adminOn 22 December 1978 the Rhodesian security forces led by the infamous Selous Scouts carried out a raid on Mboroma Camp, a Zipra facility where suspected enemy agents were kept.
The Rhodesians had been spying on the camp since November of that year and during the raid code-named Operation Vodka.
The enemy forces got away with 32 people who were kept at the camp and took them to then Salisbury, now Harare.
The commander of the Selous Scout unit, the late Lt-Col Ron Reid Daly in a book, Selous Scouts Top Secret War as told to Peter Stiff had this to say about Operation Vodka: “Then, on the 22nd December, Captain Richard Pomford’s paratroop task-force took off from an advanced airfield on Rhodesia’s northern border, and headed north through a storm-threatened sky into Zambia. Taking off after them, but synchronised to arrive over the target area just before they did, were the most worked, but still the most willing, war-planes in the world . . . the Hawker Hunters. The air-strike on the Zipra barrack-rooms and non-prisoner installations went in at 08h30 and shortly afterwards the Selous Scouts paratroopers tumbles with grim precision from their aircraft, the static lines yanking out the khaki nylon mushrooms of their chutes . . .”
In our today’s Lest We Forget Column we continue with the interview we had last week with the sharp-tongued Cde Squeeze Dlodlo, not Swikizi, as reported earlier a survivor of that raid. Cde Dlodlo found himself at Mboroma after the Zipra military intelligence officers accused him of being a spy when he arrived at Nampundwe Transit Camp in Zambia. He has vivid memories of the attack where he survived death by a whisker three days just before the 1978 Christmas. Below are excerpts of the interview with our Assistant Editor Mkhululi Sibanda (MS):
MS: Last week you were still telling us about the situation at Mboroma. As time went on I suppose more people were brought in and some of you guys were beginning to get used to the camp, so how was it?
Cde Dlodlo: There was an underground facility inside the camp which was surrounded by a fence and we were strictly told that when under attack we should not run outside but quickly slip into the pits which were nicely covered as if there was nothing beneath. The things that could give you a clue that there were pits were the breather drums. Most of the time we slept in the barracks where we were head counted every three hours to see if no one had fled. This camp was in the middle of nowhere and only a fool could have thought of running away. So as time went on we started getting used to each other and I realised that the man who was the signals officer of the camp was an ex-Matopo student. He was known as Mpostoli. He died here at home after the ceasefire. He had developed some trust in me. At times he would send me to his tent to clean it and we developed those ties and he was no longer as harsh as he used to be. We were also now allowed to play soccer. And then one day while playing soccer there was a plane that passed by, I think the enemy suspected there was a guerilla camp. One of the guerillas then shot at it twice with a machine gun. I think it was a spotter and that was around September 1978. I think the Rhodesians might have confirmed then that there was a camp in that area.
MS: Then tell us about the events leading to the attack. Were there any signs that you would come under attack?
Cde Dlodlo: Yes, they were. In fact two weeks prior to the attack, one veteran straight talking guerrilla, Mkomanisi, who had been detained for grumbling about lack of logistical support for freedom fighters at the front had alerted the camp commander that he had heard a sound of a military radio in the evening from the vicinity of the camp perimeter fence. The camp commander would have none of the warning, neither did he bother to investigate but chose to discard that information as part of Mkomanisi’s quest to be recognised. Also a spirit medium among us, Cde Msebele had warned everybody after we had been woken up one night about an impending bombardment during an unusual trance and that was a week before the raid. I had also dreamt being in the centre of a field whose fence (uthango) was burning and I ran towards the south easterly direction to escape being burnt. I kept that dream to myself but strongly felt it was telling me what to do in the event of an attack and indeed I did escape south easterly and that is how I kept my life, thanks to my ancestors.
MS: So all those warnings were never taken seriously by the command element. What do you think might have been the reason for not taking them seriously?
