An aspect of the South African Border War. Coming soon.

At the end of 1987 and the beginning of 1988 arguably the largest tank battle in Africa since WWII, and the only one of its kind ever to take place in sub-Saharan Africa, was fought. The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale was a key episode in what has since come to be known as the South African Border War. While the Portuguese fought two intense guerrilla wars in the region, those being Angola and Mozambique, and white Rhodesia similarly battled internal nationalist movements throughout the 1970s, none of these compared in any way in terms of size and regional impact to the semi-conventional, and at times fully conventional, war that South Africa fought against a combination of local liberation movements, the internal factions of Angola and Cuban, and to a lesser extent Soviet armed forces.

Somehow in the mythology of African counter insurgency the South African Border War has tended to slip off the radar. International scholars of military history are in the main far more conversant with events that occurred in Rhodesia than those that took place along the arid and featureless frontier between Angola and Namibia, then known as South West Africa. Here, from 1966 to 1989, a generation of South African youth held the line in a conflict that few fully understood, and which was fought in the midst of quantum regional changes, evolving over the course of its twenty or more years from a classic counter-insurgency campaign to a fully conventional war.

>>Map

A brief background to the South African Border War

For those not familiar with the wider events of African liberation, it might be said in a nutshell that the major European powers awoke in the aftermath of WWII with a recognition that they were entering into a new world order that would be governed less by the dictum of men such as Cecil John Rhodes^[1] and more in line with the principals of the Atlantic Charter, the second and third principals of which required that territorial adjustments must be in accord with the wishes of the peoples concerned and that all peoples had a right to self-determination. The two principal signatories of this document were Roosevelt and Churchill.

In actual fact the principal of self determination had become inescapable in modern Africa, bearing in mind that a generation of educated blacks had entered the mainstream of politics, a great many of whom had been also exposed through military service to the principals of freedom implicit in the wider war effort. The dominoes began to fall towards the end of the 1950s, with the first major bloodletting taking place in Algeria and Kenya, and then a decade later in Angola, Mozambique and Rhodesia. Resistance to majority rule tended to be registered most forcefully in those colonies occupied by European settlers. Rhodesia and Kenya were probably the best examples of this. South Africa escaped much of the pressure to liberalize her politics by dint of the fact that she had been declared a Crown Dominion 1910, and then granted de facto independence by the Statute of Westminster of December 1931 that offered such to all of the settled dominions.^[2]

The British, meanwhile, handed over sovereignty with very little apparent regret,  the French, on the other hand, tended to renegotiate revised terms, while the Portuguese alone held on with fanatical determination to their ‘overseas provinces’. Rhodesia was somewhat unique inasmuch as the white community declared a highly quixotic unilateral independence, and paid for it with fifteen years of brilliant but strangulating civil war. Portugal ultimately relinquished Mozambique an Angola only in the aftermath a peaceful military coup in April 1974 that overthrew a fascist dictatorship in Lisbon, and Rhodesia, of course, became Zimbabwe thanks to a negotiated settlement that ended a divisive civil war.

This left South Africa alone staring down the massed ranks of African liberation, holding under her wing South West Africa (later Namibia), the last substantive territory, aside from South Africa herself, still under minority white control. Rhodesia, Mozambique and Angola all had their liberation movements, each of which conformed to the somewhat ad-hoc organization of a revolutionary movement, tending also to be Marxist aligned, and each following fairly closely the Maoist dictum of revolutionary guerrilla war.

In the case of South Africa this was SWAPO, or the South West Africa People’s Organization, a movement cut completely from the cloth of Leninist/Stalinist revolution that had inbuilt into it everything that struck most cleanly at the heart of white South African fear. Initially SWAPO found refuge in Zambia from where incursions were launched into the Caprivi Strip region of South West Africa that challenged South African law enforcement hardly at all. Angola at that time still lay under Portuguese control. However, after the 1974 coup in Lisbon the political landscape changed radically. The civilian government in Portugal fell, the symbolic value of empire deflated, after which an almost unseemly rush to divest the nation of its colonies gripped the new military administration.

South Africa initially responded to the Swart Gevaar, or black danger, buy attempting through a policy of detente to accommodate black Africa, offering in exchange for acceptance the ballast of the South African economy in a continent-wide common market . At more or less the same time the United States, somewhat distracted by events in Vietnam, began to take notice of a sudden power vacuum in Africa where the Soviet Union and Cuba had adroitly begun to sow influence. South Africa also took, some would say belated, notice of the arrival of communism right in its midst, noticing also that the liberation of South West Africa had become of the new focus of the Front Line States, a loose affiliation of newly liberated governments actively confronting and seeking to flush out the last corners of white domination. The latest of these had been Angola and Mozambique, both now under radical black leadership, both aligned strongly to the left and both manifestly unstable. Needless to say SWAPO moved its offensive operations swiftly from Zambia into Angola where it was  availed of almost 1200km of thinly garrisoned border with South West Africa. What is more the implied might of Moscow and Havana backed up the ruling MPLA, which in turn offered implicit support for SWAPO, altering the complexion of  South Africa’s Border War almost overnight.

Counter-insurgency in South West Africa

The landscape of the Namibia/Angola frontier varies from woodland savanna bushveld to desert hill country to true desert, all of which on one way of another, barring the scarcity of water, makes it reasonably accessible by foot, helicopter and vehicle. The countryside is in fact arguably better suited to mechanized and air warfare than low key guerrilla insurgency, and certainly in the early stages of the war SWAPO registered very little other than one tactical defeat after another, usually at the hands of local and metropolitan police units aided by local tracking personnel. Operations tended to favor the tracker/combat configuration that, incidentally, the Rhodesians had already mastered through the development of such units as the Selous Scouts and the local C Squadron SAS, among others, which suited the kind of low-tech war that was being fought in that country, and that also underway in South West Africa at more or less the same time.

It must be remembered that SWAPO’s primary tactic had been no avoid set piece engagements with an enemy it could not hope to beat in an open fight, but rather to pursue a revolutionary agenda among the local population, seeding what destruction it could through ambushes, land mine activity and occasional infrastructural sabotage. For the remainder it sought always to stay one step ahead of the South Africans, and for the most part it succeeded. From this emerged Koevoet, more accurately known as the South West Africa Police Counter-Insurgency Unit, a multiracial force modeled very closely on the Rhodesian Selous Scouts, although of course remaining a police and not an army unit.

On April 1 1974 the South African Defense Force assumed responsibly for border operations, which was not a moment too soon, for in just over a fortnight the Portuguese Government would fall, pitching Angola in a steep trajectory towards Marxist revolution and war. As observed by SWAPO leader Sam Nujoma: ‘Our geographical isolation was over. It was as if a locked door had suddenly swung open. I realized instantly that the struggle was in a new phase… For us [it] meant that… we could at last make direct attacks across our northern frontier and send in our forces and weapons on a large scale.’

Operation Savannah

The first significant incursion took place towards the end of 1974 and early 1975. Portuguese decolonization, once the decision had been made, was perfunctory at the very least. This did not ramificate particularly seriously on the power handover in Mozambique. Here there was only one unity movement poised to take power, and whatever it might have established as the new political blueprint of Mozambique, the transition at least was relatively straightforward. In Angola, on the other hand, three armed revolutionary organizations existed, configured to a large extent along ethnic/regional lines, and supported respectively by the United States, Cuba and the Soviet Union. These were the Peoples Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA, the National Front for the Liberation of Angola, or FNLA, and the National Movement for the Total Independence of Angola, or UNITA. The Portuguese left the stage upon the understanding that an election would be held to decide the matter.  This was the Treaty of Alvor which ended the long Angolan independence struggle – although, of course, no sooner had the agreement been signed, than the long Angolan civil war began.

The concern that these vents generated in the superpower capitals can easily be imagined. The United States, however, was somewhat slower off the mark than the Soviet Union and Cuba in sowing influence in an effective power vacuum, this thanks largely to events still underway in Vietnam, and the extreme reluctance in Washington to contemplate overt armed intervention anywhere else in the world for the time being, and certainly not in Africa.

The United States, however, if not an ally, had at least a local partner in the region with similar strategic interests as it’s own to call upon. This was South Africa. With covert CIA assistance, and much rhetorical American support, south Africa moved into Angola with the intention of influencing matters on the ground, poising itself to support the pro-west UNITA and FNLA factions against the distinctly pro-east MPLA. Four South African battle groups began what military historians from all sides agree was a spectacular advance north towards the capital Luanda. This operation was ultimately stalled by the combination of significant Cuban reinforcement of the status quo and a general re-adjustment of the political landscape which saw the US withdrawing support and the Organization of African Unity opting to throw its weight behind the MPLA. The situation for South Africa, left carrying the baby as it were, was both embarrassing and military precarious. An inevitable withdrawal was ordered by Pretoria and completed towards the end of 1975. All that could be said of the matter was the South Africa emerged with a new key ally – UNITA – to help cover territory in a by now massively amplified frontier insurgency. Overall power in Angola was assumed by the MPLA with overwhelming support from the USSR, Cuba and the Organization of African Unity OAU.

SWAPO comes of age

Although it was hardly the truth of the matter, South Africa was perceived, and the associated enemy propaganda drove this fact home, to have been defeated in Angola. This prompted a liberation hungry population of South West Africa and South Africa to contribute a great many more sons to what was seen as the final push towards Namibian independence. At the same time as its ranks were thus swelling, SWAPO was able at last to break out of the easily defensible Caprivi region and spread the insurgency across the length of the Angolan/SWA border area – in particular into the politically alert and populous Ovamboland.

This conformed very much to the three phase Maoist strategy of guerrilla warfare. To attenuate conventional enemy forces to such an extent that they are unable to effectively operate. No less important was the politicization of the masses which in the African context implied heavy doses of Marxist aligned ideology alongside the salutary torture and killing of selected individuals – quite often administrative chiefs who were stigmatized by an association with the state – as an indication of the price to be paid for not supporting the movement.

The South African Response

South Africa was not immediately equipped to take on a fully fledged insurgency such as this, an in the beginning responded by flooding the region with battalions composed largely of young white conscripts who attempted by the use of the Kitcheneresque strategy of massive overland sweeps to drive forward or net SWAPO concentrations. As many analysts observed at the time, urban South African youth were not dissimilar to urban youth anywhere, and tended to be out of their depth in the deep bush of northern SWA, while tactically their command element lacked a certain amount of creativity, caused perhaps by inexperience. It might be worth pointing out that South Africa had scaled back its military preparedness in the Aftermath of WWII, and now, confronted by an increasingly unfriendly international community, and the onset of the anti-Apartheid Struggle, it was much less able to replenish its capacity using traditional sources such as the British. Perhaps the most important issue, however, was that the SADF in all is permutations had absolutely no meaningful contact with, no sympathy for and no influence over the local population. The battle for hearts and minds, so crucial in any army’s counter-insurgency arsenal, was therefore lost before it was even fought.

In due course, however, SADF began to find its feet. A more traditional counter-insurgency methodology slowly evolved with perhaps the earliest and clearest sign of adaption being the increased use of native troops as the bulwark of local knowledge and as trackers in an increasingly artful approach to war. Koevoet came into being, reflecting the racially mixed make of up Rhodesia’s Selous Scouts, followed by 32 Battalion, or the Buffalo Soldiers, which consisted in the main of ex-FNLA fighters,  31 Battalion, made up of Bushmen, 101 Battalion of Ovambos, 201 Battalion of East Caprivi and the ethnically mixed 911 Battalion. With the exception of Koevoet, which was under police administration, and 32 Battalion which remained part of the SADF, all of these became part of the South West Africa Territorial Force SWATF, a local configuration that ultimately accounted for about seventy percent of the manpower engaged in the South African Border War.

