----- Original Message ----- > >I don't recall this incident, but it suggests a US connection. Any > >comments?
In Zim's main weekly, the Financial Gazette, I used to have a column, and this is what I wrote on this story on 29 January 1993: How Rhodesia poisoned SA The South African Defense Force and South African Police are capable of untold horrors, and, via the independent press and the Goldstone Commission, scandals emerge nearly every week which otherwise should, in a humane society, lead to the government's resignation. Yet the origins of the most contemptible covert operations aimed at civilians or opposition political groups may never be known, if President FW de Klerk's current plans for a no-strings-attached amnesty plan are eventually consummated. So it is up to insiders to reveal occasional secrets, and to gutsy researchers to put these into some form of coherent story. Thus it is useful to look at fresh allegations about Rhodesian-era contributions to modern-day South African roguery by Mr Jeremy Brickhill. Currently an Oxford doctoral student and filmmaker, Mr Brickhill fought for ZAPU in the 1970s and in 1987 nearly lost his life when aspiring assassins carbombed him at the Avondale shopping centre. His analysis of the role of Rhodesian chemical and biological experiments in South Africa can be found in the Winter 1993 issue of the American magazine Covert Action Quarterly, in an article entitled "Zimbabwe's Poisoned Legacy: Secret War in Southern Africa." For years rumours have circulated about nefarious Rhodesian Special Forces experiments, including former CIO director Ken Flower's own admission that poisoned uniforms were planted for ZANU's use, leading to the deaths of hundreds of cadres. One case of likely biological warfare, reports Dr Meryl Nass of the University of Massachusetts in the same magazine, was an extraordinary outbreak of anthrax in 1978-80: "It affected large areas, killed thousands of head of livestock, and produced the largest number of human anthrax cases in one disease outbreak ever reported in the world. It caused extensive economic hardship in areas with a predominantly black population, while leaving white areas unscathed." Mr Brickhill reviews a range of evidence of chemical and biological warfare conducted against ZANU and ZAPU guerrillas in the late 1970s by the CIO and Selous Scouts. He discusses the means by which the Rhodesians' "Operation Favour" manipulated Bishop Abel Muzorewa and Mr Ndabaningi Sithole to recruit 5 000 pro-government guerrillas "notorious for their undisciplined and murderous behaviour." And he suggests how, subsequently, "Operation Winter" transferred the Rhodesian lessons and military "assets" directly to South Africa under the nose of British transition team and US authorities. Mr Brickhill maintains that had the major Western players been so inclined, much could have been done to halt the migration of trained killers and their wares down South: "Field testing of chemical and biological weapons by the Rhodesians must have been of great interest to many other countries. With their extensive penetration of the Rhodesian military and intelligence services, the British intelligence service MI-6 could hardly have failed to learn the details of the poison war. Ken Flower himself confirms the close liaison he maintained with the CIA, MI-6 and other Western intelligence agencies." By the time the Lancaster House deal was negotiated, Mr Brickhill says, the future of the Rhodesian military was decided: "The South Africans were to be the principal beneficiaries of the Rhodesian [covert military] assets; they, after all, had to carry on the fight [against the ANC]. The Rhodesian assets were happy enough to go to South Africa. The British and Americans, while not displeased with the arrangement, were concerned with potential political and diplomatic repercussions. Hence the stipulation that the transfer of the Rhodesian assets should appear to be informal and unorganised." Even Mozambican FRELIMO officials were drawn into the "web of deception" by the British, Mr Brickhill insists. "They were told that if they agreed to help keep ZANU guerrillas under control and committed to the election process, the MNR would be disbanded." Mozambique's former Security Minister Sergio Vierra later told Mr Brickhill: "We were naive. We were very naive." At the time independence was being celebrated in Zimbabwe, the Rhodesian Special Forces were already being assimilated into the SADF. The Recce Commandos welcomed the Selous Scouts and SAS, and the poisons technology was incorporated for future use. Mr Brickhill alleges that the shadowy Civil Co-operation Bureau of the SADF ─ acknowledged to be the centre of 1980s death squad activity ─ was originally set up to encourage Rhodesian "dirty tricks operators, and many of the CCB operators were Rhodesians." The SADF also established the Directorate of Special Tasks with the Rhodesians, which organised the RENAMO takeover. These were no ordinary soldiers. Mr Brickhill quotes an interview with Mr Henrik Ellert, formerly with the Rhodesian CIO: "Not everyone can go out and kill. It's very few people who can go and kill in cold blood like this. The business of dealing in poisons, killing by stealth, by booby-trap bombs and so on, is by its very nature a very dirty business." The Rhodesians "produced such people in quantity," Mr Brickhill comments. "Such were the assets handed on to South Africa from Rhodesia's dirty war through the connivance of Western powers in 1980. The question today is what will happen to these assets now?" Mr Brickhill's article appears on the heels of revelations by the Goldstone Commission that a "Third Force" has been working hard to infiltrate and disrupt the ANC. Renewed Angolan civil war has generated charges of SA intervention, and more than a hundred SA-based mercenaries recently left for Zaire to prop up the Mobutu Sese Seko government. Moreover, while there has been no recent evidence of South Africa engaging in chemical and biological warfare on the scale that many rural Zimbabweans encountered, the SADF Military Forensic Department has come under extensive scrutiny for providing poison to CCB death squads. In the late 1970s the SADF financed Rhodesia's Selous Scouts and, according to Mr Brickhill, had Forensic Department experts and intelligence operatives present in Rhodesian camps "where the poison war was developed." Perhaps the most famous victim of SA toxins was Rev. Frank Chikane, General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches. While visiting the US in 1989, Rev. Chikane was diagnosed and treated for organophosphate poisoning, which, notes Mr Brickhill, was "the principal chemical weapon used by the Rhodesians." Rev. Chikane was treated in time to prevent permanent damage, but other victims of late 1980s poisonings have not been so lucky. Mr Klaas de Jonge, a Dutch citizen who worked with the ANC, put on a poisoned jacket left in his hotel cupboard and lost his eyesight. And in the past few weeks there has been renewed controversy around the fate of the ANC military leader in Swaziland, Mr Thami Zulu, who died of poison (there is a fierce dispute about Mr Zulu's allegiance and who did the poisoning). Mr de Klerk's proposed unconditional amnesty would indemnify all state personnel who committed such crimes. In a surprise vote last October, the proposed amnesty was rejected by Parliament due to opposition by the coloured Labour Party. But the ANC have agreed that once interim government is in place an amnesty will be granted. However, the ANC want full disclosure of covert actions, in part because, in the words of Mr Brickhill: "Many of the themes of secret war ─ `contra-type' armies, psychological war, poison war and so-called `black-on-black' violence ─ which today continue to take their toll in the region were first developed in Rhodesia. The story of this legacy is still largely untold and shrouded in secrecy. If Southern Africa is not to limp into the twenty-first century bloodied and broken, the secret war and its legacies must be seriously addressed."
