The Army had no intelligence network of its own, but the lack of real insurgency simply did not necessitate it. This was to change with the escalation of conflict in December 1972. In the northeast, which had been generally neglected by the Rhodesian administration at all levels, Special Branch’s traditional reliance upon a handful of picked informers proved hopelessly inadequate. When the Army subsequently formed its own Military Intelligence Department in 1973, however, Special Branch regarded it with suspicion. The Department had no effective access to captured insurgents until 1978 and was generally confined to gathering external intel­ligence, largely through its radio interception service. There was also no Intelligence Corps formed within the Army until July 1975. Similarly, Special Branch initially controlled the special intelligence-gathering units which were raised by Major Ron Reid-Daly between November 1973 and January 1974. Subse­quently named the Selous Scouts in March 1974, the regiment came under Comops control in 1977. There is some evidence of

friction between the Selous Scouts and the Army, the attempt by Reid-Daly to recruit black servicemen from the Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR) being persistently resisted. Equally, the blowing of the cover of the Selous Scouts’ first ‘pseudo’ operation in January 1974 by a Special Branch officer led to friction between the BSAP and the Scouts. A further indication of some of the tensions within the armed forces was the allegation in 1979 that the Selous Scouts were more intent on ivory poaching than killing guerrillas in areas frozen to operations by other members of the Security Forces. The Army’s Intelligence Department bugged Reid-Daly’s telephone and, amid the reverberations, Hickman was sacked as Army commander and Reid-Daly court-martialed. Reid-Daly was reprimanded and retired.

Despite the increasing demands made upon white manpower, the great majority of the personnel of the Security Forces remained black. Until 1979 they were also all volunteers and there was no shortage of recruits, particularly among the Karanga tribe. Accordingly, the RAR added a second battalion in 1974, a third in 1977 and a fourth in 1978, the establishment of the latter raising the proportion of black servicemen from some 66 per cent of the whole to around 70 per cent. Approximately 75 per cent of the BSAP were also black, including most of the Police Support Units (PSU), popularly known as ‘Black Boots’. Africans were attracted not only by good pay, housing, educational facilities and health care but also by traditional bonds of family service to the state. By 1979, too, there were 30 black commissioned officers in the Army. There is little evidence of disciplinary problems among black service personnel, although it would appear that some opposed the Anglo-Rhodesian proposals tested by the Pearce Commission and that the majority of the RAR probably voted solidly for Mugabe in the 1980 elections.

The lack of manpower tended to imply that there was little administrative ‘tail’ to the Security Forces, since traditionally most support functions had been undertaken by African labourers. The majority of the white national servicemen, especially older age groups, were also placed in a variety of more or less static roles such as holding units, police reserve units, the Guard Force created in February 1976 to assist the defence of protected villages (PVs), and the Defence Regiment formed in 1978 to guard important installations and communications. The principal strike formations were the regulars of the all-white Rhodesian Light Infantry (RLI). the white SAS, and the mixed-race Selous Scouts. While the RLI and the RAR provided the men for the ‘Fire Forces’ inside Rhodesia, the SAS and Scouts were available for external operations. There were also some other specialist units for counter-insurgency. The BSAP, for example, had Police Anti-Terrorist Units (PATU) as well as the PSUs, specialist anti-stock theft teams and SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics Teams) which were designed to contain urban terrorism. The latter, however, was relatively limited, the most successful urban guerrilla operations being the bomb planted in the Salisbury branch of Woolworths in August 1977 and the rocket attack on the capital’s oil storage depot in December 1978. The Ministry of Internal Affairs also fielded African District Security Assistants (DSAs) from 1976 for security duties in PVs. Another specialist Army unit was the Grey’s Scouts, a mixed-race mounted unit often used to patrol border minefields.

The manpower shortage also had repercussions in terms of strategy in frontier areas and to prevent guerrilla infiltration into the interior. Ironically, the white urban areas and farms were surrounded by the African Tribal Trust Lands (ATLs) in a manner approximating to the Maoist guerrilla theory that the countryside dominated by insurgents should surround the cities. The need to prevent infiltration was an additional reason for striking at guerrilla concentrations outside Rhodesia. The Rhodesian forces were, in fact, well suited to counter-insurgency and had begun a systematic study of the subject in the 1950s. Some 50 per cent of all regular training was in the form of small-unit operations. There was also a reservoir of expertise from direct experience of British counter-insurgency operations. The Rhodesian Far East Volunteer Unit had served in Malaya during the Emergency in the 1950s; the then single battalion of the RAR had served in Malaya from 1956 to 1958; and Rhodesia’s SAS had begun life as ‘C’ (Rhodesia) Squadron of the Malayan Scouts, later named ‘C’ (Rhodesia) Squadron of the British SAS, and had served both in Malaya and in Aden. The Rhodesian Air Force had also sent elements to Kuwait and Aden between 1958 and 1961. Indeed, it was sometimes alleged that there was a ‘Malayan’ clique within the armed forces, Walls having commanded the Rhodesian SAS squadron in Malaya. More recent experience was also available, the Selous Scouts being modelled to some extent on Portugal’s Flechas whom Reid-Daly had studied. There was also close study of Israeli techniques, particularly in terms of external operations.⁷

Yet, despite the expertise available, the crucial lack of co­ordination in command and control prevented the development of the kind of distinct overall strategy that had characterised the British operations with which the Rhodesians were so familiar. Comops appeared after its creation in 1977 to abandon the generally-defensive reaction to guerrilla infiltration of earlier years in favour of a strategy of mobile counter-offensive. But, in the absence of sufficient numbers of men on the ground, the success of the counter-offensive largely depended upon inflicting high kill ratios. No real attempt could be made to hold cleared areas until the SFAs became available and it was not until 1979 that an area defence system was adopted, based on firmly holding ‘Vital Asset Ground’ corresponding to the white areas of Rhodesia.⁸ This did not mean that some areas were tacitly abandoned to the guerrillas since elite groups such as the Selous Scouts would make periodic forays and the remaining ground of ‘tactical importance’ outside the vital asset ground, primarily the flLs and game parks, became available for locating and destroying guerrillas at will. It was, however, late in the day before such a co-ordinated strategy was evolved and it has been suggested that the apolitical nature of the Rhodesian armed forces prevented them from seriously coming to terms with the political aspects of guerrilla insurgency.⁹ There was never any real attempt at political indoctrination or instruction within the Rhodesian armed forces and to the end of the war guerrilla insurgency tended to be regarded as a military rather than a political problem to which military solutions alone should be applied.

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