Towards the end of the 1970s the Rhodesian Fireforce strategy – airborne envelopment in response to ground coverage and pseudo operations – gained wide acceptance and became a key counter-insurgency strategy in South West Africa. This required intensive ground patrolling which in the South African case involved foot patrols, but also a great many APC and infantry support vehicles such as the ubiquitous Ratels and Caspirs. Air power in a more conventional sense was also routinely applied, either in air raids against strategic targets or in support of SADF ground operations. Naturally helicopters played a key role throughout, with the SAAF deploying large numbers of French Alouette IIIs, Pumas and Super Frelons.

In addition to this, heavy external operations against SWAPO or combined SWAPO/FAPLA bases and settlements, often directly supported by Cuban Mig pilots and ground troops, were undertaken that again pushed the war towards fully conventional scope, bringing, as the 1980s progressed, SWAPO effectively to its knees. This, however, did not mean the was was won. Far from it. Notwithstanding the wider geo-political global landscape, against which South Africa had no defense, as SWAPO fell away as the main enemy South Africa found itself more deeply involved in the Angolan civil war through the ongoing support of its proxy Movement UNITA.

In this regard the SADF lost no single major tactical engagement, but in doing so, and in destroying the colossal amounts of enemy ordnance that it did, it simply prompted ever more sophisticated and quantitative Soviet resupply which exponentially placed ultimate victory further and further out of reach.

A negotiated solution

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the removal of the communist block as a source of strategic and material support for the enemies of South Africa introduced the inevitability of a negotiated settlement. Matters on the ground had reached an effective stalemate, and politically South Africa was at least able to say that it had contained matters until such time as the danger of a communist takeover of Namibia had been removed. This was certainly the case. Pretoria reached the conclusion fairly early on that the war, such as it was, was ultimately un-winnable, but at the same time white South Africa could hardly tolerate a Russian/Cuban walk into Namibia, and certainly it could not accept a Marxist, one party state situated on its western flank with the avowed position of wiping white South Africa off the map.

In 1988 a UN Commissioner for Namibia was appointed. Upon South Africa’s relinquishing control of Namibia, Commissioner Bernt Carlsson’s role would be to administer the country on behalf of the United Nations, to formulate a new framework constitution and to organize free and fair elections based upon a non-racial universal franchise.

Also in that year a US mediation team  headed by the highly competent  US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Chester A. Crocker, who assembled negotiators from Angola, Cuba, and South Africa alongside observers from the Soviet Union for a round table session held in London. Intense diplomatic maneuvering characterized the next seven months, as the parties formulated a series of agreements to bring peace to the region and make possible the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 435 (UNSCR 435).

At the Ronald Reagan/Mikhail Gorbachev summit of leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union in Moscow (29 May-1 June 1988), it was decided that Cuban troops would be withdrawn from Angola and Soviet military aid would cease attendant on a South Africa withdrawal from Namibia. The New York Accords – agreements to give effect to these decisions – were drawn up for signature at UN headquarters in New York in December 1988. Cuba, South Africa, and  Angola agreed to a total Cuban troop withdrawal from Angola. This agreement – known as the Brazzaville Protocol – also established a Joint Monitoring Commission (JMC), with the United States and the Soviet Union as observers, to oversee implementation of the accords. A bilateral agreement between Cuba and Angola was signed at UN headquarters in New York City on 22 December 1988. On the same day, a tripartite agreement between Angola, Cuba and South Africa was signed whereby South Africa agreed to hand control of Namibia to the United Nations.

I was recently contacted by Eleanor Smart regarding a collection of photographs belonging to her and concerning her father who served in East Africa during WWI. What follows is her own description of the circumstances of Robert Bell Smart, and a selection of his photographs.

Robert Bell Smart.  Born in Glasgow July 1890. Died in Paisley Sept. 1962

 My father started his working life as a telegraph boy in the Post Office in Glasgow. In 1915 he enlisted in the Royal Signals, or The Royal Engineers Signals Unit, as Sapper R B Smart.  Not sure exactly. He was sent to France. This bit he never spoke of, so I don’t know where he was or what battle(s) he was in .It’s actually easier to trace those who were killed. His brother was killed at Arras and with little bother I found the gravestone.

He couldn’t have been in France long. He was invalided home having suffered from gas attacks and had trench feet and by 1916 was in East Africa. He seems to have started in Nairobi and over the next 3 years he made his way with the regiment down to the Cape.

He used to say that Nairobi was just a collection of mud huts and would never believe that in 50 years it might have changed! I didn’t believe what he said about the mud huts either!

It’s all such a long time ago, to remember all he said about it. And he did talk about it. If the word wasn’t quite enjoyment, it seems to have been interesting.

I remember he showed me the photo, now lost, of the tree under which Stanley met David Livingstone. He said he had once spoken to a man who had spoken to Livingstone (an iconic figure to us Scots!).

Much of their time seemed to be taken up with erecting telegraph poles, often pulled down by giraffes.  He said they never saw the Germans who were always in front of them. He had a smattering of Swahili. He contracted malaria and was stretchered by his pal from Aberdeen, Jimmy Wilson.

When he reached Cape Town , he was impressed by Table Mountain and often described the ‘Table Cloth’, as they described the cloud that often covered it. He spoke about the black Africans not being allowed to walk on the same pavement as the white man, or travel on the same transport. This was long before ‘official apartheid’.

Just to explain the generations: Dad was late marrying and I came along late on in the marriage and I am 73. His oldest brother was too old for the Great War!

There seems to be very little  literature about the war in East Africa, but I would love to find out more about the kind of thing he was involved in.

As the armed wing of ZAPU withdrew to ponder lessons learned, the detained leadership within Rhodesia settled into what seemed likely to be a sustained period of restriction. For Joshua Nkomo the prospect was particularly dreary. Somewhere between the claims of his apologists of untainted zealotry, and his protagonists insistence on his innate corruptibility, lies the truth of what motivated Nkomo. At the very least he was a comfort loving soul. He was not a flint hard, ascetic ideologue like Robert Mugabe, nor a spiritually driven humanitarian like Ndabaningi Sithole, and for him to be transported with the rudiments of life to an isolated location on the fringes of Gonarezou National Park, and there left to ponder nothing but the bland landscape and the unchanging faces of his party executive, was cruel indeed. It seems that he tried to make the best of it, but his memoirs are richly imbibed with the lengthy tedium of it all. He was preoccupied with his ballooning weight, which according to historian Peter Stiff was exacerbated by Rhodesian security officials feeding him choice fare to try if possible to induce a heart attack, and his doctor supplying him with weight loss pills that kept him restless and awake.

Matters at that time were in the hands of his deputy, James Chikerema, then leading the party from Lusaka, a complex and conflicted character in his own right, and perhaps not the best captain of a drifting ship. At that time a strong residue of the old elitist view of leadership lingered in the party, and Chikerema was not a particularly well educated man. It has been suggested that he was chosen by Nkomo as his deputy on the terms that many deputies are chosen, that is to lack either the intelligence or the charisma to seriously challenge the leadership. Upon Nkomo’s detention, however, the leadership fell into his hands, and surrounded by men of genuine merit and education, he was at a disadvantage. To this he responded with churlishness, intransigence and an imperfect understanding of committee leadership.

George Silundika may have lacked a finished education, but this more as a consequence of funding than merit, and he was a highly politicised, highly motivated and accomplished man, and as Publicity Secretary a leading light on the executive committee. Not least of his advantages, however, was the fact that he was a Kalanga, born near Plumtree, in a region of the country that had produced quite a number of accomplished amaNdebele leaders of late. One of these was Bulawayo trade unionist, veteran of the 1959 detentions and Nkomo loyalist Jason Moyo. Moyo was precisely the kind of deputy a man like Chikerema would rather not have. He was firmly built, handsome and charming, all in stark contrast to Chikerema’s faux bookishness, his wiry appearance and snappish over-sensitivity. In a meritocracy Moyo certainly had superior credentials, and in response to this it was Chikerema tendency to, on the one hand, stress that he alone held Joshua Nkomo’s powers in trust, and on the other to act frequently over the heads of other members the External Committee.

Chikerema was a Mashona, and drew his support primarily from George Nyandoro, a Mashona aristocrat whose father had been deposed as chief by the colonial authorities, which at that time was as clear a statement of nationalist sympathy as might ever be needed. His defining comment was that, in the aftermath of World War II, black ex-servicemen had been given bicycles while white ex-servicemen had been given farms. [i] George Nyandoro himself was an intractable nationalist, one of the early hard-liners, and known to maintain an ethnocentric view of the struggle. It was felt in certain quarters overlapping party lines that the amaNdebele sought to dominate the Liberation Struggle. In amaNdebele circles (although in fact Moyo and Silundika were Kalangas, a small group living on either side of the Botswana border in the region of Plumtree) that Chikerema, far from acting under the authority of Joshua Nkomo (also a Kalanga), Chikerema had spuriously usurped Nkomo’s authority, using it in a manner that Nkomo himself would not have, nor approved of, which undermined the integrity and authority of the External Committee.

So it went. The main policy preoccupation at that time was the necessity to examine recent military and party failures, and at the same time re-examine overall strategy, but in particular to the prosecution of the war, and Chikerema, it seemed to many, had lost sight of this in his naval gazing obsession with the distribution of authority. Thus Moyo, Silundika, and a third amaNdebele committee member Edward Ndlovu, a pure blood amaNdebele and member of the exulted abeZanzi class, as aristocratic in his own way as Nyandoro, undertook to conduct an assessment and produce a report. On 25 February 1970 a document appeared in circulation entitled ‘Observations on our Struggle’ which was a thoughtful assessment of the current status, with equally thoughtful suggests for future strategy. It also was not uncritical of Chikerema, and in particular an ill considered granting of permission to a foreign film crew to take footage of guerrillas shortly to depart to Rhodesia. This action was difficult to comprehend for two reasons: most importantly in exposed combatants to recognition by an extremely vigilant Rhodesian intelligence service, and secondly it embarrassed Kenneth Kaunda who had consistently denied that any guerrilla bases or staging points existe don his territory.

The document was signed my Moyo, Silundika and Ndlovu, and whatever its merits, it prompted a brief war of documents that saw the almost immediate publication of a rebuttal from Chikerema and Nyandoro entitled ‘Reply to Observations on our Struggle’. In essence Chikerema objected to the political leadership responding to military matters which were his responsibility alone as head of ZAPU’s Special Affairs. This document unfortunately carried no hint of the forward thinking strategic planning that had the original document, but was a self orientated confirmation of his own leadership destiny from Chikerema, based on an indisputable anointing by Nkomo, who was revealed by the document to suffer a debilitating dependence of Chikerema for basic advice, guidance and planning. The document concluded with Chikerema assuming personal and absolute authority over the party in the name of Life President Joshua Nkomo.

By degrees James Chikerema and his largely Mashona faction began to lose ground which resulted in Chikerema leading a ZAPU faction in forming the breakaway Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe, or FROLIZI. The political manoeuvre behind this was an ostensible quest for unity between the two major liberation movement that had, and remained in bitter opposition, a state of affairs that the Organisation of African Unity and the leaders of the Frontline States deplored. Ignorant of the deep personal and political fissures that existed between the founding leaders of ZAPU and ZANU, both the OAU and the Frontline States demanded that the combined Zimbabwean liberation movement bury its differences and jointly challenge imperialism as a united front. FROLIZI in the eyes of many represented this, and in this respect Chikerema succeeded, but in reality FROLIZI remained a splinter group, never achieving what might be regarded as a mass following, and never managing to field an army or armed wing of any particular consequence.

