Green Leader: Operation Gatling, the Rhodesian Military's Response To The Viscount Tragedy

Preface:

The sun sets somewhere

The royal charter was a useful way of privatising empire building because private capital could flow in when treasury funds were too stretched to extend empires.

Chartered companies had been around for centuries, but the concept became very popular among the big powers after Portuguese mariners discovered new sea routes, especially those around the southern tip of Africa, in the late fifteenth century. Portuguese, French, British, German, Dutch, Scandinavian and Russian chartered companies appeared all over the newly discovered world. The Dutch East India Company and Britain’s Honourable East India Company were among the largest, possessing their own navies and armies to support their endeavours, making these companies more powerful than many sovereign states.

By the late 1880s, the scramble for Africa was over and the chartered company concept had run its course. Yet, on an 1885 map of British territories, there was a vast inland stretch of unclaimed territory north of South Africa, which was then simply called Matabele Land, and which comprises present-day Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Portugal had its eye on this piece of land, lying between two central African colonies: Angola on the Atlantic Ocean to the west and Mozambique on the Indian Ocean to the east. This vast area offered Portugal a strategic portion of contiguous territory across central Africa. The idea of Portugal having such a vast influence in central Africa horrified some of the British empire builders, and in October 1889, the last-recorded charter was awarded to Cecil Rhodes when Queen Victoria gave her seal to a charter for the British South Africa Company (BSACo). The purpose of the BSACo was simply stated in the preamble to the charter document:

That the existence of a powerful British Company, controlled by those of Our subjects in whom We have confidence, and having its principal field of operations in that region of South Africa lying to the north of Bechuanaland and to the west of Portuguese East Africa, would be advantageous to the commercial and other interests of Our subjects in the United Kingdom and in Our Colonies.

A royal charter was not Rhodes’s first choice. He had tried to persuade the British government to grant protectorate status to Matabele Land, which would have been a much cheaper option for him. But Rhodes was out of luck because the new Naval Defence Act of 1889 called for massive spending to expand the Royal Navy and, therefore, the treasury in London was seriously stretched. Rhodes, a diamond and gold magnate, and a multimillionaire, needed to personally put up most of the money for the chartered company.

Eleven months later, Rhodes’s BSACo pioneer column trekked north from Bechuanaland (now Botswana). The trek ended at a small, rocky hill surrounded by pleasant marshlands, which they named Fort Salisbury. The fort lay at the heart of the piece of central Africa that Rhodes now controlled and grew rapidly into a large settlement, which became Salisbury (present-day Harare). The charter territory was named Matabeleland, Mashonaland and Barotseland after the largest tribal groups living in the general areas. This mouthful of a name was soon simplified to Zambezia or Charterland. A few years later, a new name emerged: Rhodesia. The name was formally adopted in 1895, and Northern and Southern Rhodesia were demarcated by the Zambezi River.

Rhodes’s ambition, however, extended further than this piece of central Africa named after him. He had a vision of continuous British territory stretching from Cape Town to Cairo. Ironically, an event that occurred near Cairo six decades later, long after Rhodes’s death, would unravel the achievement of his ultimate dream and catalyse the rapid dismantling of British interests in Africa.

In 1956 Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, which provoked Israel, Britain and France to launch coordinated attacks on Egypt to remove Nasser from power and seize the strategic waterway. The three allies achieved their military objectives by taking control of the Suez Canal, Gaza and parts of the Sinai Desert. Politically, however, it was a disaster; the world at large, and particularly the US, condemned the invasion. The US applied intense financial pressure on Britain, France and Israel, which led to the humiliating withdrawal of their forces from Egypt.

The seeds of this humiliation were sown 16 years earlier, in the dark days of World War II. Britain was fighting for her very survival against Germany when Prime Minister Winston Churchill persuaded US President Theodore Roosevelt to supply arms and equipment to Britain and her allies, enshrined in an agreement known as the Atlantic Charter, which was signed in 1941. Better known as the Lend-Lease Agreement, the deal came with big strings attached – colonial strings. Roosevelt wanted to see British and French colonial interests around the world winding down, and so he inserted a decolonisation clause.