Cde Dlodlo: It would appear reports about possible enemy activities were never taken seriously by some field commanders whose experience in real combat was questionable after many had been deployed in the rear camps without front combat experience. The same case of an empty packet of a 20 Madison being discovered near Mkushi Girls Camp, I refer you to the Chronicle edition of 18 April, 2015, whose story was titled Jane Ndlovu, the Unsung Hero which reveals a lot about the disdain with which some camp commanders simply despised vital tell-tale signs of enemy reconnaissance activities. One then wonders what the key roles of the military intelligence were when such information was being availed to operatives for scrutiny and possible pre-emptive action. Almost all Rhodesian air and ground attack raids were preceded by extensive infantry reconnaissance activities inside Zambia and little if any evidence points to significant and effective counter-intelligence action on the part of our intelligence bosses.
The non-committal and unimpressive response one is likely to get is that “it was a war situation comrade.” But with nearly 400 innocent recruits safely locked up in Mboroma purportedly for unproven offences of “being agents of or aiding the Rhodesian security establishment” one sees a yawning gap of chronic incompetence in the counter intelligence hierarchy in the rear during that time. I am sure there were other reasons for being so busy putting innocent souls into quarantine like justifying the very existence of the intelligence unit or finding an excuse of not being deployed where the real action and the real enemy was — at the front.
MS: But you talk about nearly 400 innocent recruits, how innocent were they when Daly in his book is quoted as saying the camp held a number of captured Rhodesian security personnel and a number of renegades from the Zipra ranks.
Cde Dlodlo: One does not need to read much into the Reid Daly statement beyond a commander who saw an opportunity to generate well supported propaganda in the face of losing the war. Rhodesia was on the downward slope of losing the war and the attack on Mboroma was surely part of the last kicks of a dying horse. There was no strategic significance in true military strategy to justify Operation Vodka. I don’t see any. Ok, let me explain from my own analysis and what I saw as an inmate of that camp, the composition of the Mboroma Prison Camp was as follows: 85 percent ordinary recruits who had responded to Comrade Jane Ngwenya’s Daily Voice of Zimbabwe Radio Call for all young people to rise and join the liberation war. In the background of Cde Ngwenya’s voice was noise of Zipra’s toyi-toying and a lion’s roar. The 10 percent were ex-Rhodesian policemen and district assistants who had, on their own decided to join the liberation struggle ,through Jane Ngwenya’s ever persuasive and convincing radio call that all Sons of Zimbabwe desert the ranks of enemy forces to join the liberation struggle while the last five percent comprised trained guerillas who had fallen out of favour with the top commanders mostly for complaining openly about what the freedom fighters fighting inside Zimbabwe felt was lack of logistical support from the rear.
So any intelligent enemy command would surely react to such an opportunity of a very soft target presenting itself in the hope that they would parade captured prisoners from such a camp, pretend they were trained guerrillas and develop a powerful anti-liberation propaganda theme. Therefore, the Selous Scouts commander may have been very right to say they targeted Mboroma Prison for what it was worth — an easy to defeat target that had a massive and valuable capacity to generate visible propaganda using live and captured human bodies and voices who had the lived experiences of having been badly traumatised.
MS: But Comrade you sound very bitter about your colleagues in the struggle and maybe that is impairing your judgment.
Cde Dlodlo: I am just being brutally honest here and it is my own assessment because I lived with those people. Please visit the Selous Scout website, which is www.selouscouts.com. In that website, the real Selous Scouts have their role of honour and not a single so called “Mboroma prisoner of war” appears in that list. But such was the brutal treatment by some of our brothers which some of us met while we had volunteered to join the war against minority rule. While we take no offence, we hope those who partook in that unjustified mission add the words remorse and compassion to their conscience and learn not to brag about the dirty past they enjoyed while we suffered. While in Mboroma, innocent souls were lost and I can only vividly remember incidents where the following innocent comrades died: Vitalis, tortured to death, Bhejane (Johannes Mkwilibindi), survived a bullet shot in the groin, Zhuwao an ex-Khami Prison escapee who joined the liberation war only to be arrested and detained in Mboroma, a fine footballer I had ever met, Henry Nleya killed by enemy fire while trying to escape from the attack and Witness Tshabalala, one of the first blacks who had played for the Rhodesian Soccer team in Australia in 1966 who was captured and taken to Harare as well as Dudlu from Masendu in Bulilima who I am sure died before independence after capture. May their Souls Rest in Peace.