This version of events is once again a course charted between the absolutely contradictory versions offered by allied students of the affair and surviving participants, but in fact it is hardly relevant. The split that followed ran along tribal lines, and any proclamation that tribalism played no part in it is clearly faulty. James Chikerema and George Silundika went one way and Jason Moyo and his peers another, and with them went their rank and file divided along similar lines. The facts of the situation as it played out are simply that a split occurred, resulting in shots being fired, unconstitutional arrests and sides drawn in the guerrilla camps. Kenneth Kaunda, never a wholly committed patron of the revolution, was once again unnerved by the proliferation of non-aligned military forced on his territory. He moved to quell the civil war, and largely did so, but the real damage of the feud was felt less at the core than on the fringes.

 ZAPU’s Military Re-organisation

Of deep significance to ZAPU’s military command capacity was the frustrated defection to ZANU of some key figures of the armed wing – most notably Rex Nhongo who was destined to play a leading role in ZANU’s eventual seizure of the Zimbabwe laurels, and Robson Manyika, ZAPU Chief of Staff who, along with Nhongo took with them operational information and many individual cadré, both of which were of great value to ZANU. This dramatically altered the balance of power in the liberation movement, prejudicing ZAPU to a degree that arguably it would not recover from.

However perhaps the most important military and political reverse felt as a consequence of this implosion was the loss of respect and political leverage available to ZAPU along the north-eastern frontier of Rhodesia as the Mozambique liberation movement FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) continued to make territorial gains in its war against the Portuguese colonial occupation. By 1970 these gains were significant, pressing south against the natural barrier of the Zambezi River, and confronting the Portuguese with the possibility of a vast new front opening up in Tete Province bordering Rhodesia in the northwest. Logistically this would represent a breakthrough for any group able to access the region in the wake of FRELIMO advances. Prior to this any incursion into Rhodesia required first to cross the easily defendable line of the Zambezi, but if FRELIMO were in occupation of Tete Province then manifestly operations against Rhodesia could be mounted from rear bases within Mozambique along a front that would increase in length and effectiveness as the Portuguese retreated south.

Initially this advantage belonged to ZAPU. ZAPU retained the pedigree of a fully constituted political party while in the Diaspora ZANU existed under a cloud of suspicion as a disruptive splinter movement unnecessarily dividing the Struggle. As a consequence charismatic revolutionary and leader of FRELIMO Samora Machel, a man with unimpeachable revolutionary credentials and a leader of the Frontline States even if his state had yet to be wholly conquered, was determined that no ZANU military activity would take place in his territory, and held out for ZAPU to resolve its internal contradictions in order that it could make use of the Mozambique front.

This did not happen, and the vacuum was in due course filled by ZANU and its armed win ZANLA. In the meanwhile Jason Moyo and his clique assumed leadership of ZAPU in exile after which both parties experience a moribund period as the ramifications of the split affected each. Both had been forced to take a step back from the active prosecution of the war in order to re-examine tactics. Both did this, and although certain common conclusions were reached – most notably the obvious fact that the education and politicisation of the masses was vital as a precursor to any level of armed incursion –quite variant attitudes to the armed struggle developed which further underlined the tactical differences between the two armed groups.

Immediately after the split Jason Moyo convened a week-long consultative meeting during which the entire party structure was reviewed. A Revolutionary Council was formed as the main body of ZAPU outside of Rhodesia with a separate but subordinate military command structure developing under the Zimbabwe Peoples Revolutions Army, or ZIPRA. The seats of the Revolutionary Council were occupied by members of the National Executive Committee, heads of departments and military leaders and was an advance on the improvised exiled leadership structure established under Chikerema. It was able to function as a more broadly based provisional party executive committee. A subordinate organ to the Revolutionary Council that linked it to the party workers and general membership was the Congress of Militants, an ad hoc party congress with limited powers.[ii] Charged with the function of conducting the war on a localised level was the War Council, also subordinate to the Revolutionary Council, but arguably the most powerful and significant organ of the party during the war years. The War Council comprised five permanent members including:

• President of ZAPU Joshua Nkomo
• Party Commissar, Samuel Munodawafa
• Secretary for Defence Akim Ndlovu
• The Commander of ZIPRA, Lookout Msuku
• Head of the National Security Organisation (NSO) Dumiso Dabengwa

The National Security Organisation, or NSO, was the internal security and intelligence arm and was headed by Dumiso Dabengwa, an impressive 32 year old ex-guerrilla who was one of the first to receive foreign military training. The role of the NSO, besides its security and intelligence functions, was o keep the War Council up to date with intelligence and research briefings and to present strategic option proposals for the consideration of the War Council.

Overall responsibility for military policy and administration was the Secretary for Deference, while command functions were carried out by the High Command headed by ZIPRA commander, a contemporary of Dumiso Dabengwa, Lookout Masuku, a 31-year old foreign trained veteran and charismatic and intuitive military commander. Masuku headed the ZIPRA high command which comprised he and his deputies, other chiefs and deputies of departments including artillery, communications, logistics, medical services, operations, personnel and training, reconnaissance and transport. Immediately below these were frontline commanders and their deputies, rear camp commanders and their deputies, and of course the NSO structure itself.

Conduct of the war was carefully organised through a highly inclusive process of meetings and consultation which in due course resulted in far more intelligent view of the war and a far more comprehensive response to it. Gone where the large, self-contained deployments which to amateurs might have seemed at the time the logical way to fight war, but which were easily identified and neutralised by the Rhodesian Security Forces. The period between 1972 and 1974 saw a vastly increased use of hit and run, ambush and landmine tactics which were deployed in a successful campaign to make large areas of the operational zones virtually inaccessible to the Rhodesian Security forces. In particular along access roads to the South African camps, which all in all served to seriously impede the mobility of the security forces and was moreover deadly against civilians of the local farming communities.

Civilians and military personnel would in due course be protected by a series of state-of-the-art mine protected vehicles designed and manufactured locally that would to some degree neutralise the threat of landmines and roadside ambushes, but for the time being vehicles were sandbagged to limit the impact of mines and vehicles moved cautiously and in convoy, and heavily armed through the operation areas of the northeast. South African positions, meanwhile, were frequently targeted and a number of SAP details were killed by landmine blasts on or around the access roads to their camps. In May 1973 a South African policeman suffered a mental breakdown after surviving his third landmine blast in a single day travelling between Mount Darwin and Mukumbura. Vehicle ambushes similarly harrowed troops plying the isolated rural roads, with an incident recorded of a convoy of South African policemen travelling in the Kandeya Tribal Trust Land in the northeast coming under brief attack, after which a deeply distressed detailed fired randomly on a group of civilians standing along the roadside before suffering a mental collapse. He was promptly casualty evacuated back to South Africa.[iii]

While this new offensive program was underway ZIPRA also busied itself with establishing a coherent structure of support on the ground in order to facilitate a more comprehensive merger between cadré and civilians in the operational theatre. This involved the establishment of arms caches and subversive cells throughout the Matabeleland Tribal Trust lands using Russian trained agents infiltrating the country from bases in Botswana.[iv] These were very well planned and executed operations, known as the 3-2-3 network, that worked very closely with locally established imijhiba [v] networks of local contact men and embedded operatives. A series of secret communications and signals were devised to allow one person to recognise the next member in the chain. It was a ‘cut-out’ system, the idea of which was to ensure that if one man was captured and compromised the extent of his knowledge would necessarily be too limited for his interrogation to reveal much beyond his own immediate responsibility.

The objective of establishing widely dispersed arms caches was two-fold: in the first instance the intention was to make arms and ordinance available to locals, and in particular landmines which were widely used and deployed by locally trained imijhiba, a group that increasingly began to assume responsibility for local cell organisation, courier duties and limited military operations such as vehicle ambushes; and secondly it was necessary to pre-plan the re-arming of trained ZIPRA cadré operating large distances away from rear bases either in Zambia or Botswana.

Much more during this period than at any time hitherto ZAPU organisation took into account the necessity for, not only the acceptance, but the active involvement of as wide a swathe of the local population as possible. This ran true to the Maoist doctrine of guerrilla war that ‘guerrilla war basically derives from the masses and is supported by them, it can neither exist nor flourish if it separates itself from their sympathies and cooperation’.[vi] It was also means of confirmation that the days of elitist involvement in the struggle were over, and that the war was a project undertaken by the people for the people, serving also to underline the fact that the enemy forces, isolated not only by colour but by cultural fraternity, were alien and had no place in the land of ancestral black heritage.

As carefully planned and executed as it was, however, the organisers and operatives were pitted against a formidable enemy. Despite the alienation of the mass of the white population from the underground black psyche the success of Rhodesian intelligence was then, as it had earlier been, extraordinarily successful. A Russian trained agent was captured in Bulawayo and from that root of information an effective attack was launched against the network, with many key individuals detained and much of the network compromised. However the weight of public opinion now lay with the guerrillas. Rhodesian intelligence had in the past been able to rely on a perplexed population uncertain what to make of strange talking and strange looking menfolk appearing armed and menacing in their areas. Now the people understood precisely what was afoot, and more importantly they supported the movement more than they did not. Reverses were suffered, no doubt, but the momentum had been established, and if one step was taken back, usually two steps were taken forward.

There was a third and alternative aspect to the strategy of arms cache deployment, which was probably more speculative at that stage than actual, but concerned the notion that upon the outbreak of conventional war, codenamed Zero Hour, the arms secreted throughout the countryside would be activated by civilians in support of an invasion launched across the Zambezi.

In the meanwhile ZANLA, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, the armed wing of ZANU, had completed its own strategic revaluation and was gradually peeling open an extended front along the eastern border of Rhodesia and Mozambique. The Rhodesian Security Forces reacted in a pro-active manner, as was to be expected, but found the radically increased area of operations taxing on its manpower reserves, as had been hoped would be the case by Herbert Chitepo among others in the formulation of revise military strategies across the board. The territorial influence of ZIPRA was felt mainly in the west of the country and along the north-eastern border with Zambia and ZANLA mainly along the eastern border. As 1970s progressed ZIPRA operational areas extended across the entire western portion of the country and most of the midlands. The Rhodesian army was stretched to maximum capacity with demands for military manpower for the first time conflicting with the needs of industry and commerce. This was a critical point in the Rhodesian rebellion, and the moment of her most bitter political disappointment.

Each of the separate protagonist of the war – ZANU, ZAPU and the Rhodesian Government – enjoyed and suffered the patronage and interference of a proxy power. Each of these supported their ideological allies while recognising and making known the unacceptable political, economic and human cost to the region of the current military solution. The ongoing support of military action by proxy powers was done so only to reinforce the respective negotiating positions in exploring the options for a political solution. The black nationalists were supported regionally by the Organisation of African Unity and the Frontline states. The ongoing mantra of both of these organisations was Unity! A divided nationalist movement played into the hands of a fiercely united white Rhodesia, diminishing the potential for an end to war and at the same time raising the spectre of immediate tribal/civil war upon the eventual achievement of majority rule.

If the OAU and the Frontline States were the patrons of the Liberation Struggle, meanwhile, then the Portuguese and the South Africans were the patrons of Rhodesian resistance. Of greatest importance to Rhodesia from a military and logistical point of view was South Africa. Much has been made in nationalist circles of the military and political alliance between South Africa and Rhodesia while the supply and financing of the Rhodesian war effort by South Africa has always been assumed to have been a case of South Africa defining its own security interests by proxy. ZAPU particularly has been guilty of over-emphasising this fiction, mainly in defence of its much criticised strategy to authorise an alliance between itself and the South African ANC. However from the onset the Rhodesian and South African political alliance had always been more theoretical and than actual, and was never absolute.