Clause 3 of the Atlantic Charter required the signatories to ‘respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them’. Churchill, and many others, did not believe, or did not want to believe, that clause 3 also applied to the existing colonies in Africa. They were wrong.

Roosevelt died before the end of the war but his decolonisation legacy lived on. Although the pressure to decolonise in Africa was somewhat eased by Harry Truman, Roosevelt’s successor, this was only because he needed Britain and France as counterweights to the menace of Stalin’s growing post-war Soviet empire. Yet, although they were victors, the war had bankrupted Britain and France, and they simply could no longer afford to retain all their colonies. To exacerbate the problem, the Soviet Union and China had not only replaced Britain and France as superpowers, but were actively arming and training anti-colonial forces, making life even more difficult for the old masters.

Britain started its decolonisation process in South Asia and the Middle East in 1947 by granting independence to India, the jewel in its crown. Britain then ended its rule in Burma and Ceylon, and withdrew from Palestine. These rapid withdrawals usually led to chaos and civil strife. Nevertheless, the US administration was pleased that Britain was, at last, dismantling its empire, which explains why President Dwight ‘Ike’ Eisenhower, who had succeeded Truman in 1953, was incensed that Britain and France had invaded Egypt. He threatened to cut off loans to Britain and devalue the pound, thereby forcing their humiliating withdrawal from Egypt.

A high-profile victim of the Suez Crisis was Anthony Eden, the British prime minister, who resigned from office in January 1957, just three months after the invasion. The Conservative Party then had no formal mechanism to replace its leader, so Queen Elizabeth II took advice from senior ministers, including Winston Churchill, and appointed Harold Macmillan, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and former foreign secretary, as the new prime minister. This appointment was bizarre because Macmillan had been a strong advocate of the invasion of Egypt. Moreover, he had failed to pass a message to Eden from John Dulles, the US secretary of state, warning Britain not to invade Egypt. After the invasion, however, when Macmillan witnessed the US administration’s anger and, more importantly, the financial impact on Britain, he switched his position and became a strong advocate for the withdrawal from Egypt.

Macmillan’s first global priority was to repair the seriously frayed ‘special relationship’ between Britain and the US by rekindling his friendship with President Eisenhower. ‘I was a sort of son to Ike,’ Macmillan said later.

One sure way of gaining brownie points with America was to accelerate the process of decolonisation – a task that Conservative Party leader Macmillan tackled with zest. Therefore, the Suez Crisis marked the true beginning of the end of the British Empire in Africa, and it sent shivers through the colonies.

Decolonisation in Africa started the year after the crisis, with Ghana gaining independence in 1957. By 1960 the decolonisation of sub-Saharan Africa was in full swing, underscored by Macmillan’s ‘winds of change’ address to South Africa’s Parliament in Cape Town in February 1960. France was in a particular hurry, especially because it had already lost its colonies in Indochina and was facing serious difficulties in Algeria. Within seven months in 1960, 13 former French colonies in Africa were given independence.

With the writing on the wall, South Africa – then a self-governing dominion of the British Empire – held a referendum in 1961 that enabled it to become a republic. The Southern Rhodesian government – then part of a federation with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland – was also spooked by the Suez Crisis and Harold Macmillan’s coming to power, and so it called a referendum on a new constitution in 1961. The referendum was approved by British Parliament and became law. The 1961 Constitution opened the way for Southern Rhodesia to separate from the federation and become an autonomous community, or dominion – the same status enjoyed by the dominions of Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

As a prelude to dominion status, the formal channel of communication between Southern Rhodesia and London was transferred from the colonial office to the dominion’s office, which changed the nature of the relationship between the Crown and Southern Rhodesia from directive to diplomatic. Southern Rhodesia was unique, in that, unlike the other dominions, it had never been controlled by London: the BSACo had governed the country until 1923, when the charter was dissolved and the territory annexed to become a self-governing colony.

