Atrocities committed against the people, their livestock and possessions were widely reported in the media with graphic photographs of destruction, murder and maiming. Whereas the international community chose to ignore these horrors, the mindless slaughter of innocents angered urban blacks and the entire white community.
I saw the poor woman whose husband was killed in her presence before the gang leader cut off his ears, nose and fingers. The wife was then forced to cook and devour the grizzly items. No pity was shown when she retched and vomited; she was beaten until she retained even that which she had thrown up.
Another woman was flown in for medical attention. Her entire top lip had been cut away from back molars via her nose with electrician’s side-cutters.
The naked body of a young woman was found staked to the ground, arms and legs outstretched on ropes that were pegged into the ground. A blood-covered maize cob remained imbedded in her vagina as well as a thick burning pole that had been driven into her rectum to cause her an indescribably painful death in a very lonely place.
In many cases the use of burning poles driven into women’s vaginas and men’s rectums was done in the presence of villagers who witnessed such horrifying murder that they dared not report the atrocities for fear of becoming victims themselves. Whole herds of cattle were slaughtered with automatic gunfire or were hamstrung, necessitating their destruction by government agencies.
The term ‘terrorist’ was entirely justified for cowardly leaders of ZANLA gangs who wantonly brutalised hundreds of hapless civilians; yet the international community called them ‘guerrillas’. These bullies, though intent on murdering white farmers, lacked the courage to achieve the levels sought by their ZANU politicos. Night attacks on white farmers mounted but the casualties and damage caused was so much lower than might have occurred if undertaken by men of courage. ZANLA could intimidate their black brethren but not the white folk. There were many instances of a farmer and his wife fighting off the most determined of terrorist forces, usually in excess of fifteen men, because the terrorists could not match their sheer guts and determination. Yet a mere handful of terrorists could have hundreds of tribesmen cowering from the simplest of verbal threats.
In the course of moving around their farms and out on the country roads, farmers and their families needed to be prepared and armed to face the ever-present threat of landmines and ambush. Incredibly, very few farmers abandoned their farms because of these dangers. The vast majority stubbornly refused to be intimidated, as ZANLA had been assured they would. Most children attended boarding schools and were brought home to the farms for their holidays. Every effort was made to keep farming life as normal as possible and many incredible stories can be told of the community that bore the brunt of the war against whites.
One Centenary farmer received a hand-written note from the leader of a particular terrorist gang asking him not to allow his daughters to ride their horses on an adjacent farm where their safety could not be guaranteed. So long as they rode on their own farm they would be safe. It seems the farmer in question was popular with his workers whereas the farmer on the adjacent farm was not.
Amongst Christians there were stories of divine intervention. One of these emanated from a captured terrorist who explained why his especially large group abandoned their planned attack of a farmstead. He said the attack was aborted when, upon arrival at the farmstead, many armed men dressed in illuminated white clothes and riding white horses surrounded the place; yet not one horseman had been present that night.
ZANLA recruitment
TERRORIST NUMBERS INSIDE THE COUNTRY during 1973 were insufficient to spread the SF as thinly as ZANLA had hoped. ZANLA losses, particularly to its leadership, were having a greater detrimental effect than we realised. Recruits sent to Tanzania for training would only be available in late 1974, but ZANLA could not wait that long. The short-term solution was to train recruits internally.
Diverting for a moment—our verbal, written and radio terminology changed in this period to identify individuals. These were:
CT—Communist Terrorist
EFA—European Female Adult
LTT—Locally Trained Terrorist
AFJ—African Female Juvenile
AMA—African Male Adult
EFJ—European Female Juvenile
EMA—European Male Adult
AMJ—African Male Juvenile
EMJ—European Male Juvenile
AFA—African Female Adult
Willing and unwilling recruits, mainly young males, were inducted for immediate training inside the country. Given old SKS and PPSH weapons, these young men and teenagers were taught rudimentary skills preparatory to armed combat. In most cases no more than two rounds were expended in training to conserve ammunition and limit the risk of exposure by the sound of gunfire. Inevitably these LTTs gained their shooting experience in combat, providing they survived the first contact with our troops; many did not!
The real value of LTTs to the regular elements of ZANLA was their local knowledge and their ability to move amongst the people. They could also expose themselves openly amongst the RSF when unarmed to gather intelligence and provide early-warning services. But the LTTs themselves gave ZANLA leaders many headaches since most became nasty little thugs who committed murder and rape, causing a great deal of tribal chaos. Many other youths, impressed by LTT thuggery, fashioned replicas of CT weapons from wood to terrorise adults, thereby creating a general breakdown in family unity and discipline.
Along with the training of LTTs, ZANLA commenced forced recruitment of youths, male and female, for external training. This came to the country’s open attention on America’s Independence Day when, during the early evening of 4 July 1973, seventeen heavily armed CTs stormed into the usually peaceful St Albert’s Mission, causing fear and panic as they rounded up over 270 people. They stated that they were taking the secondary-level children, together with a number of adult teachers and mission staff, for military training outside the country.
Harassing and hurrying their frightened abductees, the CTs used force to accelerate the collection of food, clothing and blankets for the long walk through Mozambique to Zambia. From there they were to be transported to the Tanzanian training camps. Father Clemence Freymer bravely insisted he must go along to be with the children. He was the only white member of the group that set off that dark night for the steep descent down the escarpment. The missionaries, fearing landmines and ambush, set off on foot to raise the alarm at the nearest white farm. This could not be done by telephone because the lines had been cut and the mission had opted not to be on the Agri-Alert radio network.
At Centenary I was awakened at 02:00. It was normal practice to have two Provosts on immediate standby loaded with eight 4-inch para-illuminating flares to respond to CT attacks on farmsteads, so two of us scrambled to light up the route along which the CTs were taking the abductees.