MS: Then on the day of attack what happened. Take us through, give us an eye witness’ account.
Cde Dlodlo: The first wave of bombardment could have been after 8am and that was 22nd December, 1978. It was carried out by three to four Lynx attack aircraft as I was in the library within the Mboroma Camp. I bolted out into thick smoke and headed in the easterly direction, jumping over a two-metre fence in the process. Meanwhile, umfana kaDaggi, a guy from Mwenezi who was manning the only anti-aircraft Zegue allocated to protect us — the so called prisoners of war — immediately responded with rapid anti-aircraft fire causing the enemy planes to disperse. In that lull of enemy fire, most of those who were within the camp swiftly melted into the bush while a few ran into the underground shelter network within the camp.
Remember orders had been given by the acting camp commander Ephraim Mavhiya that all prisoners were expected to get inside shelters as camp security would shoot anyone who tried to run away during the attack. Other instructions had come from Jeconia Moyo who had changed the hostile treatment we had been subjected to, to a much more humane setting.
MS: You mean Moyo who now runs a stationery business in Bulawayo?
Cde Dlodlo: Yes, that one , he had also been badly tortured on arrival in Zambia after deserting service in the Rhodesian police force to join the liberation war but had survived Mboroma, I understand Dumiso Dabengwa intervened and assigned him to go for training after realising he could be turned into a very important asset.
MS: We had diverted a bit, please continue with how the attack occurred.
Cde Dlodlo: After about 10 minutes of anti-aircraft defence and aerial confusion, mfana KaDaggi sabotaged the Zegue and quickly disappeared as all enemy fire was being targeted at the Zegeu general position. Meanwhile, I had safely found my way out and was on the highest point on the mountain range that lay parallel to Mboroma and was separated by a large swamp that had overgrown elephant grass which served most of us as very good camouflage and cover so we could easily escape. I had not yet been trained but I manoeuvred my way to safety and met others who had also nearly died under enemy fire. I joined three or so others and luckily we had Comrade Gabella, a man from Tsholotsho who had been trained in 1975 in Morogoro who immediately took over command of us to the gathering point. Gabella was later killed by Madondo’s team for a very minor misdemeanour after being accused of stealing a few blankets from the camp which he had sold to buy himself local tobacco and a few litres of traditional umqombothi (opaque beer) from nearby Zambian villages to kill boredom. The enemy continued with the attack and ground forces were sweeping through the area and at around 12pm, heavy rains started falling and there was smoke all over Mboroma Camp. Helicopters zoomed in like honeybees to land at the football pitch near the camp as the bombing phase ended. Paratroopers had been dropped while the bombing was going on and some of our colleagues had been shot dead, others had rushed to hide inside the camp shelter and others were captured hiding in nearby bushes after surrender. Our Zegeu was taken together with the 32 captured colleagues and we were later told that 8-12 were killed during the attack.
MS: When the enemy attacked I understand quite a number of your colleagues were outside the camp. Where were they?
Cde Dlodlo: The other 300 plus had gone to collect game meat from the Luangwa mountain range and so the enemy effectively did not get what it had thought it would harvest from the raid. Most of those 32 captured had run into the shelter network within the camp and were the ones who were fished out by the enemy and taken away. In fact moves had already been made to always de-congest the camp in the event of an attack.
MS: So after that attack what happened to the survivors like yourself?
Cde Dlodlo: We were later given the normal six-month guerilla Zipra training at Lima Camp Two, some 30km from the original Mboroma Camp led by one Algerian trained Zipra commando, the late Jordan Gampu, a Kalanga man who was an expert in the field.
MS: So in other words the attack by the Rhodesians was a blessing in disguise as after that incident you were finally sent for military training.
Cde Dlodlo: I would say the attack proved beyond any doubt that we had been innocent and wrongfully accused of being enemy agents. There was no reason why over 300 men, purportedly arrested for being enemy agents could run away from their master’s rescue mission. We were then sent to Mayeba after training, to wait for deployment in the front and some were immediately deployed. Sooner or later, the war came to an end to the merriment of all Zimbabweans. After the war of Independence I rightfully took my place in our newly created national army and served diligently until I retired in the 1990s.
Online Reporter