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Title: The Farmer at War
Source:
Rhodesia and South Africa: Military History
URL Source: http://www.rhodesia.nl/farmeratwar.html
Published: Jan 1, 1979
Author: Trevor Grundy and Bernard Miller
Post Date: 2009-05-10 18:17:29 by Deasy
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Keywords: zimbabwe, cfr, zog, death of the west
Views: 138
Comments: 6
Chapter One.
Chapter Three.
Chapter Four
Chapter Five.
Chapter Seven.
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine.
Chapter Ten.
Chapter Eleven.
Chapter Thirteen.
Chapter Fourteen.
Chapter fifteen.
Chapter Sixteen.
It is a story of heroism and tragedy, of dedicated determination and tenacity in the face of an unprecedented onslaught on the land. Many have died and many more have been maimed.
Their moral and physical courage is being sorely tried and tested over and again. Lord Moran, who was Sir Winston Churchill's physician for more than a quarter of a century, once wrote: "Courage is willpower ... A man's courage is his capital and he is always spending ..." There is no doubting the willpower of the farming community.
Courage has different faces. There is the courage to stand up and shoot back to drive the raiders from the homestead and land; there is, too, the courage to plough, plant and reap another crop, putting all at risk season after season.
The Farmer at War is also a tribute to those in commerce and industry who provide vital services to agriculture; a tribute to agronomists, extension and veterinary officers in both the public and private sectors; a tribute to the Police and Security Forces. Their combined contribution is incalculable.
Foremost, however, this salute is to the women behind the men — the farming wives. In them lies the strength of our nation.
As that first attacking bullet sped through the sound barrier cracking out its message of death, she awakes almost expectantly, rolls from the bed to the floor and crawls on hands and knees towards the radio alarm which will alert Security Forces and neighbouring families. There's no panic or hesitation. She's practiced this over and again. Night after night. . .just in case. But this is no practice...it's the real thing.
Her actions are automatic. Purely instinctive. She gropes for the alarm button, finds it and presses. She's oblivious to the high-pitched scream coming from the set, a scream of alarm that lasts a mere 12 seconds, but to her could be 12 long hours; oblivious too to bleeding legs, wounds inflicted as she laboured across splintered glass. Only seconds, not long now. "Control.. .go", the disembodied voice comes over clearly, calmly. Reassuring. "Under attack from the north," she replies, her voice low but steady. No trace of hysteria, yet.. .that will come later.
"Small arms, mortar, I think. Maybe rockets, too."
The attack ends as suddenly as it started. Silence. Then a muted thump and the night sky is lit by an orange glow. Retreating, the raiders fire barns and equipment, drive off the farm labour and fire their compound.
In that attack 42 mortar bombs were dropped into the farm complex and approximately 2 000 rounds of small arms fire pumped into the farmhouse.
At first light Security Forces launch follow-up operations on the ground and in the air. The hunters become the hunted, although they still hold a trump card. By day they hide their weapons and lose their identities among the tribesmen in the sprawling villages of neighbouring Tribal Trust Lands, the traditional homes of almost four million subsistence farmers many of whom have been cowed and subverted by their ruthless so-called "liberators."
At the opposite end of the country in the remote Matobo District, 120 km south of Bulawayo, terrorists came for a harmless black woman farmer. Her son tells of "the night they murdered my mother".
They came to her in the night. Three tall, young men brandishing AK rifles.
"Woman," the group leader asked my mother, "how dare you work against the liberation forces of Zimbabwe? We have heard all about you, your two sons (they are policemen) who are collaborating with the enemy. Why haven't you told them to leave their jobs and come back home?"
For a few seconds, words failed her. She simply stared at them, their weapons and their menacing faces. It was an agonising moment.
The question was repeated, in a more threatening tone.
"I am not sure if I know what you are talking about. And what on earth have I done wrong?" asked the woman of 53, her arms folded, in a sad and telling moment.
"You will follow us to our court, where, like many others, you will be tried for your crimes," they said, dragging her out of her home.
My sister, with her three children aged between five years and six months, and my brother's wife, who had three-month-old twins, were told to follow.
They ordered my mother to sit down under a big marula tree. As a flurry of questions was levelled at her she was kicked about, beaten and tortured.
