EFFORTPOST Random Rhodesia Bush War Scandals

@Redactor0

Greetings guys, I wanted to talk about some Rhodesian war scandals, or at least event which stirred lots of seeth and drama back in South Africa, when my parents' generation received news negatively reflecting upon Rhodesia or the Rhodesian Bush war, as things rapidly went south for the Rhodesians over 15 years of war.

1 - RHODESIA MINEFIELDS:

https://www.halotrust.org/latest/halo-updates/stories/zimbabwes-minefields-a-visual-explainer/

Many people don't know that modern Zimbabwe still has a metric shitload mines active all the way back 40 years ago from the Rhodesian Bush War. This one isn't as controversial as other events I've covered, but it did put the Rhodesian armed forces in a bad light (even from the eyes of their South African allies) when in the last desperate 5 years of the Bush war, they desperately started to mine colossal stretches of borders with minefields.

Just as a reminder, during the Rhodesian Bush War, 2/3rds of the entire nation's borders were bounded by hostile states and were frequently crossed by communist guerillas to sabotage government infrastructure to try and force the white regime to be toppled. As a military, the Rhodesians fare magnificently, but no matter their body counts, their communist opposition continued to grow and grow in numbers, and incursions into Rhodesia continued from more varied directions. Here is a further picture from the article to demonstrate how massively huge these borders were and how near impossible it was to man them with the small Rhodesian military over such vast stretches.

Farm attacks become as common as gov infrastructure attacks and the whole nation was in a state of near constant siege in the final years of the war from 1974-1979. It was a bizarre time. Thus, under extreme desperation the Rhodesians would mine nearly a 3rd of their entire "hostile" borders. This was a relatively dramatic schism between Rhodesians and their benefactor SA, and drew further criticism from the international community. It was considered cowardly and scandelous by South African supporters of Rhodesia back in 1970s.

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Long after the capitulation of the Rhodesian regime, and the transformation into Zimbabwe, the giant stretches of landmines would still haunt Zimbabwe.

https://www.halotrust.org/latest/halo-updates/stories/zimbabwes-minefields-a-visual-explainer/

"Zimbabwe's minefields are uniquely dense and complex. At first the Rhodesian military laid in several belts - dense anti-personnel mines were buried in the ground in one section. Then a locally-made mine called the 'Ploughshare' was hoisted on posts and attached to a tripwire in another belt. As the war went on, fences and cleared ground were dispensed with and each mine-laying unit started using different patterns. The posts for the Ploughshares have since rotted and their tripwires eroded. After four decades of rains, animal disturbance and growing vegetation, HALO can never be certain where it will find each mine."

When it became aware that many of the mines laid out were South African built and designed, and given to the Rhodesians, there were further scandals and drama by South Africans themselves.

"Zimbabwe's minefields are uniquely dense and complex. At first the Rhodesian military laid in several belts - dense anti-personnel mines were buried in the ground in one section. Then a locally-made mine called the 'Ploughshare' was hoisted on posts and attached to a tripwire in another belt. As the war went on, fences and cleared ground were dispensed with and each mine-laying unit started using different patterns. The posts for the Ploughshares have since rotted and their tripwires eroded. After four decades of rains, animal disturbance and growing vegetation, HALO can never be certain where it will find each mine."

https://adf-magazine.com/2022/11/land-mines-haunt-zimbabwe-40-years-after-war/

" the Rhodesian army planted an estimated 3 million anti-personnel mines between 1974 and 1979 in five major minefields across 850 kilometers of the country's eastern and northern borders. Dense belts of land mines — some with about 5,500 per square kilometer — on Zimbabwe's border with Mozambique have hindered development in marginalized communities."

Of course since the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy in 2001, any funds for demining efforts have been basically non-existent, and only foreign Demining NGOs like HALO have been putting any real efforts into demining for the past 20 years in Zimbabwe.

https://www.hrw.org/reports/1997/lmsa/

2 - SHOOTING DOWN OF CIVILIAN AIRLINERS:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-28361223

As the rhodesian Bush war continued its cycle of violence and reprisals, a lot of borderline warcrimes got committed by both factions. ZANU and ZAPU the two primary communist factions would frequently attack civilian targets indiscriminately and violently attack any non-communist supporting black factions, the white government under Ian Smith would brutalize and torture prisoners for information on communist guerilla locations and so on.

This contest of brutality would reach a peak when two civilian airplanes were shot down Air Rhodesia Flight 825 on 3 September 1978 and Air Rhodesia Flight 827 on 12 February 1979, by Soviet-supplied SA-7 heat-seeking missiles. They were fired by the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) (which was the military wing of ZAPU), camping beneath the Salisbury to Kariba Airport route.

