THIS week, in Zimbabwe’s history, marks the 46th anniversary of the torching of the Rhodesian Salisbury fuel depot by ZANLA commandos on 11 December 1978. A lightning strike that came completely out of the blue, the ZANLA knock on the very doors of Salisbury literally knocked out the depot that fuelled the Rhodesian war effort. The ZANLA unit escaped unharmed but it had set the Rhodesian Army Commander General Peter Walls on his own march to the colonial regime’s Waterloo. The unthinkable had become inexorable from then on, but it is a momentum that had been building for some time.

Following the assassination of Chairman Chitepo in March 1975 and the arrest of the ZANLA High Command, the ZANLA war machine had ‘virtually’ drifted without radar until the September 1977 historic Chimoio Congress restructured it for purpose. Barely two months later, the Rhodesian raids on Chimoio and Tembwe on 23 November and 25 November 1977, respectively, had tested the purpose leaving in excess of 1 000 guerillas and civilian refugees dead. The surprise raid on Chimoio, which the Rhodesians code-named ‘Operation Dingo’, had been a massive Second World War-style raid involving 58 aircraft and mass-destruction munitions. It was 32 years after the Second World War and it meant that some of the Rhodesian participants would have seen action in the closing stages of the war.

As a matter of fact, Ian Smith, who sanctioned the raid on Chimoio as Rhodesian Premier, had been a British Royal Airforce fighter pilot against the Germans. If he had been realistic and wanted to be honest, he would have been the first to acknowledge that raids of the same magnitude and same concentrations of targets had produced more casualties in World War Europe than in Mozambique. The implications appear to have been lost to Rhodesian propagandists. Of the 58 aircraft that took part in the Chimoio raid, the Rhodesians have themselves stated that almost all of them came out with bullet holes from the defenders.

The inadvertent acknowledgement is that the restructured ZANLA had not taken their baptism lying down. They had risen to the task and, whatever superlatives the Rhodesians would mobilise to define their prowess would also inadvertently confirm the determination of their ZANLA targets. It is a matter of fact that it is the challenge that defines the competence. A British Lord, Richard Cecil, would be killed by a ZANLA unit while trying to prove otherwise. He would be killed by the enemy whose incompetence he was trying to document for British television. The British journalist, film-maker, soldier and graduate from the muchhyped Sandhurst was the son of Robert Gascoyne-Cecil and great grandson to Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, also known as Lord Salisbury. Lord Salisbury had been British premier during the British occupation of Zimbabwe in 1890.

The capital city of Rhodesia had been named, Salisbury, after him. The place where the British flag had been raised as a sign of occupation on 12 September 1890 had been named Cecil Square after him. The same Cecil Square would be renamed Africa Unity Square after Zimbabwe won its independence from British occupation. It is the prominence of Lord Salisbury in Rhodesia’s history and the proportionally vast landed interests of the family that got Lord Richard Cecil involved in Rhodesia’s armed defence of white minority rule. And it is that stance that got him killed by ZANLA.

It is the same prominence of the same Salisbury (Cecil) family that made Lord Richard Cecil’s killing a decisive factor in the British government’s sudden resolve to end the war. Lord Richard Cecil was killed on 20 April 1978. He was buried on 27 April 1978 which, by strange coincidence, was the 80th anniversary of the 27 April 1898 killing of the mediums of Nehanda, Kagubi and other leaders of resistance to the British occupation of Zimbabwe. The killing of Lord Richard Cecil had hurt and, thereafter, British calls to end the war had become incessant and, almost every action gravitated to or consolidated that purpose and end. A tragic sequel to the killing of Lord Richard Cecil by ZANLA would be the downing of Air Rhodesia Flight 825 by ZIPRA fighters on 3 September 1978. The dead would total 48 and really shake both the racist Rhodesian government and the metropolitan backers. And then the ZANLA commandos had come to town, commanded by a former Salisbury United Omnibus Company driver-turned guerrilla, Member Kuvhiringidza, including comrades Nhamo, Lobo, Bombs, No Rest, America Mudzvanyiriri, Brian Chimurenga and Poison Waungana. The attack on the Salisbury fuel depot had brought tears out of Ian Smith’s eyes. And, before those tears had dried, ZIPRA had shot down a second Viscount, Air Rhodesia Flight 827 killing all 59 on board. The pressure was, of course, unbearable and internal settlement elections were held in April 1979, which was a one gruesome year after the killing of Lord Richard Cecil by ZANLA.

The elections were won by the UANC Bishop Abel Muzorewa, But the ‘veneer’ over Rhodesian treachery was too thin to deceive anyone and the war continued. And, the following month, in May 1979 British general elections spawned the Margaret Thatcher-led Conservative government that included Lord Richard Cecil’s brother, Viscount Cranbourne, whose first call was to end the war in Rhodesia. In June, the Rhodesians fronted the UANC Bishop Abel Muzorewa to form the Zimbabwe-Rhodesia government but by August had accepted the impracticality of it. And they accepted the new British Premier, Margaret Thatcher’s, proposal for real peace talks at Lancaster. And, while the peace talks were scheduled to start on 10 September 1979, the Rhodesians and South Africans combined a force to raid Mapai, a ZANLA rear base in Mozambique’s Gaza Province. That was on 5 September and an ‘anticipated’ win was expected to strengthen the Rhodesian hand at the upcoming Lancaster House peace negotiations.

The miscalculation cost the raiders dearly. Their losses included a Puma helicopter and those who survived the crushing defeat left the battle scene by hot extraction. Their dead would remain unrecovered many years after the war.