The scramble to get out of Africa was obscenely fast and many of the colonies were unprepared for independence. By the end of 1963, 27 sub-Saharan African countries had been granted independence, and chaos seemed to follow as a matter of course. Undeterred, the British government unilaterally dissolved the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1963, which paved the way for independence for Zambia (Northern Rhodesia), Malawi (Nyasaland) and Southern Rhodesia. Malawi became independent in July 1964 and Zambia soon followed suit in October.

Southern Rhodesia, too, expected independence: after all, it was a model self-governing colony and very loyal to the Crown. So much so, that the royal family paid a special visit to Southern Rhodesia in 1946 to mark their appreciation for the heavy sacrifice the small country had made in both world wars – especially World War II, where Southern Rhodesia had lost more men as a proportion of the population than any other Allied nation. Little did those dedicated Rhodesian loyalists know that the very war they joined would catalyse the end of their colony and life as they knew it.

Because the 1961 Constitution had been approved by British Parliament, it led to an incontrovertible assumption that independence for the darling colony would be a mere formality. After all, Britain had recognised the South African referendum of 1961, even though only the white electorate had voted. However, the rules were changing rapidly.

Harold Macmillan resigned in 1963 because of ill health, possibly exacerbated by a sex scandal involving his minister of war, John Profumo. The scandal hit the Tory Party hard and Macmillan’s successor, Alec Douglas-Home, lasted only a year before being defeated by the Labour Party, led by Harold Wilson, in 1964. Wilson soon pronounced that Labour was ‘totally opposed to granting independence to Southern Rhodesia so long as the government of that country remain[ed] under the control of the white minority.’

A line in the sand had been drawn and the Southern Rhodesian government felt deeply betrayed by Wilson.

That same year, the Rhodesian Front party, which had been elected to power in 1962, ejected their leader, Winston Field. The party believed he had not done enough to secure independence and replaced him with the straight-talking, Rhodesian-born farmer and former World War II fighter pilot, Ian Smith. The stage was set for a clash between the two leaders, Wilson and Smith.

The relationship, if there ever was one, between Wilson and Smith deteriorated as they exchanged petulant letters. They met face to face in London in January 1965, when Smith attended the funeral of Winston Churchill. But, even though Smith was a former Royal Air Force pilot, he was not invited to the post-funeral lunch at Buckingham Palace. The queen noticed Smith’s absence and sent for him, which irritated Wilson. Smith was also excluded from the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference later that year, which soured things even further.

Smith called an election in May 1965, and based his campaign on a pledge to obtain independence for the country. It was a landslide victory. Humphrey Gibbs, Her Majesty’s governor in Rhodesia, warned that the election result made a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) more likely. In a last-ditch effort, Wilson flew to Salisbury in October 1965 to seek a solution. There was no breakthrough and Wilson took a hard line: he told the House of Commons two days later that he intended to bring direct British control over the Rhodesian Parliament to ensure progress was made towards majority rule, and warned Smith that his government would be committing treason if they went for UDI.

Jack Howman, one of Ian Smith’s ministers and a close confidant, wrote in his memoirs:

At the end of the day, after weeks of probing and testing all the ledges and corners, all the twists and turns and balancing all the possible and probable eventualities, the alternatives stood out stark and clear. It was in essence simply a matter of survival and UDI was the last reluctant step brought about, promoted and made inescapable by deliberate breach of social contract on the part of the British Government and their fixed and settled determination to engineer our destruction.

Britain had only once before been presented with a UDI – on 4 July 1776, when the United States declared independence. Guided closely by the American document, the Rhodesians signed the declaration of independence on 11 November 1965.