In the first attack, eighteen civilians on board somehow survived, and five of these went away to find water. Half an hour later nine ZIPRA fighters arrived, promising help; three of the thirteen survivors hid when they saw them, which saved their lives. In the words of Time magazine, the ZIPRA cadres "herded together the ten people at the wreckage, robbed them of their valuables, and finally cut them down with automatic weapons fire". Nkomo claimed responsibility for the attack and spoke of it to the BBC in a way Rhodesians considered gloating.

Wayback machine for Time magazine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20080307203237/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,916377,00.html

"" Of the 56 people on board, 38 died in the crash. Five of the 18 survivors struggled free and left immediately in search of water. Three of the remaining 13 were miraculously spared by hiding when, half an hour later, nine armed guerrilla soldiers arrived. "It's only because I know a terrorist when I see one that I'm still alive," recalled Anthony Hill, 39, an army reservist. He hid in the bush. At first the guerrillas, clad in jungle green uniforms, seemed friendly, promising help. But then they herded together the ten people at the wreckage, robbed them of their valuables, and finally cut them down with automatic weapons fire. From another hiding place, businessman Hans Hansen and his wife Diana could hear the victims crying, "Please don't shoot us!" as the firing began. Dazed by the ordeal, Hansen said later: "I'll never be able to get that moment out of my mind." ""

https://web.archive.org/web/20080307203237/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,916377,00.html

In the second attack all 59 people on board were killed in the crash, after the plane had been hit by the heat-seeking missle. The mood became very ugly within Salisbury (the capital of Rhodesia itself), and racial tension was on a knife edge. These incidents pulled back likely agreements to hand over democratic vote to the black population, as Nkomo the leader of these guerillas having claimed ownership of these two attacks, appeared boastful to the Rhodesian civilian public.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=262147538775303

This cratered Ian Smiths secret idea to secure a peace with Nkomo.

https://web.archive.org/web/20090708031424/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,916377-2,00.html

Ian Smith, Nkomo and Mugabe would later meet in a secret meeting for peace, but basically teh main point of contention was who would control the military and what the military make-up would consist of. Initially Ian Smith had been keen to give a transitional military power between Rhodesian and ZAPU forces, but the 2 brutal attacks on the civilian aircraft facilitated Rhodesian public anger similar to the 2014 shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, when Russian separatists mistakenly shot down a large aircraft they mistook for a Ukrainain military vessel. But where as the Russians quickly scrubbed evidence of their shooting after they realized they had killed near 300 civilian passengers of non-beligerent countries, the boast of Nkomo actively stating they took responsibility of the two civilian airliners, fueled much greater national anger and tragedy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17

"" But Smith's ability to engage in such negotiations was seriously compromised by increasing Rhodesian anger over the air-crash massacre. When he and his wife arrived at the Anglican Cathedral in Salisbury to attend a memorial service for the victims, two men in the crowd of whites outside held banners reading: "Prime Minister, give Nkomo a message from us when you meet him secretly next time: 'Go to heck, you murdering bastard.' """

"Responding to the popular mood, Smith told his Parliament that he would soon take "positive and firm" measures that would not be popular with the outside world; presumably he meant attacks on guerrilla bases in Zambia and Mozambique. His government also announced that because of the security situation, elections that were supposed to be held by Dec. 31 would have to be postponed for two or three months."

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In retaliation for the shooting down of Flight 825 in September 1978, Rhodesian Air Force Canberra bombers, Hunter fighter-bombers and helicopter gunships attacked the ZIPRA guerrilla base at Westlands farm near Lusaka in October 1978, warning Zambian forces by radio not to interfere.

Some excellent combat footage

https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/xk4qb9/in_late_september_1978_rhodesian_air_cav_and/

The point is after these two attacks on the civilian aircraft, the war would be extended for nearly another year.

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""One of the more troubling aspects of the latest crisis was the light it threw on Joshua Nkomo. Until now, it had been assumed by many that the pragmatic and ambitious Nkomo was the strongest candidate to lead an independent Zimbabwe —even though, as a member of the minority Matabele tribe, he would lack the wholehearted support of the powerful Mashona peoples, who form about 80% of the country's population. But Nkomo's performance last week, in the aftermath of the crash and the massacre, raised new doubts about his qualifications for national leadership.

Britain's Foreign Secretary David Owen put the best light on a sorry situation when he observed that even as the Rhodesians "now have the seeds of their future prosperity within their grasp, so they also have the seeds of their destruction." The problem was that, with every alliance weakened by the latest events, it was hard to imagine which individual or group would be strong enough to make the next move toward a settlement. ·""

Did this for redactor0 and he still hasnt answered