After being vigorously interrogated, both my sister and brother's "wife were ordered to leave the scene. "And we will be coming for you, too," the terrorists added.
While the women stood undecided as to what to do next, the terrorists wasted no time. They opened fire ... one, two, three shots .. . and there my mother lay. She was dead. Dead for "sins of commission and omission", as one of the terrorists said.
My sister and brother's wife couldn't wait to see any more. With the only clothes on their bodies, some of the children at their backs and others in their arms, they ran throughout the night — some 50 km — to the nearest bus stop at Kezi.
Because they had no money, they had to plead with the bus conductor to take them into the bus, which was going to Bulawayo. The grief-stricken and weary survivors of the ordeal told this horrifying and harrowing story when I met them a few days later.
But perhaps the tragedy of it all, said my sister as she wept bitterly by her bed, is that "our mother had to be buried, if at all, by strangers, without any of her five children attending her final farewell".
She asked, "Is this the freedom they are fighting for .. . the bestial and barbaric killings perpetuated in the name of freedom and justice? Heaven help us, we don't need such freedom." I couldn't have agreed with her more.
I will always remember that last time I saw my mother, cheerful as she ever had been. She had journeyed all the long day to Bulawayo last December to see me on my arrival after an absence of five years.
Seemingly with a premonition of death, she told me, "I don't think there is much life for me, my son. It's no longer safe to live in our homes today. But we always hope... only hope... things might improve.
"But even when they kill me, don't worry yourself too much, my son. It seems we have finally reached that point...
"Be yourself. Be a man in this troubled land. And, as long as you don't forget Him above, He will always be with you." Well... may He be with her, too.
These scenes could be taking place now in almost any part of Zimbabwe Rhodesia's farming areas. It has been like this for just on seven years; almost nightly, some luckless farmer and his family are hit. They used to say, hopefully, "It won't happen to us." But it has and it is.
They call this lovely land — a contrasting land of sprawling veld, mountains, rivers and forests, desert and barren outcrop — God's own country. Can all this be going on behind His back?
The Zimbabwe Rhodesian farmer is at war. He is in the frontline of this conflict, a top "soft target" for the externally-based, Communist-trained terrorists whose aim is to remove whites from the country and destroy their influence which in 89 short years has been the key to economic and social development unparalleled on the African continent. Terror tactics have operated on classic Mao lines — infiltrate and subvert the tribesman, disrupt the civil administration by closing schools, clinics and council offices. Violent intimidation of black farmers and the destruction of his crops and stock. The ruthless slaughter of whole kraals where villagers refuse to co-operate.
Attacks on white commercial farms, which number just over 5 500, have multiple aims. To disrupt the economy and drive the whites off the land, to cut communications and lay siege to the country's four cities — Salisbury, Bulawayo, Gwelo and Umtali — breach their defences by urban warfare and eventually bring about the capitulation of the civil authority. Their goal: to set up a Marxist Leninist State "through the barrel of the gun".
This has been openly repeated by the two Patriotic Front leaders Joshua Nkomo, based in Zambia, and Robert Mugabe, based in Mocambique. That they have failed is due largely to the country's white farming community who have not only successfully defended themselves, and made a major contribution to the Security Forces, but have more than doubled food production to ensure self-sufficiency and surpluses for export. But the cost in life and limb is high. In comparison the $1 million a day spent on the war effort is mere peanuts.
If the white farmer is under siege, then his black counterpart in the Tribal Trust Lands, which make up 41 per cent of the country's land mass, an area roughly three times the size of England, and in the African commercial farming areas, is doubly so. Most of the 6 500-plus black civilians who have died at the hands of terrorist gangs, or in crossfire, were black farmers and their families, many of whom were horribly tortured. The list of atrocities makes nightmare reading. He is the man-in-the-middle, a simple unsophisticated peasant farmer seeking out a subsistence living from overworked land, only just surviving against a backdrop of increasing terrorist presence.
Terrorists pressure him to give them food and shelter. To refuse, as many have, spells death for him and his family, after inhuman torture and beatings. Security Forces pressure him to refuse aid and to report all approaches by gangs, and in retaliation terrorists burn his crops and prevent him disinfectant dipping his cattle against insect-borne disease which in 1978 alone killed 250 000 head. His children are abducted and forcibly marched to Mocambique, Zambia and Botswana for military training; his schools, clinics and churches closed, his women raped and often sickenly mutilated. Truly, the position of many black farmers' is untenable.
