It was at about this time that we received a visitation in COMOPS from ex-RLI Major Alan Lindner, long- serving intelligence officer to Selous Scouts and now attached to Military Intelligence. He came to make a preliminary presentation of a detailed study he had undertaken. Alan made this presentation to General Barnard, Brian Robinson, Peter Burford, Terence Murphy, the COMOPS SB representative Chief Superintendent Mike Edden and me. Quite a bit of what he had to say involved the same matters Terence and I had considered in formulating our Auxiliaries plan. However, Alan’s presentation went much deeper and moved through many steps before unfolding into a clearly defined strategy.
On his own and drawing from his experience with Selous Scouts, Alan had worked out the very military strategy that COMOPS should have produced many months earlier. His maps with well-defined overlays built up a picture that, because of its un-embroidered simplicity, unscrambled the multiplicity of problems facing us. It specifically revealed the most fundamental flaw in COMOPS operational management. Put simply, it showed that, in attempting to secure all internal ground and conducting external operations, our forces had been spread too thinly to prevent the cancer of CT encroachment into economically important areas that Alan called ‘The Vital Ground’.
Vital Ground encompassed all commercial areas including white farms, isolated mines, main roads and rail routes. From those areas in which the CTs were strongest, the tribal areas, Alan’s plan advocated almost total withdrawal of forces to make them fully available for external operations and to secure the Vital Ground in strength. Only then would Selous Scouts and high-density operations be mounted to progressively reoccupy adjoining TTLs with the odd probe into hot spots to keep abreast of developments and, more especially, to take out key CT groups.
External operations would obviously have to be stepped up and sustained to ensure that the CT presence in the semiabandoned areas, some of which ZANLA had already claimed to be ‘liberated areas’, did not become too strong. Robert Mugabe had named 1979
Alan Lindner’s plan was so convincing to those of us who heard it that an instruction was issued to all main players to attend a repeat presentation to the National JOC where Alan’s proposals were accepted and put into immediate effect.
The virtual abandonment of the Tribal Trust Lands by the security forces did not affect the Sub-JOC locations as all of these lay in Vital Ground. However, many police stations remained in the unattended areas because, to its credit, PGHQ was determined to retain every single one of its many stations, no matter the dangers. This placed a few stations, particularly those close to the Mozambican border, in a very hostile environment often necessitating Dakotas to run the gauntlet to para-drop critical provisions to hard-pressed policemen and, occasionally, helicopters to change over personnel and undertake the evacuation of casualties. Nyamapanda, right on the border with Mozambique next to the main road to Malawi, was the most harassed and dangerous of all the police positions.
Protective villages continued to be manned by Guard Force with Pfumo re Vanhu auxiliaries in the consolidated villages. They could call upon Fireforce during daylight hours. Inevitably, however, ZANLA’s many relatively ineffective stand-off attacks occurred at night.
One huge problem in leaving many hapless tribesmen to their own devices was that it caused streams of refugees to move out of the countryside to the safety of cities and towns. In consequence, shantytowns sprang up in untidy knots around many built-up areas.
Mozambican National Resistance
PRIOR TO HIS POSTING TO COMOPS, former Commander of SAS Lieutenant-Colonel Brian Robinson had been attached to an establishment specifically created to handle Special Operations. This Special Operations HQ had been under OCC control until COMOPS took over and brought special operations under its wing. Initially Brian was horrified at the prospect of working with Bert Barnard but he was able to conduct most of his work with Group Captain Norman Walsh with whom he had a good personal working relationship, as witnessed before and during Operation Dingo.
Although Brian enjoyed initial planning and tasking work, all of which was conducted in an operations room expressly reserved for top-secret operations, he sorely missed the nittygritty planning that SAS and Selous Scouts did back in their respective headquarters. Consequently, Brian spent much of his day prowling the corridors of COMOPS like a caged lion.
Having been so involved with Norman Walsh, Brian had a very high regard for Air Force opinion in all aspects of SAS and other specialist ground-force work. Having also been involved with me in earlier times, and whenever Norman had asked me to join in on special ops planning, Brian came to me first whenever he needed to bounce ideas off someone in COMOPS. We got on well, and were privy to every aspect of Special Forces operations other than Selous Scouts and CIO external undercover work. Whenever such detail as we needed was given, we kept it strictly to ourselves. One such undercover operation was revealed when the SAS and Air Force had to become directly involved in its development.
In late December 1978, I visited an isolated farm in the Odzi farming area east of Umtali. Here, at a top- secret Central Intelligence Organisation base, training was being conducted for a resistance movement that was intent on ousting FRELIMO from power. This organisation was variously known as MRM (Mozambican Resistance Movement), MNR (Mozambican National Resistance) and RENAMO. MNR was the term we preferred.
Milling around the helicopter I had flown myself on this visit was a scruffy but happy group of Mozambicans with huge smiles. A fair-sized force of these men was already operating in Mozambique and scoring spectacular successes against FRELIMO.
SAS were about to deploy with the resistance force to give them the training and direction that only the SAS could provide. Air Force would be needed for resupply and other supporting roles. Surprisingly, when the time came for the first para-supply by Dakotas, it was to deliver maize and vegetable seeds with only small amounts of ammunition and troop comforts included. The reason for this was that the MNR had little need for weapons or ammunition because they were capturing most of what they required from FRELIMO.
The willing support being given MNR by the local people bore testimony to the tribesmen’s utter dislike of FRELIMO. However, willing as they were, these poor folk could not hope to provide all the food needs of the fast- growing resistance force. So, in response to SAS direction, MNR needed seed to grow its own crops for self- sufficiency within its safe havens in the forests and valleys surrounding Gorongoza mountain.
FRELIMO had antagonised the rural people in so many ways. They had kicked out Mozambique’s white Portuguese and, in doing so, had brought about the destruction of the income base upon which rural families depended. Without the Portuguese, earnings by previous commercial, industrial and domestic workers had dried up. None of FRELIMO’s preindependence promises had materialised so the peasants, who had been forced into failed communal farming activities, were much worse off than at any time during their relatively stressfree existence under Portuguese rule.
The peoples’ trust in MNR to return them to situations of ‘the good old days’ was reinforced by well- orchestrated radio broadcasts beamed from Rhodesia by Portuguese-speaking presenters. ‘The Voice of Free Africa’ services, whilst boosting the MNR image, incensed FRELIMO by emphasising the impotence of its leadership and slating communist ideologies that were failing to fill stomachs or keep people warm and children educated. The Mozambican peasants liked what they were hearing and MNR’s popularity soared and spread.
The MNR might have substantially altered the course of our war had funds been available when they were needed back in 1976. This was another of many situations to which the ‘toolittle-too-late’ tag might be pinned because, from the outset, MNR was very pro-white, pro-Rhodesia and violently anticommunist. This they demonstrated by providing us with some important intelligence on ZANLA’s activities and locations. Of greater importance to Rhodesia was the fact that MNR activities were so troublesome to FRELIMO that earlier plans to