The real history of Rhodesia/South African alliance had tended to be punctuated with more incidences of acrimony and misalignment than co-operation. The Boer Republic of Transvaal had been thwarted in its efforts to acquire the territory of Matabeleland in the late 19th century by Cecil John Rhodes, and later it was insulted by Rhodes and Jameson when both attempted to pre-empt an uprising, and were then wholly dispossessed by the Anglo/Boer War of 1899 that followed largely as a consequence. In 1924 the hand of unity was offered to Rhodesia by the Union of South Africa and was rejected, leaving just the finest thread of racial fraternity to carry the two neighbours into and beyond the new age of African liberation.

In Southern Africa this new age was manifest first by the collapse of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, driving the line of white control south across the Zambezi, and then in a faltering guerrilla war, fought, and increasingly lost, by the Portuguese in Mozambique and Angola. For Rhodesia the threat of a Portuguese defeat in Mozambique opened up the awful possibility of a massively increased war front running the length of their common border which would immediately cut off vital international supply links and allow a far greater scope of access into the country by aggressive forces. For South Africa a Portuguese withdrawal from Southern Africa would bring the frontline of African nationalism to its own borders, both directly along its own eastern border with Mozambique, but also indirectly on the border between Angola and Namibia, then the South African territory of South West Africa.

Then in April of 1974 a left leaning military coup in Portugal ousted the right wing civilian government of Prime Minister Mercelo Caetano. Under Caetano the Portuguese had largely defied international sanctions against Rhodesia and had maintained throughout a defiant if quixotic determination to maintain her own African overseas territories in the face of an increasing obviously military incapacity. It was the bleeding wars in Mozambique and Angola that largely precipitated the coup, and implicit was the fact that some sort of a political settlement in both territories would be sought as a matter of urgency. The end of four centuries of Portuguese occupation of the east coast of Africa was imminent. This was a sobering moment for white Rhodesia, but it was initially greeted more with optimism than despair, since it was widely assumed that now years of faltering cooperation in mutual security between South Africa and Rhodesia would be washed away, and South Africa would have no choice but to weigh in with the full force of her mighty army to halt the southward march of black nationalism once and for all.

But alas this did tak eplace. Instead South Africa, under the leadership of Prime Minister John Vorster, sought rapprochement in the region, using Zambia and the moderate black president Kenneth Kaunda as a bridge, and its influence over the future political direction of white Rhodesia as inducement.

John Vorster believed in part that South Africa’s significant economic muscle would be a greater force for the long term security of itself in the region than her equally significant military might. It was Vorster’s rather forlorn conviction that an African common market, led by South African capital and economic expertise, would be enough to overcome the obvious anomalies of South Africa’s own warped racial politics in the minds of his fellow African leaders. This in particular would be the case if Rhodesia could be wrested from white control and guided towards a negotiated handover to one or other, or ideally a unified combination of all the Zimbabwean liberation movements.

The process was called détente, and indeed it would seem that John Vorster’s overtures towards mutual co-operation and peace were indeed met with approval in certain quarters of Africa, Malawi being one of these, to a degree Zambia another, and others being Côte d’Ivoire under Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Liberia under William Tolbert and Zaire under Mobuto Sese Seko. In Tanzania and in the Mozambique liberation fraternity it was positively received only insofar as it promised liberation for Rhodesia and not for any forgiveness of South Africa or any future economic cooperation. Nonetheless it renewed in the minds of all on the Frontline the urgency of bringing together the nationalist leaders into a united front. Pressure was brought to bear against Ian Smith by the South Africa to release the detained nationalists in order that they could gather in Lusaka for talks on Unity.

ZAPU had by then recovered from its own internal contradictions and had no particular interest in unity at that point, and there was certainly no strategic advantage in ending the war just as momentum was being re-established and the Rhodesian Security Forces were clearly under enormous pressure to cover the massively increased war zone. It was in fact more or less at this point that it began to become clear to many in Rhodesia that the chances of a military victory had diminished to zero, leaving only the possibility of some sort of a political solution emerging out of the chaos of war. This was still not commonly felt among a white population buoyed up by the jingoistic propaganda of an increasingly worried government. As Central Intelligence organisation supremo ken Flower observed: ‘Government propaganda had long since prevailed over fact and no one in authority was prepared to encourage disillusionment or mention the possibility of defeat in a game which had taken a new and serious turn.’[vii]

Ken Flower was in fact one of a small handful of white officials fully cognisant of the perilous state of vulnerability of a white population increasingly overwhelmed by security demands and haemorrhaging from a steady exodus of manpower as the future of minority rule grew daily more tenuous. He was in fact on one of the last international flights out of Lisbon in April 1974 as the coup took place. Up until the last he had been urging a tripartite security response to the overwhelming tide of black nationalism. To Flower it seemed that each of the white leadership camps were in their own way fiddling while Rome was aflame, and a solution no less quixotic than any other was the madcap pursuit of détente. On August I 1975 South Africa officially withdrew its armed presence from Rhodesia as a gesture of good faith and as a quid pro quo for cooperation from Zambia in the advance of détente. However this did not include the removal of helicopters, pilots and ground support crew who remained in the country on loan.

Meanwhile military activity was ostensibly suspended across the board in respect of a ceasefire agreement prior to all party negotiations. This was ostensible because in fact low key guerrilla activity continued in both nationalist camps, and violations of the ceasefire were common and ongoing. Nkomo’s release from detention also catalysed, or perhaps simply coincided with, massively accelerated response to recruitment, with a rate suggestion by nationalist historian Eliakim Sibanda at some 3000 individuals leaving the country for foreign guerrilla camps each month. This coincided with the arrival in a liberated Angola of large numbers of Cuban and Soviet personnel presenting the opportunity for the effective training of raw recruits much closer at hand.

Despite all these advantages the period of 1975/6 represented a lull in military activity across the board and much of the ground gained during the earlier landmine and ambush phase of the war were gradually lost as Rhodesian forces consolidated during the lull. The Rhodesians however enjoyed absolutely no political legitimacy in the rural areas and Tribal Trust Lands of the country, and while the regime was able to regain some ground lost, political activity, not covered by the moratorium on military activity, continued unabated in ZAPU areas of the country, as it did countrywide. By the mid-1970s, even if little was then visible above the surface, the roots of the Armed Struggle in the rural areas ran deep. In the rural areas in particular, which had increasingly become the focus of the struggle, the urban areas being generally quiet, war had by then become the only generally accepted avenue towards liberation.

The main vehicle for the dissemination of political ideas and revolutionary philosophy throughout Matabeleland south and north was the Ibandla leZintandane, or the Church of Orphans, which was an organisation that had begun as an underground thread of the banned Peoples Caretaker Council, itself an administrative organ of ZAPU, and which evolved into a multi-faceted and far reaching organisational tool in the dissemination of information, the provision of free political space for speeches and sermons and for the wider organisation of communication networks and supply logistics. Renewed political organisation manifest itself in the disruption of local rural administration and the undermining of and non-cooperation with African Councils, the smallest state organisational units at grassroots level. The clear loss on the part of the Rhodesian Government of the war for the hearts and minds of the people was being felt in a gradual loss of administrative control over the more remote regions. Administrative facilities, dips, schools, clinics and missions in the rural areas were closed, a trend that would continue and gather force as the war intensified. Black government, police and civil service staff were harassed and often killed, while the selective killing of individuals known to be or suspected of selling out tended to be high profile, demonstratively horrific and usually highly salutary.

To combat such effective subliminal influences on a population at times caught between the excesses of the Security Forces by day and the retaliatory excesses of the guerrillas at night the government opted for a strategy pioneered elsewhere in the empire to varying degrees of success. Across large swathes of the north and northeast of the country a system of concentration or containment was put in place along the model of Portuguese aldeamentos in Mozambique, but also following a similar system used in locations as diverse as Kenya and Malaya during similar outbreaks of colonial insurrection. In Rhodesia the system was benignly labelled the Protected Village program, and in essence involved the mass concentration of rural population into fortified settlements that were in theory carefully regulated and heavily controlled. The idea was obviously to isolate the guerrillas from a rural population from which they drew recruits, physical succour and logistical support.

This kind of activity was clear admission on the part of the Rhodesian government that it enjoyed no loyalty or meaningful support among the rural black populations of the country, and that the only means remaining of controlling their actions and behaviour was coercive. The Protected Village program was couched in terms of protecting innocent civilians from the predations of gangster guerrillas, but so despised was the protected Village system that it was viewed as, and largely was, a kind of subtle, and at times rather overt form of collective punishment.

Another tactic drawn from earlier colonial wars was introduced in Rhodesia. Experiments with pseudo operations in Rhodesia were initially carried out under the aegis of Special Branch, but were in due course taken over by the army which gave rise to the famous, and perhaps infamous, Selous Scouts Regiment, named after the legendary scout and hunter of an earlier generation, and charged with the responsibility of penetration, reconnaissance, intelligence and subversion. The Selous Scouts were a typical special forces regiment, made up of men of intelligence, physical endurance and loyalty, and as intelligence supremo Ken Flower, who more than anybody was responsible for the formation of the unit, ruefully commented, attracted its fair share of ‘vainglorious extroverts and psychopathic killers’.[viii]

The Selous Scouts began along the simple principal of white special forces operatives dressing up as blacks and attempting, with varying degrees of success, to penetrate guerrilla networks with a view either to gaining intelligence, guiding in pinpoint Fireforce attacks, or both. The limitations of the unit lay in the inherent unreliability of white men dressed up as black, and increasingly captured guerrillas were turned, bleached of information and released back into the field to operate with the Selous Scouts as pseudo guerrillas. So successful did the unit eventually become that it became the scourge of internal guerrilla groups, accounting for a great many successful Fireforce operations, and at times merging a little too closely with guerrilla enforcement tactics and perpetrating many of its own wanton atrocities against civilians in the ongoing war for hearts and minds, now subverted largely to a contest in the application of terror.

1975 saw the handover of Mozambique to the liberation forces of FELIMO. By 1976 the first attacks along the exposed mountainous east of Rhodesia were being felt. It was in 1976 also that the Rhodesian Security Forces effected a revised strategy and began to stage cross border raids against mixed targets mainly in Mozambique. One of the defining actions of the Selous Scout as an attack force was the raid on Nydzonia Base in August of that year that saw a large but indeterminate death toll inflicted on what the Rhodesian Government insisted was a constituted guerrilla base, and what the ZANU insisted was a refugee emplacement. This was a new and aggressive phase of the war that for ZANLA was fought more or less on the Chinese model of human wave, while ZIPRA opted for a more methodical and conventional approach to its participation in The Struggle.

Deep in the signature countryside of Zululand – undulating grassland punctuated by rubble crowned kopjies and shallow river valleys – lie two key sites in the mythology of the black/white struggle for Southern Africa. The Anglo/Zulu War in many respects was the beginning of the end of black independent monarchy in Southern Africa. It came about as a consequence of a number of factors, some political and some visceral, but all of which were defined by one simple defining principal.: the simple fact that an aggressive and expanding British Empire could not tolerate the existence alongside it of of an independent, militarily vigorous, politically cohesive and culturally intact black mass such as the Zulu. Whatever might have been the political machinations that took place to justify the subsequent de-clawing of the Zulu Nation, such an anachronism as it had become was manifestly doomed long before its inevitable defeat.

The end of of black monarchy in Africa

The story of the destruction of the Zulu nation is reflected in demise of many other powerful indigenous societies that fell to the advance of European imperialism. Some succumbed meekly to the inevitable while others fought back. In the case of the Zulu there was never any doubt that the end would be bloody, costly and glorious. This, after all, tended to define the self image of the Zulu people, who were militaristic to the last and committed unto death to their leadership and regimental structure.