Unlike the white commercial farmer, he has neither the means or the capability to protect himself with sophisticated weaponry, security fencing and protected vehicles. He lies open. He is vulnerable
"There's no doubt that the farmer and his family, who have been in the frontline of this war for seven years now, is the prime target," said Denis Norman, president of the Rhodesia National Farmers Union, after a flying visit to the Melsetter farming area which is being mauled by terrorists.
The reasons are plain. A large percentage of the black electorate work and live on white farms. These together with the urban black, make up 40 per cent of the electorate!
The border village of Melsetter is situated 152 kilometres from Umtali, nestling in the foothills of the awesome Chimanimani Mountains which divide Zimbabwe Rhodesia from Mocambique. Despite the war it is still a delightful part of the country.
I left Salisbury with Jack Humphreys, the Welsh-born director of the RNFU and dropped down at a farm airstrip to pick up Denis Norman from his Norton farm, just 50 kilometres outside the city. As we climbed aboard the gleaming seven-seater Aztec aircraft, the pilot joked, "Got your parachutes?" There's a tendency in Rhodesia today to make nervous quips about flying. On September 3, 1978, an Air Rhodesia Viscount with 54 passengers on board was shot down by a Russian heat seeking Sam 7 missile and 10 of the 18 who survived the crash were butchered by one of Nkomo's terrorist gangs. On February 12 this year a second Air Rhodesia Viscount was downed by two similar Sam 7 missiles. All 59 innocent civilian passengers who were returning to Salisbury after a holiday weekend at Kariba, and crew, died. Joshua Nkomo again claimed responsibility.
First stop Umtali, often described as the "jewel" of the Eastern Highlands and the "gateway" to Rhodesia. The "gate" to Mocambique, Beira and the Indian Ocean was closed following the collapse of Portuguese colonial rule in April, 1974, when a coup d'etat inspired by socialist leader Mario Soares, led to the abandonment of Mocambique to Samora Machel's Frelimo, and Angola to Angestino Neto and his Soviet backers and Cuban surrogates.
Once busy with tourists flocking to and from Beira's sunny beaches, Umtali is now a garrison town, its spacious tree-lined avenues a witness to war. Armoured personnel carriers rumble down Main Street; the old Cecil Hotel, a favourite meeting place for town and country folk, is now headquarters, No 3 Brigade. But next door the plush New Cecil Hotel is doing business as usual, though its clientele has changed somewhat. It still caters for businessmen and a diminished tourist trade but these visitors are outnumbered by service wives, their families and girl friends.
Umtali has been mortar bombed five times both from Mocambique and inside Rhodesia. In April, terrorists attacked a city Police camp with mortars and small-arms fire, killing an innocent civilian living next door and seriously injuring his wife. Earlier, in February this year, the city was awarded the Meritorious Conduct Medal.
Despite the war, or maybe because of it, its citizens, black and white, are determined that their everyday life — work, leisure and pleasure — is disrupted as little as possible. The nearby Vumba Mountains is a favourite weekend retreat for many, offering as it does comfortable accommodation in welcoming hostelries which snuggle picturesquely into the hillside.
To stand and stare at the ever-changing mood of the Vumba Mountains is an experience in itself ... on occasions a landscape painting of sunny blues and greens, brilliant reds contrasting with splashes of boisterous purples ... on occasions a contrasting canvas of racing clouds their grey-black shadows sweeping across valleys and hills like some giant flood, enveloping all in ghost-like mists, flowing and eddying, depositing droplets like dew on thirsty vegetation.
Impressive.
The aesthetic qualities of the Vumba is only equalled by what it has to offer the sportsman ... golf, swimming, tennis, squash, trekking, fishing. It's all there.
Despite the war, the shows must go on: the Umtali and District Agricultural Show, which attracts farming and commercial interest from all over the country; the annual horse jumping show, which is a must on the calendar for junior and senior riders; the Aloe Festival, a week of celebration; the drama festivals, dog and cat shows, bird shows, flower shows ... polo, rugby, soccer, cricket, tennis, squash and hockey tournaments. It is all happening just as if the war was a non-event.
