Thursday, 12 June 1986: Heading East while Discussing the Rhodesian War

June 25, 11:00AM, Home of Pete & Verity Mundy, Lake McIlwaine, Zimbabwe

The morning after arriving in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, I had my first opportunity to drive a car in Africa.  George, the businessman with whom I was travelling, had faith that I could keep his Japanese sedan on the left side of the road.  One of the most awkward aspects of driving his car was getting used to shifting the five-speed transmission with my left hand.  When I had to make a right turn, I would shout out loud to myself, “Get in the left lane, left lane!” and managed to avoid any mishaps, running errands while George was in a meeting. 

It was a 3¼ hour drive east from Harare to Nyanga National Park.  We covered 265km (165 miles). 

 

That afternoon, we left for Nyanga in Zimbabwe’s eastern highlands.  I had booked lodging for the night in a national park chalet.  George was going to be nearby at the Troutbeck Resort for a three-day conference.  The chalets were all booked for Friday and Saturday night, and I hoped they would get a cancellation.  If not, I could probably get a room at one of the hotels nearby.

Hound and Hare Bar, Troutbeck Resort, Zimbabwe.  George’s conference was at Troutbeck.  I reserved a small national park chalet a few miles away.

Source:  https://mobile.twitter.com/TheTroutbeck/status/1127151534293291009/photo/1

  

From Harare, we headed southeast on the Mutare highway for 170kms.  For the first part of the trip, the road led us through forests of tall trees and a rolling landscape.  There were farms here and there.  The further east we drove, the more rugged the landscape became with mountains looming to the east in the direction of our journey.  Before we reached the turnoff of Rusape, I got George to talk about his experiences as an army major during the Rhodesian War. 

During that war, the Rhodesians burned a one kilometer-wide strip along the Mozambique border.  In order to keep the guerillas from using Mozambique as a safe base, the Rhodesian soldiers shot everything that moved within the no-man’s land be it a cow or a child.  George complained that they were not allowed to shoot guerillas inside the Rhodesian border unless they caught them with weapons.  So when the guerillas saw the army coming, they would hide their weapons and look like peaceful villagers.  The army tried to win the “hearts and minds” of the rural Africans, but the guerillas outdid them through intimidation.  In other words, the guerillas would tell local people to keep their mouths shut or be killed.  Sounded like shades of Viet Nam to me. 

I asked George how he had felt about killing guerillas.  He replied that he would think about the brutality of the guerillas that he had seen:  African women with their lips or ears cut off; foreign missionaries who had been shot while their wives watched; the women raped and then forced to watch while the men’s bodies were thrown around the room from bayonet to bayonet.  He would think of these incidents while shooting guerillas.

How had white officers like George been able to remain in the country after they had lost the war?  Members of some of the more hard-core white units like the Selous Scouts (Green Beret-types) had been forced to leave the country after the war.  Most other white soldiers had had few problems.  For one thing, the new Zimbabwean government would have faced a cut-off of foreign aid had they brutalized white Rhodesian soldiers.  However, blacks who had fought in the Rhodesian Army were not so lucky.  Some of them had arms cut off or suffered similar indignities. 

The Selous Scouts were a multi-racial, special forces paratrooper unit of the Rhodesian Army.   Source: http://highabovefarbeyond.blogspot.com/2017/08/chapter-19-enter-selous-scouts.html

All in all, the Rhodesian War sounds like one nasty mess.  It’s a miracle that a good deal of reconciliation has taken place between the former enemies.  Of course, the Africans know that the whites who have stayed are willing to live under a black government.  If they didn’t want to contribute to the economic progress of this new country, they wouldn’t have stayed.  

When we reached Rusape, George turned left and headed up a narrow winding road.  We climbed higher and higher through granite mountains and past flat-topped trees.  The rugged landscape “looked” like what I had imagined for this part of Africa.  We flew around carts pulled by oxen and hundreds of African kids walking home from school.

As darkness was falling, we located the national park chalets.  I could at last spend some time alone.  After staying with four different families for the last five nights, I welcomed the opportunity to cook my own meals and to fart whenever I damn-well pleased.  The next 2½ days are really a new story as they involved administrative hassles with the park service and telephones as well as some great hiking, visits to spectacular waterfalls, and a three-hour hike with two couples to the summit of Inyangani (8500 feet), Zimbabwe’s high point.