The first of the great African strongmen

In many ways the Zulu mindset can be traced to the philosophy of one man. Shaka Zulu was arguably the first of the great African strongmen, who ruled by a combination of terror and personality in an age and in a place unrestrained by the rights of the individual, or indeed by any opposing authority. Notwithstanding a certain latent psychosis, not uncommon, one might suppose, in enormously powerful men, Shaka was a military genius who took an already aggressive martial sensibility, and, upon his assumption of power, fine tuned and developed it, with extraordinarily advanced weapons and tactics, into something that was nothing less than a phenomenon. The result was the rapid expansion of Zulu influence across the coastal littoral of eastern South Africa, advancuing his influence through the spread of fugitives and refugees as far north as the lakes region of the Great Rift Valley.

Most of this took place in the early decades of the 19th century, observed by a few white traders and missionaries, but not in any way influenced by a parallel European expansion underway at the Cape. By the time these two societies met Shaka was long dead and his dynasty had been assumed by his half brother.

The arrival of the white man

The first point of conflict between the white man and the Zulu occurred during the advance of the Afrikaner people into the interior, at which point the Zulu regiments were exposed for the first time to to the power orchestrated musketry. It was not until the Natal region had been more comprehensively settled, and when the power of the Zulu lay under certain understood treaties, that the inevitability of their removal from the overall political scene was finally acted upon.

The Anglo/Zulu War

That a Zulu defeat was inevitable did not protect the British from suffering a shattering reverse in the opening moves of the war. This was the battle of Isandlwana that was fought on 22 January 1879 and which claimed the lives of some 1,300 British troops and local auxiliaries by a force of an estimated 20,000 Zulu. This actions was followed soon afterwards by the equally iconic action at Rourke’s Drift where a detachment of 150 men under the command of a Royal Engineers Lieutenant defended a rear emplacement against a sustained assault by a 5,000 strong detachment of the much larger Zulu force that had a day before annihilated the British at Isandlwana, and which, now flush with victory, sensed a quick and decisive end to the affair with the killing of the few British remaining, many ill or injured in a makeshift hospital.

The battle of Rourke’s Drift very quickly became one of those imperial battles that has since been the steady fodder of schoolboy comics and adventure novels ever since. It ranks alongside the Charge of the Light Brigade for its sheer audacity, if not its hopeless  grandeur, for in fact, against the odds, and with the award of an astonishing combined 14 Victoria Crosses for both battles.

The key sites today

The present day monuments of Rourke’s Drift and Isandlwana are well within a day’s drive of Durban or Johannesburg/Pretoria and close to the town of Dundee. The area does  not attract huge numbers of tourists, and on the whole it is pleasantly quiet, understated and reverent. In the surrounding area there are a handful of hospitality establishment along the bush lodge pattern, usually with a knowledgeable local guide available to chat about this, and the whole subject of warfare in Africa, and if not then there always are a few local hacks around the bar who know much and talk no less. One of the great charms of battlefield touring I hear you say, and you are right.

You certainly do not need a guide to visit the site. There are quite enough books on the subject and a fair amount of literature available on site, but nothing quite brings the event to life as the narrative of an enthusiastic local expert, and that is what I would always recommend. Get in touch for some pointers on South African Battlefield Tours or to book a Guided Excursion.

By COMMANDER G . B. SPICER-SIMSON,. S.O., R.N. Wednesday, 28th March, 1934, at 3 p.m.

ADMIRAL SIR WILLIAM GOODENOUGH,. C.B., M.V.O., in the Chair.

The Chairman, in introducing the Lecturer, said that Commander Spicer-Simson had had a very varied and adventurous career. He saw service in China; he was on the Boundaries Commission in North Borneo; he made a triangulated survey of the Upper Yangtze; and between 1910 and 1914 he was the Director of the Gambia Survey. In 1915 he was sent out with a small party of officers and men on the expedition to Lake Tanganyika, which, if it was a minor operation of the War, was nevertheless one of great importance.

Lake Tanganyika is a very considerable stretch of water. It is as long as England from Southampton to the Scottish border L -about 420 miles; but not very wide-the average width is
only 47 miles, though there are places where it is over 70 miles wide. The prevailing wind is South-East, and blows straight up the Lake, when quite a heavy sea can be encountered.

The question of taking boats out there depended very largely on the size and sort of boats, and upon the means of transport available. We did consider taking craft in sections, but that would have meant special construction and consequently delay, while time was regarded as being of first importance. The only thing to do, therefore, was to Iook round for the most suitable boats available. In making my selection I had to review the potential routes to the scene of action. There were three means of access to the Lake. One of these was by railway from Dar-es-Salaam, right through German East Africa; naturally that route’was closed to us. A second route was up the Congo, and thence by railway to the Lake ; that would have been very easy but for the fact that in the Crystal Mountains, where the Congo breaks through, there is a succession of falls and rapids, where the Belgians-this being in the Belgian Congo-had built a narrow-gauge railway which passed through a very large number of tunnels and little enclosed bridges. These would have limited any vessel that could have been got through to about 3 ft. beam.l We were left, therefore, with the only remaining route, namely-from Cape Town by railway to Fungurume (about 2,700 miles) , from that point through the bush for a distance of about I j O miles to Sankisia, thence by rail (15 miles) to Bukama, and then about zoo miles down the river Lualaba to Ikbalo, again entraining for the last part of the journey (175 miles)
to Albertville, on the Lake.

Obviously the size of our boats would be limited by the stretch of railway, and the final determining factor appeared to be a certain bridge, but, as a matter of fact, when we reached that bridge the boats had to be taken off the trucks and slid along the track on their cradles. This was done by lowering them on to sleepers laid across the rails, which were well greased; the engine then simply towed them along through the bridge. Even so we had only about 7 in. clearance at the top.

THE BOATS AND THEIR TRANSPORT

The boats we took with us were two small craft-the remainder of a batch of eight built just before the War for the Greek Government. These I named hfimi ” and Toutou.” They were 40 feet long and 8 feet beam, and had twin screws, and two IOO h.p. motor engines which used petrol. Their full speed was nearly 19 knots. As originally designed, they mere not very suitable, because we had to mount some sort of gun on them So we cut down the forecastle and mounted a 3-pdr. hotchkiss forward. The ordinary mounting for this gun made the centre of gravity too high, so this also had to be cut down, and the gun-layer, instead of standing at the gun, had to kneel down to fire it. Anyone who has ever handled a hotchkiss gun will realize how much more difficult it is to fire it from a kneeling than from a standing position. Aft we mounted a maxim.

The petrol tanks were on and underneath the stern sheets, and I was a little afraid that, since the hulls were only 3/8 in. mahogany, rifle fire might penetrate to the tanks; so we fitted thin plates to protect them-incidentally these helped to compensate for the weight of the gun forward. When these various operations were completed, however, the boats drew nearly four inches more than before, and could barely do 15 knots. However, the fastest enemy vessel on the Lake was reported to do only 12 knots, so I was satisfied.

In order to prepare our road, we had sent out a part of the expedition in the steamer before the one in which we left. The order to organize the expedition was given on 2nd May, 1915. On 5th June the advance party-that is the road-making party-left England, and on 12th June we got the boats on board our ship, and the main party set forth. The advance party, having arrived, proceeded to build twenty miles of road; then they simply pushed on through the bush for another thirty miles, and began to build the next section. This plan was adopted because I knew that it would take a considerable time to get the expedition away from the base, and that the advance of the boats would be slow. So I proposed to complete the 3o-mile gap, which had just, been blazed, while I was waiting for all the gear to be collected before we could make a start with the boats, and while these were doing the first twenty miles.

The boats were carried in cradles specially made for them by Messrs. Thornycroft. These cradles were built to a design of my own, but certain details were altered by the experts, who assured me that the light wheels they put fore and aft and the 6-in. by 2-in supporting beam would be quite adequate to stand any strains likely to be thrown on them. I had stuck out for a Iz-in. beam, and I was right. We had not gone more than zoo yards before the 6-in. beam broke. It was impossible to get a 12-in. beam locally, so we had to be content with two 6-in. beams. Instead of the little wheels fore and aft, which also showed signs of buckling, I got hold of some truck wheels that the railway were using for transporting their sleepers from the bush; with these we made a sort of fore-carriage, the main wheels being shifted a little bit further aft. To tow the whole outfit along the roads we had traction engines. The boats’ cradles were so fitted that they could be unbolted. from their trucks for lifting on to the deck of a steamer or a railway truck.

THE JOURNEY TO THE LAKE

On arrival a t railhead, just beyond Fungurume, we had to unload the gear. We had 130 tons of ammunition, food and stores, which had to go with us. A good many of the natives who assisted us came from Rhodesia, and after we had been in the Congo for a little while we. got a fair number of carriers, who took the smaller things. The lorry took the guns. While the expedition was being prepared for the long journey, work was started on the 30-mile gap in the road. Curiously enough some of my men suffered from snow-blindness at this time, although we were not far from the Equator. The fact was that the whole of the surface soil in the district is full of mica, and the brilliance of the reflection of the sun off that material produced the same effect as snow.

In making the road we also had to construct a good many bridges, and none of us knew much about that art. Lieutenant Wainwright, who had been ranching for some time in Southern Rhodesia, knew a little about bridge-building and road-making, but generally speaking we learned by experience. We made our first bridge by cutting down huge trees and laying them across the stream, fairly high piers being set up underneath ; but when the first traction engine attempted to go across it just dropped through. Thus we learnt our first lesson; viz: make the piers short for then the bridge is shorter and the piers less likely to fail. In the course of our travels we realized that there were other problems besides the actual building of the bridges. The time of year happened to be towards the end of the dry season, and the water-level of the streams was some way below the top of the banks; this meant that there was a considerable slope down to it on one side, and up from it on the other. The result was that the traction engine with its boat in tow got down on to the bridge, and then could not climb up again.

The bridge was not wide enough for the other traction engine to pass, so the only thing to do was to build another, higher, bridge for the second engine. When it had got to the other side it helped the first traction engine to climb the bank ; then the two engines were used to get the boats across. We built a very large number of bridges-over a hundred and fifty, if those of only 6 ft. or so are counted; but there were nearly a hundred of over 10 ft. The great problem was to get the boats over the Ilitumba Mountains, between Fungurume and Sankisia. There were many difficulties on this part of the route. At the top of the mountains the water runs off rapidly, with the result that the trees are small, and the local timber was inadequate to bridge the dry, but fairly deep, watercourses. However, me buried explosive charges in the two banks on either side and blew them up ; the earth fell into the dried watercourse and filled it up to some extent. hleanwhile we collected as many of the local natives as possible,l and they were set to work cutting down trees and grading them according to length. The trees were laid in the gaps with their points inward and their butts outward, the longest being at the bottom, with smaller and smaller ones on top, until the gap was filled in. This sort of bridge looked quite satisfactory, but to walk on it while the boats were being taken over was almost impossible-it was like trying to walk on a spring mattress.

This section of our journey was about a hundred and fifty miles in length, so far as we could judge by bicycling along it and reading the cyclometers. I divided it into three fifty-mile sections, and at the end of each section we built a depot, which was guarded by three white men and one officer together with some natives. It was also necessary to build depots because a great deal of the ammunition and food we carried was marked ‘keep cool’ -very good advice, but not easy to follow with a temperature in the shade reaching 118°, and in the sun 182°; moreover, having cut down the trees, we were deprived of their shade. Another discomfort was the dust made by the traction engines.What with the dust and heat, it was thirsty work.

Our lorry was marked ‘load not to exceed 3 tons’; but we found an abandoned ox wagon, took off the wheels and built a trailer; into the lorry we put a load with guns and ammunition of about 6 tons, and into the trailer a matter of about I ton. Each load was then run out from the railhead to the first depot, fifty miles out, where it was dumped. That would occupy a morning and part of the afternoon; during the rest of the afternoon the lorry and trailer would come back again, reaching our base camp usually just after sunset. While the stores were being moved forward, the boats were also progressing steadily in tow of their engines-ordinary agricultural traction engines from Northern Rhodesia.