It is this spirit that can be seen reflected in the majority of the sensitive country areas, where everyday life has been affected, but not disrupted, by the war situation, and where the farming community work hard, fight hard and enjoy their leisure and pleasures whether its a strenuous sport, quietly gardening or merely enjoying a sundowner on the country club veranda, watching the sun set and the last group of thirsty golfers down their last putts.
Our aircraft swept down between the hills which encircle the city, landing almost elegantly on the tarred strip. There waiting were two more passengers, a Union councillor and a leading timber grower. The Eastern Highlands is a major timber producer. Our destination was Tilbury airstrip 25 kilometres from Melsetter itself. It was a rib-jarring, nervy flight south, closely skirting the Mocambique border and for a scarey 15 minutes through dense cloud. It was only later when safely back in Salisbury the pilot admitted over a welcome cold beer that he had crossed well into Mocambique and was an open target for Frelimo or terrorist ground fire and missiles.
The aircraft broke through the cloud ceiling into an incredibly blue, blue sky over Tilbury strip, which took on the appearance of a pencil scar in an otherwise unbroken vistarama of emerald green pines. Breathtakingly beautiful, disarmingly so for the area is terrorist infested.
Three black troopers were left behind to guard the aircraft while we boarded two heavily landmine and ambush-protected vehicles, bristling with arms. One was a converted Land Rover, the other a "Kudu" — an unslightly conglomeration of heavy gauge steel and armour plating. Through narrow slits in the side of the vehicle we peered at the passing countryside, the pine-flanked earth road blood red in colour. Just off the road African kraals, the smoke from outdoor fires curling lazily skywards. It was all so peaceful. How appearances lie. Ambushes day and night are too frequent a hazard.
It had been raining earlier and the aroma of rain on earth and pine was almost overpowering. The Portuguese driver told me this was the best time for tourists "but they do not come any more. The Outward Bound School in the Chimanimani hills closed down long ago, but next year it may be better," he said optimistically.
But will it?
The objective of the Norman-Humphrey visit to Melsetter was to get first hand from farmers the farming and security position. "To find out what is going on," Norman put it bluntly.
The briefing was given by one of the local farmers, in the Farmers' Hall which has the appearance of an early post World War Two school, brown walls hung with black wooden shields with the word "Melsetter" engraved beneath them. It reminded me vividly of my first school in a Welsh mining village. It was probably built about that time, too. The briefing was delivered in clipped style which matched the occasion and the mood of the meeting. Tense but determined. There were frequent references to a large map of the Melsetter area pinned to a blackboard. This showed the main farms, ranches and neighbouring Tribal Trust Lands. Empty homesteads were clearly marked. So were parts of the area which had suffered recent terrorist attacks. Frighteningly, too many.
In 1976 Melsetter and Cashel districts were home to 225 white family units with 150 family units on the estates, 30 people living in the village (we were in the village) and 45 farms being worked. At the end of 1978 there were only 108 family units in the area — 62 families on the estates, 38 people living in the village and eight farms being worked. Four Europeans and one African were killed in 1976. Thirteen Europeans and 39 Africans in 1978.
Twenty four homesteads had been destroyed last year (none at all in 1976) and over the last three years there had been 1 053 terrorist contacts. Seventy two vehicles had been destroyed. The number of contacts with terrorists (most of them ZANLA from Mocambique) in 1978 had been 419 — 14 more than in newly decorated Umtali.
Stark statistics that do little to tell the story of death, courage and determination in what was once a small but thriving community of blacks and whites living and working in peace.
Terrorist ambushes along the main tarred road to Umtali, sometimes two or three a week, had stopped city transporters carrying local fruit and vegetables to the markets, the briefing was told. The Melsetter community was raising funds to buy a seven-tonne truck to do the job ... the banks had stopped sending their mobile, small banks on wheels, to Melsetter a year ago. The tourist industry had ground to a full stop. "If any more people leave this area we'll be really pushed to contain the situation," said the military man.