Smith went to the Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation’s studios that morning to record a speech announcing UDI to his small country. Jack Howman recalled the moment:

His set, poker face registered no emotion but, within, the man was deeply, cruelly strained. I know my Prime Minister – when he is under tension, his vocal chords irritate and make him cough as if he had a slight throat infection. It took a little while to record his speech for, on several occasions, he had to stop, stand up and move about to ease his back and to clear his throat.

‘In the lives of most nations, there comes a moment when a stand has to be made for principle, whatever the consequences, this moment has come to Rhodesia’, were the key words that Smith uttered in his broadcast.

Wilson was furious and predicted that Rhodesia would be brought to its knees within months, if not weeks. He instituted sanctions and an oil embargo, and sent a British warship into the Mozambique Channel to prevent the passage of oil to Rhodesia through the Portuguese-controlled ports. Sadly for Wilson, the Rhodesians seemed to thrive in adversity and his prediction came to naught. A year after UDI, Wilson finally realised that he would have to negotiate with the Rhodesians. Smith was invited to talks on board a British warship, HMS Tiger, in the Mediterranean.

The Tiger headmaster

Ian Smith, Jack Howman and their small team arrived in Gibraltar at 3 a.m. on 2 December 1966, after a tiring flight in a Bristol Britannia from Salisbury, via Luanda and Ascension Island for refuelling. It was pitch dark and the rain was pouring down in Gibraltar when the Rhodesian delegation boarded a launch taking them to the Tiger. As soon as they boarded the warship, it set sail into the Mediterranean.

‘After meeting us on deck,’ recalled Howman, ‘Wilson took us below and went straight into debate but, after a while, Ian excused us, pointing out that we had been in an aircraft for twenty-six hours and were weary and disorientated. Our reception was frigid and formal.’

Wilson was clearly trying to bully Smith with those pre-dawn tactics. The talks did not go well and matters came to a head that evening. ‘At 9 p.m. a summons came for Ian and me to join Wilson in the Admiral’s day cabin. Wilson was curled up in an armchair, a look of fury on him. You could cut the atmosphere with a knife,’ said Howman.

Wilson told the Rhodesians that the British government refused to be pushed around any longer: ‘It is an intolerable humiliation! Here is Rhodesia, representing about one tenth of one per cent of the Commonwealth, creating a situation, which might result in the splitting of the Commonwealth.’

‘Hell he was furious,’ remembered Howman. ‘He went on non-stop for half an hour with the whole tenor of his bile being quite incomprehensible.’

Wilson was, of course, trying to coerce Smith to sign an agreement on HMS Tiger – a British ship in international waters and, therefore, legally on British soil. The talks ended with Wilson giving Smith until noon on 5 December 1966 – less than 36 hours – to fly back, consult his cabinet and give an answer. The deadline was missed and the answer was no.

The main stumbling block for the Rhodesians was Wilson’s intent to appoint an executive British governor, one with the power to sack the prime minister and any other elected minister, and to invite non-elected people into government. After 44 years of self-government, this was too much for the Rhodesians.

Wilson did not take the rejection well. He went straight to the UN and persuaded the body to pass Resolution 232, which imposed mandatory sanctions on Rhodesia – the first such resolution in the history of the UN.

A fearless opportunity lost

Harold Wilson realised that his bullying tactics had backfired. Almost two years later, the British prime minister arranged another round of talks, again on a warship in Gibraltar. This time it was different: the warship, HMS Fearless, would remain docked in Gibraltar and the Rhodesians would be accommodated on an adjacent ship, a new destroyer named HMS Kent. In addition, the mood was much warmer, with Wilson occasionally addressing Smith by his first name.

The talks got underway on 10 October 1968 and progressed well.

The terms offered on board HMS Fearless were much better than those offered on HMS Tiger and both sides moved towards each other. Jack Howman captured the gravity of a key moment in his memoirs when he recalled Harold Wilson’s words: ‘We have both moved, there are great issues at stake and we cannot fail. We have gone to the limit and we cannot go any further and remain creditable.’