For many miles we had to cut down trees and we used the branches to bind the surface of the track together. As time went on we gained experience in bridge building. We used to build out sections from both sides of the river and leave a gap in the middle; then-a few men with poles would be placed on the two ends of these sections to keep the river debris moving through the gap. Just before one of the trains arrived, the gap would be closed and the train would pass over; then the bridge would be reopened. The object of this was to avoid our bridges being swept away ; previously we had two bridges swept away by the collection of debris against them.

Another obstacle which we had to encounter was wandering swamps -swamps which actually move about. As one sees them on the surface of the water they look rather like water-lilies; the Belgians call them water cabbage. There is nothing very much above water, but these aquatic plants, which is what they really are, throw out long hair-like roots, sometimes 6 ft. in length, not into the ground, but into the water. So dense do they become that they form a kind of barrage until the weight of water is sufficient to roll the obstruction before it. Sometimes
when we had built our road we found that it was in the path of one of these wandering swamps, and the traction engines could not get through because their fire-boxes were so low that the fire would have been put out. Then ive had to build another road round the swamp.

The country through which we went was mainly mahogany forest – African Rosewood – although every now and then we came to open downs. Now and then we encountered a forest fire, probably caused by the natives, or it might have been spontaneous combustion. In any case it was not at all pleasant to see a sheet of flame coming down towards us at thirty or forty miles an hour. The best thing to do was to follow the plan of the natives and light another fire in the path of the big flames, so that when the latter reached the spot there was nothing to keep them alive.

Another thing which gave us trouble was ant-bear holes, into which on occasions the wheel of one of the boats’ cradles would drop. These holes would measure as much as 34 ft. in diameter, and were usually of some depth. Occasionally they were near the surface, and if any weight was placed on them they gave way. The danger was that, if a wheel dropped into one of these holes, the propeller shaft of the boat, which projected well below the stern, might be damaged. Eventually we got the natives to tap the ground ahead ; with their finer senses, they could tell whether there was any hollowness, when they would scrape off the surface growth, thus marking the places to be avoided. Luckily no damage was done to the boats.

By and by we reached a spot where the surface was very sandy. I had been warned that there was a great deal of sandy country to traverse, so I had brought up from Southern Rhodesia sixty-four head of cattle. These beasts are excellent in sand, mud, swamps or anything of that sort, but they do not seem to be of much use for pulling up a hill. On reaching the mountains we put both traction engines on to one boat and went some little way up, but after a time we came to a stop. The traction engines could not get up the slope. Then we put the oxen in front of the traction engines, started up the engines and, as soon as the engines began to move, blew a whistle, which caused the oxen to move on, and so we got moving again. Very soon, however, the oxen got used to the whistle, and, incidentally, the hill got steeper, and they refused to pull any more. This was rather an impasse, and I learned afterwards that the Belgians were betting IOO to I that we would not get even half-way up I wish I had known it at the time; I would have taken them on ! Then the idea occurred to me of balancing the weight of the oxen against the eight tons or so which had to be pulled up. A purchase was attached to a tree, well stayed to others, about twenty yards ahead of the boat ; one block of the purchase was
made fast to the boat carriage, and the hauling part was made fast to a team of oxen facing down the slope. The oxen were then made to pull downhill, and in that way the boat came slowly up. We were still at no great height above the plain, and this same method had to be repeated many times for each boat. Eventually we got to a point 4,200 ft. above the plain and 6,400 ft. above the sea. The top of the mountains was now beginning to come into sight. Here we actually got to a place where it was no longer very steep and we could use the oxen in the ordinary way. On 8th September we reached the summit.

We had thought that going down the other side would be quite easy, but that proved not to be the case. Our traction engines had no brakes, and there were no means of checking them from running away except that they were fitted to go astern. But on one occasion Toutou’s  traction engine, with steam on for full speed astern, was actually running away full speed ahead. Luckily it was checked before there was any serious accident. At one sharp bend in the descent the traction engine which was pulling ” hlimi ” suddenly turned broadside on, and the boat very nearly went over the edge. It was necessary to draw fires to prevent burning out the combustion chamber and tubes, and then to haul Mimi and the tractor up again by means of a cable. Fortunately we had plenty of natives with us to carry out the hauling operation by hand. Afterwards, instead of allowing the tractors to run down free, we used to bury a ‘dead man’ – that is, several blocks of timber 20 ft. long-about 8 or g ft. in the ground, with a wire strapped round them and brought up to the surface, thus acting as an anchor; then by means of a hawser and bollard we managed to ease the traction engine gently down the slope.

At length we got to the bottom, in the valley of the Lualaba River, and only thirty-five miles from the river itself. Having reached that point we found ourselves running short of water. There were twenty white men and four hundred natives. We had been on an allowance of half a pint a day each, but now we had only ten gallons left. I sent out a lot of natives to scout for water, and luckily they managed to find it at a village, just as the traction engines had come to a full stop because there was not sufficient water in the boilers to allow us to keep the fires in. All the men from that village had gone on with our roadmaking party, but we bribed the women by supplying them with some gaudy waist-cloths-in that place a woman is regarded as over-dressed if she has two articles of clothing-and for these they were prepared to tramp a distance of eight miles carrying on their heads water from their well. They supplied us with sufficient for the traction engines, and we all had a wash and a bath and as much to drink as we wanted; that very night we were washed out of camp by a thunderstorm !

THE BOATS AFLOAT AGAIN

That was the end of our troubles, for at Sankisia we reached the terminus of the fifteen miles of light railway to Bukama. There we launched the boats into the Lualaba River – another name for the Upper Congo – and set forth to Kabalo. So, at last Toutou  and Mimi were afloat again after having been for four months high and dry, and the condition that they were in shows the care that had been taken of them by their crews. Toutou was absolutely water-tight,and Mimi only made 2 in of water the first night. We next proceeded to collect every native canoe we could lay hands on to transport our stores. The stores we put into them were mainly sacks of rice and flour, and so on. They went off in charge of Lieutenant Dudley, who could speak various Bantu dialects. Then we lashed underneath our boats four large empty petrol drums, two on each side of the.kee1. We wanted first to lift the boats as high as we could so as
to load as much as possible into them and, second, to protect the propellers and shafts if we grounded. The river was very shallow at that time of year, so when we could not safely use the engines the natives propelled the boats with their long paddles until we reached deeper waters. If ive ran aground-which we did continually-we used to get all the natives together, and at a given signal they would lift the boat and we would push her ahead with poles. As we were going down the river .we were assisted by the current in getting over the shallows.
On 9th October Mimi and Toutou went aground fourteen times in twelve miles-a record, I think, for H.M. ships.

When we reached the deeper water we cast off the empty drums and took some of the bigger canoes in tow. A little later I got a message from Dudley, wvho had gone on ahead to say that he had come across a shallow-draught river steamer with nobody on board but a caretaker. He sent word to ask whether I thought she would be of use to us. I replied that she would, especially as a Danish pilot, M. Mauritzen, who had been in the service of the Belgian Government, told us that there were rocks to be negotiated. Dudley thereupon went on board, but the native caretaker refused to let him take over the vessel; his orders, he said, were to keep her where she mas until the crew arrived. Dudley invited him into the captain’s cabin to discuss the situation and have a drink. He had arranged to be called away by one of his engine-room staff, and as he went out he locked tlie caretaker in; then he brought the vessel along to us.

We lifted the boats in their cradles on to the steamer’s deck, using long trees cut down from the river bank. and purchases as sort of extempore cranes. Thus we proceeded downstream to Ibbalo, from which place 175 miles of railway ran up to the Lake. As a matter of fact the line stopped short thirteen miles from the Lake, and the Belgians assured me that it would be impossible to do the remainder of the journey by rail because there were no more lines to be had; but we took up the rails behind us for thirteen miles and laid them in front of us !

ARRIVAL ON THE LAKE

The place where we reached the Lake was Lukuga, and our first camp was in the little bay called Kalemie Bay. The Belgians had not much telephone gear available, so I went across to the other side to see what could be done about it : they had a small motor-boat armed with a Lewis gun, and I had been told that there was a telephone connecting all the military posts on the German side. We annexed a matter of about twenty-five miles of telephone wires and two instruments from the enemy, which provided us with the communications we wanted on our side.

I must say a word about our magazines. We chose a place on the hillside where the natives were not likely to go, burned off all the grass and dug a hole about 8 ft. deep, putting our ammunition at the bottom. On the top of this we put foodstuffs and other stores, over which we built a roof of palm-leaf thatch, covering the whole with tarpaulins to keep it all cool. It was as well we did make the clearing, because a fairly big fire came along shortly afterwards. Before launching the boats on the Lake we had to construct a harbour to protect them from the violence of the seas raised by the prevailing South-East wind. Just before we arrived there two Belgian boats had been washed up on the beach. To have launched our boats in the ordinary way would have taken five or six hours, during which time the German ships might have come along and shelled us; so I devised a method of running them on railway trucks from their place of concealment into 10 ft. of water, and in each case the launching was accomplished in twenty minutes. An extension of the railway line was run out on to the breakwater, then down a fairly steep ramp into the Lake, until the lines had 10 ft. of water over them.

The Germans showed considerable interest in what was going on, and we learned that natives had reported to them that we were building a bridge across the Lake-this would have been no mean achievement, since it is 2,000 ft. deep in places. The enemy knew that we were up to something, however, and used to shell us. During one of his bombardments one of our trucks, which was full of stones, got smashed, but we left it where it was as a reinforcement of the breakwater. It was these attacks which caused me to revise the method of launching the boats to which I have already referred. Eventually they were floated out of their cradles on Christmas Eve, 1915. We had left England on 12th June, so that it had taken us fivC and a half months to get the boats to the Lake. But it only took us five and a half weeks to get command of the Lake.

INLAND WATER ENGAGEMENTS

The next day being Christmas Day we had a rest. It was the first time in the whole espedition that we had all been together, because hitherto the road-making party had been ahead of us. We had mounted the guns as soon as the boats were in the water-and, on the following day, it was my intention to carry out some trials to see whether the gun mountings were all right. It was Sunday, and at 6 a.m. all hands had mustered for prayers when one of the Belgian officers came up from the signal station to report that the fastest of the German steamers was heading straight towards the port. I completed the service, and then sent the hands off to prepare for action.

At 11 a.m. we steamed slowly out of harbour. Forty minutes later we were sighted by the enemy vessel, Kingani. She went ahead and turned away, so I steered to cut her off. At this time she was only about 3,500 yards away, and I noticed that she had only one gun, which was mounted in the centre-line of the ship, just in front of the wheel; immediately behind the wheel was the funnel, and immediately behind that the boiler-room skylight, and abaft that a small deck cabin. It was obvious, therefore, that she could not fire astern; so I maneuvered to get astern of her. She opened fire on Mimi and we returned her fire almost at the same moment. It was a naval action in miniature. By this time we had closed to about 2,700 yards, and the
Kingani  could no longer get her gun to bear on Mimi so she shifted her fire to Toutou. But both boats got into a position from which they could fire on the enemy, though he could not fire on us.

Actually Toutou  never fired a round; but Mimi’s first round carried away the Kinganis mast; then we fired twelve more rounds; aftenvards we discovered that, including the one on the mast, she had received eleven hits. There was a choppy sort of sea, and Petty Officer Waterhouse, who was firing from Mimi had to be on his knees to fire, yet he made twelve hits out of thirteen rounds !