His briefing to the visiting RNFU executives was plainly spelt out. Local manpower to police the area, fight off increasing acts of terrorism and to farm, was being stretched. It might soon snap. It was a factual report from a commander in the field to a visiting staff officer. No frills or trimmings. A simple statement of cold fact. There was no note of panic. No hint of surrender. No emotion, nor fear.
Denis Norman, who has insight and total grasp of his subject — farming and war - reported to the meeting on the war situation in other parts of the country as the April general election approached. He talked of the political uncertainty facing the farming community and emphasised the theme he repeats at farming meetings throughout the countryside: the vital necessity to maintain the commercial farmer on the land by ensuring the security of the farmer, his family, home and labour ... and by paying him a fair price for his production and effort.
His audience, mainly third and fourth generation white farmers and their wives, few of them under 50, listened intently to the facts. Fifty per cent of the national maize crop written-off by the worst drought for decades. Stocks sufficient to meet domestic requirements if there is a recurrence of drought in 1980, but export opportunities would have to be forfeited; the cattle industry is facing substantial depletion in some parts of the country because of disease and stocktheft; only three "AA" seed potato growers are still operating, all in the terrorist infested Inyanga area ..."... at this rate we will find ourselves imposing beef rationing in 12 to 18 months", he forecast. Food rationing in a country that has the potential to develop into the "breadbasket" of Southern and Central Africa?
"Whoever leads the new Government of this country must maintain the farmer on the land, must return stability and security to food production. Failing this, I fear for the future."
With the population explosion in the country reaching 3,7 per cent per annum — the biggest in the western world — the maintenance of agricultural production at $500 million, mostly from white farmers, is vital, he said. Certainly, at this stage tribal African farmers cannot even meet their own basic food needs.
Polite applause followed by one or two questions. It had all been said before. Norman was talking to the converted, who not only fully understood their precarious situation, but were living and working in it, attempting to achieve normality in an abnormal environment.
These thoughts flickered through my mind as our plane winged its way back to the comparative peace and safety of urban Salisbury, a thriving business centre, sprawling as it does in a parkland of tree-lined avenues, the Sun City of the Dark Continent, not yet infected terminally with modern society's cancerous death wish to erect monumental edifices of concrete which obliterate sun, light and air and pollutes both body and soul. It is still a garden city of exotic trees, flowers and shrubs, well-cared-for lawns, regularly sprinkled, trimmed and tended almost lovingly. Snobbishly Victorian, more English than the English in an endearing, nicely old-fashioned way.
The sun was setting like a giant flame-red orb as we took off from Tilbury, giving the impression that the encircling pine forest was on fire. Indescribably beautiful and hauntingly menacing. Travelling from Melsetter to the airstrip in the Kudu, we stood up one by one to take in the breathtaking beauty of it all, ignoring the protected slit side windows which restrict vision for the opportunity of enjoying a panoramic view. "Get your head down," a shouted warning came from inside the vehicle. "You're asking to get it shot off." It came like a dash of cold water ... back to reality.
The sky was darkening quickly now as it does in this part of the world. Sunset is lovely but brief and the cloak of night can be disturbingly claustrophobic, particularly in a light aircraft speeding into a seemingly black void. There was little conversation. All were pre-occupied with their own private thoughts, and fears. It had been a long day of hard talking. I could still mentally see that blackboard and map, pockmarked by the statistics of terror; the deeply-etched lines in the face of one farmer, black ridges in a sun-leathered profile which had experienced more than its share of anxiety; the pretty blonde who chatted birdlike, fluttering nervously from one topic to another, never quite making sense, never quite completing a sentence; her stress was disturbing, yet paradoxically her courage enduring.
It reminded me of the words of Lord Moran, who was Sir Winston Churchill's physician for more than a quarter of a century. He wrote so touchingly and sadly about courage in the trenches of Europe in the Great War: "Courage is a moral quality: it is not a chance gift of nature like an aptitude for games. It is a cold choice between two alternatives, the fixed resolve not to quit; an act of renunciation which must be made not once but many times by the power of will. Courage is willpower ... A man's courage is his capital and he is always spending. The call on the bank may be only the daily drain of the frontline or it may be a sudden draft which threatens to close the account. His will is perhaps almost destroyed by intense shelling, by heavy bombing or by bloody battle, or it is gradually used up by monotony, by exposure, by loss of support of stauncher spirits on whom he has come to depend, by physical exhaustion, by a wrong attitude to danger, its casualities, the war, to death itself."