The parties agreed on most things, most importantly, to have a parliament of 67 seats: 17 reserved for blacks, 17 for whites and 33 elected on the existing ‘A’ voters roll, which was predominantly white at that time. The compromise was that the black members, who were guaranteed a quarter of the seats, would have a blocking vote. Yet, the sticking point for Smith was that the Privy Council in London would be the appeals body for any dispute and would have the power to overturn legislation made by the Rhodesian Parliament.

No agreement was reached, but both sides parted amicably, committing to leaving the door open. A few weeks later, Wilson sent a delegation to Salisbury headed by Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs George Thomson.

The Privy Council was still the issue. ‘As much as I want a settlement,’ Smith told Thomson, ‘I would prefer no settlement at all than submit to such an appeal process.’

And so it was.

At that time, the Rhodesian economy was thriving, the insurgency war was under control and opinion polls in Britain suggested that the opposition Conservative Party was gaining ground, so there was not much compelling Smith to settle. Yet, this would prove a colossal missed opportunity, and was undoubtedly the best offer to emerge. At Lancaster House, 11 years later, the terms were far less generous to Rhodesia’s minority.

Part 1

The Viscount tragedy

1

Britain takes sides

I came to the conclusion that he [Robert Mugabe] would not make a good leader.

– Dr David Owen, British Foreign Secretary, 1977–79

After 12 years of fruitlessly searching for a political settlement in Rhodesia, in 1978 Britain decided to choose sides. At the time, Rhodesia was sandwiched between Chinese-backed insurgents to the east, based in Mozambique and loyal to Robert Mugabe, and Soviet-backed insurgents to the west, based in Zambia and loyal to Joshua Nkomo. Britain decided to back Nkomo.

Attempts to reach a settlement had come and gone, but in 1976, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger forced the issue by using what Americans call ‘meat-axe diplomacy’ to compel Ian Smith, the Rhodesian prime minister, to accept majority rule. Kissinger promised the South African prime minister, John Vorster, that if he helped to impose a black, non-communist government on Rhodesia (and Namibia), then the US administration would take the political heat off South Africa and allow the country to sort out its apartheid problems on its own terms. Yet, although Kissinger successfully forced Smith’s hand, this did not lead to compromise from the other side. If anything, the Kissinger deal hardened the attitude of the insurgent leaders because they sensed that Smith had lost control of events. When the parties gathered in Geneva at the end of 1976 to debate the Kissinger plan, the nationalists, particularly Robert Mugabe, demanded many more compromises. A furious Smith felt hoodwinked by the whole process and refused to compromise any further.

At the same time as the doomed Geneva conference, Kissinger’s boss, President Gerald Ford, lost the presidential election to Democrat Jimmy Carter, who took office as the 39th president of the United States in January 1977. The new president and his administration had a dramatic impact on events in Southern Africa. Carter was openly hostile towards any form of white rule in southern Africa, which put him at odds with Kissinger’s plan, especially the idea of shielding South Africa from political heat. Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, openly criticised the South African political system and tried to intimidate John Vorster. These tactics served only to harden South Africa’s attitude and Carter turned to oil-rich Nigeria as his principal ally in Africa. He managed to persuade Nigerian leader General Olusegun Obasanjo to get involved in reaching a settlement in Rhodesia – and the Nigerians certainly did get involved.

In early 1977, Cyrus Vance replaced Kissinger as secretary of state and soon contacted his opposite number in Britain, Foreign Secretary Dr David Owen – also a newcomer. By September that year, a new Anglo–American peace plan was formulated, known as the Owen–Vance plan. This arrangement required Smith to compromise even further and, like Kissinger’s plan, it relied on South Africa putting pressure on Rhodesia. But without their political heat shield, the South Africans were far less inclined to play ball and they refused to endorse the new plan. Unsurprisingly, Smith also rejected the