At 11.58 a.m.-eleven minutes after the action had commenced the‘ Kingani stopped, hauled down her ensign, and someone on deck waved a white handkerchief. It appeared that everybody on deck except one seaman had been killed, and that a shell had burst in the engine-room. This seaman did not know what to do, so he waved the white handkerchief. We tried to board her, but the sea was too much for us, and we damaged Mimi very considerably in the attempt she had already been damaged by the recoil of her gun. Therefore the Kingani  was ordered to go full speed for the shore, and we trained our gun on her. They declared that she was sinking, but actually she did not .sink until just as she reached the harbour, when she capsized before we could run her aground, but nobody was lost. Her two officers and three seamen of the four carried had been killed and there were left only two engineers and one white seaman, besides some of the native crew. Later that same day the dead Germans were brought ashore and buried. A guard had to be placed over the graves to prevent the Askari, who still retain their anthropophagous habits, from digging them up.

We parbuckled the Kingani on to the beach, rolling her up broadside on. She had a 6-pdr. gun which had been seized from a ship in the Indian Ocean by the Konigsberg; this I shifted aft. Then we strengthened the deck forward with bits of old iron and mounted a 12-pdr. semi-automatic gun which had been sent out to protect our base. The “ IGngani ” was placed under the White Ensign and renamed the Fifi. The new gun was really much too big for the ship, which was only 56 ft. long, while the gun itself was 12 ft. long ; when we fired it right ahead the recoil stopped the way, even when she was going at full speed.

There were still three German ships to be accounted for in these waters : the Hedwig von Wissmann and the ‘Graf von Giitsen, both larger than the Kingani – and the Pangani, which was
the Kingani’s sister ship.

Although once or twice we heard fictitious stories about German ships having been seen, nothing happened until 10th February, except that a storm came up from the North-East and the Toutou was sunk. On that day the Hedwig was sighted from our look-out station at M’Toa, fifteen miles North of Kalemie. The vessel was first seen at 6.15 in the morning, and I estimated that she would be near us at 8.30. At 8 a.m. I put out in the Fifi followed by Mimi. We sighted the Hedwig at 8.40. As soon as she saw us, she put her helm over and made off for the German side of the Lake. We had to chase her for about thirty miles before we got within range. I noticed that the Hedwig  had only one gun-a revolving six-barrel 1-pounder – which could bear astern; so I told Mimi to close to about 2,700 yards, which was about as far as her gun would fire with any accuracy, and to keep firing at the Hedwig. The Hedwig had three alternatives: she could turn and attack Mimi or she could go straight on, or she could yaw from side to side so as to bring all her four guns to bear. She chose this third alternative; but as soon as Mimi saw the flash of the guns she put her helm hard over, and by the time the shell pitched she was some yards away.

After about an hour and a quarter, during which Mimi evaded damage by continuous zig-zagging, the slower Fifi with her heavier gun, got within range and opened fire. We fired a couple of rounds, and Mimi signalled ‘ Your rounds are going over’. As a matter of fact, the captain of the Hedwig said afterwards that our second shot had carried away the end of the bridge, although it struck the water ahead of him. However, I ceased firing for about half an hour, and we pushed on as hard as we could go. At last we got to a range of about 5,000 yards, which was quite a reasonable one for‘that gun. W e fired six rounds, and got on the target with our second shot, after which we used high explosive shell. These semi-automatics can fire 28 rounds a minute, and in two minutes the Hedwig burst into flames all over. When we ceased fire we could hardly see her through the smoke and flamcs, and her forecastle was under water. Mimi picked up the survivors-fourteen white men and quite a large number of native crew. Incidentally we picked up the captain and the ensign. The ensign, I believe, was the first German ensign that was captured in a naval battle in this or any war, and the “ Kingani ” was the first German warship that was brought into harbour as a prize and transferred to the Royal
Navy.

The sinking of the Hedwig was an occasion for great native rejoicing, because the German flagship had amused herself, for no known reason, by steaming up and down the coast of the Belgian Congo and, whenever a group of natives were seen together, just dropping a shell amongst them. The natives accordingly hated the vessel, and as the action had taken place within sight of the shore-never more than 25 miles away-they had seen what was happening. They lighted fires and, when we got back to harbour, the native soldiers were loosing off their rifles, and the wives of the chief came to greet me as I landed. Their method of saluting is rather uncomfortable. The idea is to pick up a handful of earth and present it to you, indicating that their land is yours, but when, as in this case, they pick up handfuls of gravel and throw them at you it is not so pleasant.

This left the Pangani  and the Graf von Gotsen to be dealt with. One day, the Pangani mistook a small Belgian motor-boat armed with a Lewis gun only for Mimi or Toutou and promptly turned and fled towards the German coast; not looking where she was going, she ran on a rock. I went out in Fifi and we dropped a few shells to smash her up.

The Graf von Gotsen was a more formidable problem. The Kingani was only 56 tons, the Hedwig  160 tons, but the last enemy was a 800-ton vessel, and she was armed with four 10-cm. guns from the Konigsberg. We got torpedoes out from home, with dropping gear-the Admiralty had some difficulty in finding dropping gear, because it was out of date-but it seemed that we could never get at her. At length I asked the Admiralty whether they could supply us with some seaplanes. They said they could let us have the seaplanes, but no pilots, as all the pilots were wanted for the Western Front. We got some Belgian pilots, who had been running the mails up the Congo, and they went over and tried to bomb the Graf von Gotsen, but she would not come out of harbour. One morning, however, when we went over to bomb her she was not in the harbour any longer. For the next three weeks we were feverishly searching every bay, harbour and mouth of a river along the Lake from end to end, being fired at from the coast because the natives had got it into their heads that everything afloat was German. It was not until some three months later that we discovered that the Germans had come to the conclusion that the Lake was not a healthy place for them. Their smaller boats had disappeared one by one-they were not quite sure where they had gone to-and so they had just taken the Graf von Gotsen out of the harbour and sunk her.

Our expedition went out with twenty-eight officers and men all told, and returned intact. We had not a single casualty of any sort, unless we must count a Sub-Lieutenant who, being threatened by a German native, hit him with his fist, and, his finger catching on the native’s teeth, it had to be amputated because septic complications set in. Having finished our job, we disarmed our boats and handed them over to the army to do what they pleased with them. Actually they used them as transports. Then we made our way home. Lieutenant Wainwright and five other officers were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, and most of the men gobthe Distinguished Service Medal.

Thus ended the domination of Lake Tanganyika by the Germans.

There was no discussion.

The customary vote of thanks t o the Lecturer was passed by acclamation.

As a travel destination South Africa has a few key advantages and disadvantages

The main disadvantage the country suffers is violent crime. This is balanced out, however, by the fact that the South African travel industry is finely tuned, highly efficient and well regulated. The chances are thus very slim that dusk might ever find you stranded on a street corner in Hillbrow with ne’er a taxi in sight.

Crime also tends to inhibits a little bit the freedom of a self-drive tour of South Africa, which is a shame because South Africa is the one country in Africa with a comprehensive highway system, however it can be done, and is a good way to see the country if you have well developed travel smarts and a high level of special awareness.

The last point is actually quite an important one if you are considering South Africa as point of access to Africa. The industry is competitive here, and so prices in general tend to be quite reasonable. Other destinations in Africa trade far too much on the hyper-luxury market, which is, by its nature, quite narrow, and by which, one supposes, local authorities are able to achieve maximum dollar in exchange for minimum impact. Check out the Price of Travel for Cape Town, which should give a sense of prices elsewhere in the rest of the country.

In the meanwhile, I am interested here in setting the tone for an exploration of the more cerebral aspects of South Africa travel – things that are very often not available anywhere else on the continent, and which combine into a richer collage of what the continent offers than just the tne plains and the thundering hooves.

Wine Tourism in South Africa

I am tempted to say that very few people are aware that Africa is home to one of the most celebrated wine industries in the world, but of course anyone in the know will obviously be aware of this fact, and those not in the know will not be contemplating a trip to the Cape to sample the Wine of Origin in its home setting.

The concept of wine in South Africa is an odd one bearing in mind the birth pains of the majority who are still fighting for the very basics of dignified life. The history of the South Africa wine industry has its roots in the very earliest European settlements on the Cape Peninsular. The mid-17th century saw the first Dutch ship supply depot land and establish vineyards for the victual supply of passing Dutch East India Company vessels. The project was later advanced by the arrival of French Protestants fleeing the Counter-Reformation who developed a handy-craft into an art form and a supply depot into a sophisticated and cultured port town.

And so it continued. By the beginning of the 20th Century the Western Cape and surrounds had matured into a fully fledged wine region with brands and marques respected and sought after globally.

The Industry suffered a little, but not excessively, during the years of isolation that marked the end of the anti-Apartheid movement, but was quick to exploit the opportunities that re-entry into the world family offered. An entire branch of the South African tourist industry is geared towards spa/wine/gastronomic travel in one of the most sublimely beautiful corners of the world. Anywhere you travel in South Africa the food and wine are routinely of a very high standard, but there is something about sipping a rare and frosted Sauvignon blanc under the shade of a Stellenbosch oak tree.

Spa and Alternative Healing in South Africa

The Cape hospitality industry work very hard, and very successfully, to cultivate an air of first-world elegance and sophistication. This is less noticeable elsewhere in the country, but it is nonetheless reflected in countless pockets here and there where, against a variety of Africanesque backdrops, the usual spa facilities can be enjoyed along with one or two local specialities that may, or may not advance the art, but which add something to the experience nonetheless.

Music travel in South Africa

South Africa has thrown up some big names in the past, and continues to do so. The biggest I think remains Miriam Makeba, but some would argue this title belongs to Hugh Masekela, but either way these two are major international artists. For the music and culture traveler, however, South Africa has it all. The festival scene is varied, with a great many different styles crossing both race and language barriers in a way that reflects the unique race dynamic of South Africa.

Monuments and Battlefields of South Africa

Having had a virtual world war fought on its shores, and with the dynamic, and sometimes acerbic mix of races, south Africa has one of the most, if not the most, diverse and vital history of any nation in Africa. From a battlefields perspective the two main points of focus are the Anglo/Zulu War of 1879 and the Anglo/Boer War of 1899. There are significant battle-sites and monuments associated with both episodes, with the Anglo?Boer War probably enjoyed the most concentrated commemoration. Both of these attract visitors from accros sthe world who have some among the best battlefield guides in the business to choose from.

In addition there are many other monuments, sites and museums that pertain to everything from the history of the South African armed forces to the many aspects of the liberation struggle. Check out the Voortrekker Monument and the Apartheid Museum and Robben Island.

Fine food and wine has been a tradition at the Cape since founding of the first European settlement

In fact it was when the first administrator, Jan van Riebeeck, produced the very first recorded Cape wine, noted down as the year 1659. An extremely fertile industry was  founded at that moment that has been built over many generations into the celebrated wine industry and culture that defines the Cape region today.

Integral to the recipe are the many cultures and ethnicities that merged at the Cape, some willingly, but many not, but all of which have contributed extraordinary diversity to the general mix of Cape cuisine. Cape Malay is perhaps the most piquant, being a mix of local, Dutch, and variety of east Indian and oriental influences, all merged on a palette of colours and flavours that are distinctly African in origin.

It would be impossible to do justice here to what is available in Cape Town in terms of Cape wines and cuisine, but a brief sketch of the landscape might serve to inspire you to research the matter more closely, and to ensure that when you do land in the Mother City, you do not miss the opportunity to see, feel and taste this most unique of Capetonian experiences.

The quickest and easiest access to the wine experience from Cape Town is to visit Constantia, situated well within the Cape Town metropolitan area, and home to three significant wineries. Groot (large) Constantia is the oldest winery in South Africa, and as such is a National Monument, and producer of several notable red wines including Shiraz and Merlot. Another is Klein (small) Constantia, also among the oldest wineries in South Africa, and noted for white wine production, particularly Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling. Also in the area is the Constantia Uitsig winery.