He well understood the anatomy of courage, like the Rhodesian farmer, caught up in a political scenario that has defied the understanding of skilled diplomats and academics — a scenario which threatens to engulf Southern and Central Africa with appalling consequences for all its peoples.
Lord Moran's words are a fitting anthem to this country's farmers. Their courage and determination are being severely tried as many valiantly fight to stave off the threat of bankruptcy.
The supreme sacrifice...
WE would like to thank you so very much for your loving thoughts and prayers. All the wonderful letters, cards and telegrams have helped to ease our own personal desolation knowing so many friends share our sorrow so sincerely. We thank God for the wonderful years of being able to know our lovable carefree Dougie, who only saw the good side in people and everything around him, we love him so much. We have complete faith that his life continues with God in some plane beyond our comprehension. If we falter because of sudden close memories then we take courage by the words we found in Dougie's diary, which was sent back to us from the bush; "never look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around you in awareness". We will try and follow this credo.
Let us hope and pray that all the sacrifices made by so many for this wonderful country will not have been in vain. We know Dougie's going was quick, and altho' he was doing what was foreign to his nature, he sincerely believed it was vital to fight on for his family, friends and country.'
THE FARMER AT WAR
By Trevor Grundy and Bernard Miller
Published by Modern Farming Publications
Salisbury 1979
CONTENTS
In the frontline.
Tougher nut to crack.
Pioneering spirit lives on.
They pray for peace.
The one-man guard force.
Assault on our cattle.
The effects of terrorism
‘Common market’ that failed.
As intricate as a watch.
What is the answer?.
Plan for rural development
The war must stop.
Why the fight goes on.
Foreword
THIS is a salute to our farmers — white and black farmers and their families who have been in the frontline of the terror war for more than a decade. This is their story told by them.
President,
Rhodesia National Farmers' Union
(now the Commercial Farmers' Union)Chapter One
In the frontline
THERE'S an audible crackle, not loud or piercing, but as if someone is screwing up sweet paper close to your head, and like a string of green fairylights, tracers arc their way almost lazily towards the darkened homestead. Immediately, or so it seems, from behind an unlit window an FN rifle barks its harsh reply, followed by another and another. From a rock outcrop, slightly elevated so that attacking fire is aimed advantageously down on the farmhouse, a mere 100 metres away, the first mortar thumbs skywards. It soars high over the house and, thankfully for its occupants, explodes harmlessly in the bush. The long swish of a rocket, the deadliest of projectiles, is followed by an explosive thump. A hit! Hot lead ricochets off brick wall and rock outcrop, sparking, whining in a cacophony of crossfire.
Only a split second before she made that first move (was she really awake, or still asleep and motivated by some unseen hand. Or was it just another repetitive nightmare?) her husband's FN cracked out its first retaliatory burst, unaimed, unsighted. From their son's bedroom came a second burst and a third burst of automatic fire from their police guard. In another bedroom two small youngsters huddle together under their beds. It had been a great game to dive for cover when Dad shouted "bang, bang, you're dead." It was a game that saved their lives. They, too, were calm, solemn-eyed and seemingly oblivious to the shattering noise of battle.
Chapter Two
Despite the war
THE month before blacks and whites went to the polls in April to vote in the country's first majority rule government, war deaths had exceeded 14 000, a figure which does not include those killed outside the country in air raids on terrorist training camps in Zambia and Mocambique. Almost 50 a day died as the external terrorists stepped up their campaign to disrupt and discredit the general election. Again, one of their main targets, farmers — white and black.
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It can't happen here?
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#1. To: christine, Pinguinite, robnoel (#0)
I could not post the whole book. It would be good if we could archive articles of this size here, because we never know when this kind of material will vanish.
Neil, can you fix this?
The smooth criminal transition from Bush/Cheney to Obama
I fixed this though the images are not coming up. (Weren't coming up for me even before I fixed it).
#2. To: Deasy, Pinguinite (#1)
#3. To: christine (#2)
#4. To: Deasy (#3)
Movie coming soon.... Mugabe and the White African
#5. To: robnoel (#4)
#6. To: christine, Deasy (#2)
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