A far greater diversity of vineyards, wineries and associated hospitality establishments can be found in the Wine Region of the Cape hinterland

Complimenting this, and to relied upon to showcase all the favourite labels of South African wine, are the many restaurants and eateries of Cape Town. These combine to illustrate the multi-cultural past and present that Cape Town has, and continues to enjoy. Needless to say fish and seafood feature prominently, and from a series of franchise outlets to many hotel and independent restaurants, Cape Dutch, Malay and international styles of seafood add to the general variety. Indian cooking is a regular favourite in South Africa with both home and local styles, while Indian spices and methods are very evident in many, if not most Cape Dutch and Cape Malay recipes.

South Africans love meat, and are convinced with reasonable cause that South African beef is the best in the world. Lamb and mutton are also popular, and feature widely in the Malay and Dutch styles, with the recent addition of such peculiarities as crocodile steaks and ostrich, which is famed for its lean, red meat.

At almost every turn in Cape Town there is a unique establishment offering an individual take on a local favourite, or a more cosmopolitan menu appealing to the diverse tastes of indigenous Capetonians. If food and white is your alpha and omega, then Cape Town will be just the beginning of a South African culinary odyssey that you will never forget.

Get in touch for some direction on tour outfitters with an angle on good food..

The taxonomy of the local South African music industry is divided most cleanly along the line of race

South Africa’s social mindset is informed by race. While this is in fact true for all the countries of Africa that experienced permanent white settlement, South Africa was settled more comprehensively by Europeans over a very long period of time – several hundred years – which has left a deep imprint, a permanent population and a rich and developing culture. The sophistication of the South African music scene is owed to musicians of each race, and all the sub-divisions within these. The result has been the growth of a wonderful mélange of different sounds and rhythms, of expressions, sentiments, styles and methods that seem to be replicated nowhere else on earth.

The basic categories of black, white, Asian and coloured music have over the years splintered and diversified, with each at times lending and borrowing from the other, resulting in a multitude of overlapping influences.

This has thrown up some very peculiar concepts, such as the irrepressible 1970s musical Ipi Tombi, the Soweto String Quartet, Juluka, the Drakensberg Boys Choir, and such Afro jazz giants as Hugh Masekela, Dollar Brand and Kippie Moeketsi.

Black Music

Black music is by far the largest and most defining sector of the South African music industry. From its beginnings in the early 1920s under the tutelage of legendary recording executive Eric Gallo, who pioneered the first South African recording company Gallo Records, it has progressed far. Through the 1960s and 1970s it steadily evolved from the early and illicit township styles of marabi, to marabi/swing, African jazz and to the many infectious brands of township jive that still remain immensely popular today.

One of the principal figures to emerge out this period was Grammy Award winning vocalist Miriam Makeba. Makeba’s iconic Qongqothwane proved so difficult for whites to pronounce that the song became universally known as the Click Song, and achieved immortality thus. It, and many others like it, proved to be a cultural bridge of sorts that could reduce to tears many whites who would never in the 1960s have considered entertaining a black man or woman in their homes.

Brenda Fasi and Yvonne Chaka Chaka have followed in this tradition, while other famous female ensembles, such as the MaHotella Queens, and many others styled along the same lines, still tend to define the energetic township styles of Jive, or Mgqashiyo, that remain perhaps the most widely recognisable of South African musical exports.

Pennywhistle Jive

Parallel streams of very different black and coloured South African music styles where emerging independently at this time, principally the Pennywhistle Jive and acappella, that, although developed from similar roots, grew in divergent directions.

The pennywhistle style, a strident and highly melodic use of a very simple instrument, was born of the lonely hours spent on the veld by cattle herders who passed the time playing a simple three holed reed flute. This instrument was easily adapted in the towns and cities to a six holed, commercially available variant that within a very short time gave birth to the forerunner of the kwela style.

A Cappella

Acappella, or Isicathamiya, emerged from the traditional, and particularly Zulu style of an individual voice leading a harmony, which was itself an overspill of the old fireside oral style of storytelling.

In South Africa it is within traditional Zulu voice that this style has tended to be heard most, but it is a sound and tempo that resonates throughout Africa, and arguably forms the basis of most current international African popular music. The most famous proponents of this style were, and remain, the Ladysmith Black Mambazo who achieved international acclaim in the late 1980s after their collaboration with Paul Simon on his album and international tour Graceland.

Kwaito

The sweetly melodic and almost deferential mood of South African acappella cannot be further removed the sounds of the militant 1980s and 1990s. Prophets of Da City, a Cape Town rap crew superficially indiscernible from the original African/American template, are credited with the rise of a uniquely local music style called kwaito. With all the recognisable pillars of rap, kwaito is defined by a loud and proud Joburg ‘tude.

White Music

Around, within and alongside this runs a parallel plunge into ultra-modernism on the part of the white South African music pioneers. Many, if not most of the South African music festivals, notably Splashy Fen, lean heavily on this genre even though it can hardly command a lion’s share of the market.

Despite this white South African popular music enjoys a respectable pedigree that was pioneered in the 1970s by such high profile ascents as Rabbitt, Trevor Rabin’s power ballad/rock outfit that gave South Africa its first genuine pop group. Rabbitt was indeed the first thoroughly local band to have girls shrieking louder than the Marshall stack and being carried off stage in a swoon by paramedics.

Rabin went on to wield an axe for supergroup Yes, after which he settled into a Hollywood career as an award winning movie score composer.

In the wake of Rabbitt a surge of local pop and bubblegum acts followed. These, like Jodi Wayne, Jessica Jones, Four Jacks & A Jill, Gwenyth Ashley Robin and a gamut of others, clogged the local airwaves of Springbok Radio, and the 1970s pirate radio station LM Radio that beamed out of Lourenço Marques in Mozambique.

This tradition has continued, and South Africa now enjoys a solid repertoire of good white and mixed bands pushing out a regular output of rock, alternative, folk and fusion styles, all of which are very easy to locate on the local music circuit, and are usually at venues a lot more accessible to casual visitors to South Africa than mainstream black music.

South African Jazz

South African jazz has been led for more than a generation by arguably South Africa’s most influential music heavyweight. Jazz trumpeter, composer and singer Hugh Masekela’s career began in the late 1950s alongside fellow jazz virtuoso and pianist Abdulla Ibrahim. And through 40 years of prolific output and manifold collaborations, and after some 20 recorded albums, Masekela is still regarded as among the finest jazz practitioners in the world, and without doubt South Africa’s most gifted son.

In his wake have followed many imitators, but also many originals who have helped define South African jazz as a thoroughly home grown product. South African jazz is now represented around the country in many festivals and events, and in niche markets where a number of different races and groups have infused their own identity on this evergreen medium.

Afrikaans Music

Occupying nowadays something of a sub-strata is Afrikaans music, which, notwithstanding a limited market, is well represented by progressive rock influenced acts along the lines of the ubiquitous Steve Hofmeyr, and a somewhat bizarre but undeniably competent Afrikaans language punk outfit called Fokofpolisiekar, or Fuck Off Police Car. There are, of course, many others besides. Bringing up the rear of the genre, however, are countless feel-good, humorous and sentimental pub rock outfits for whom an enduring market all over the world seems to exist.

Very little of this music is ever likely to breach the big time, but since independence in 1994 it has shed many of the stifling conventions of the apartheid period, and a surprising diversity of styles and artists have breathed new life into what always tended to be a rather conservative genre determined at all costs to fight evolution.

Lucky Dube

The last word must go to the South African reggae superstar Lucky Dube, a product of the 1980s and 1990s explosion of black protest, and steeped in the venerable traditions of Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff.

Lucky Dube was a renaissance man, prolific in many styles, and a symbol of the new South Africa. His symbolism, however, ran deeper than even he would have cared to follow when he was gunned down in 2007 in a senseless carjacking that had about it all the hallmarks of South Africa’s bizarre and violent psychosis.

Lucky Dube’s death alerted many to a crisis underway in South African society, and to his millions of fans that was all the good that could be said of the matter. Rest in peace Lucky Dube.

Included in this post are just a handful of the great names that have gone to imprint South African Music on the wider world in a way that far exceeds it’s market share. For the visitor to South Africa a trip down to a local music outlet will open up a whole world of wonderful sounds and rhythms that are an integral part of understanding any nation with the cultural diversity of South Africa. If any readers wish to add a name to the list that you think specifically deserves mention, then drop me a line and and I would be glad to slip in an inclusion.

Splashy Fen

Legend has it that two friends, Peter Ferraz and Bart Fokkens, were sitting around over a beer one evening in 1990, discussing the decline of the great music festivals of yore. Concluding that the moment had come to reverse this trend the two decided then and there to found a festival in the grand old tradition, and thus the Splashy Fen was born.

For those of you not already making plans to drive, hitchhike or walk to Splashy Fen farm in the Drakensberg, then it is probably too late this year to catch the opening acts, but the festival runs for four days over Easter, so if you hurry, you might not miss the best of what is on offer.

South African Musical Diversity

Things have come a long way since the first ad hoc jam that launched the festival, and since then Splashy Fen has diversified it’s roots in folk nostalgia to embrace much of what defines South African contemporary music. Nowadays you can expect anything from the black styles of mbaqanga and iscathamiya, to alternative rock/pop, and to grunge, punk, hard rock and classical/jazz fusion. Overwhelmingly white, however, Splashy Fen is probably not for those looking for the quintessences of township jive, besides the mixed race big band and ska outfits made for easy and very general consumption. Splashy Fen made it’s debut as the brainchild of two men confronting middle age, and although it has razzed it up with some quite adventurous local beats since then – for it must said that South Africa, across the race spectrum, has plenty of those – it will probably be a disappointment for anyone hoping to tap into the rich black vein of South African city and ghetto music.

 What to Look For

However one thing that Splashy Fen does reveal is that South Africa is indeed the Rainbow Nation, pushing out a diversity of sound and image that is reflected in the thoroughly modern program of homespun South African music. This year an eclectic line up has so far included the opening jams of guitar heavy Durban rock outfit His Dying Wish, the growling and energetic ‘Homegrown Hoodoo’ of R&B foursome Black Cat Bone, and local KNZ ambient folkie Angus Burns. Others to look forward to are the all girl Joburg trio of ska grungers Japan and I; Durban’s Crossing Point, who according to their website, play positive, progressive rock/hard core, and about this there is no doubt; ‘The Otherwise’, funk/rock/alternative; and featured artist for this year, Afro/Celtic folk innovator Miriam Backhouse. Perhaps the act most to look forward to is the authentic, Africa-Ska, mixed race outfit The Rudimentals, with shades of the Specials, UB40, but also with an unmistakable, sophisticated and socially conscious Afro vibe.

South African Festival Scene

If, however, you have missed this years Splashy Fen, then fear not, because there is always next year, and what’s more the South African music and festival circuit is a full and mixed bag. You can seek out and enjoy a variety of events that encompass everything from Afrikaner cow tunes to international jazz and every style of Afro beat and groove available in the country. The Oppikoppie ‘Not Quite Easter Festival’ kicks off from the 25th to the 27th of April, while the Afrikaans music Deuriemikke Karnaval is happening this year on the 30th of April. The Annual Cape Town Jazzathon is normally staged in the Mother City in early January, while this year’s Joy of Jazz is yet to be announced. The internationally acclaimed National Arts Festival, held in the university town of Grahamstown, is this year scheduled for between 26 June and 5 July. The equally acclaimed Cape Town International Jazz Festival is set for the weekend of 28/29 March while the annual OBZ festival in Cape Town is usually held in December.

Besides these, frequent summer open air festivals and performances featuring a wide spectrum of local and international talent can be found at such venues as the Kirstenbosch, Durban and Roodepoort Botanical Gardens, the Oude Libertas Amphitheatre in Stellenbosch, and parks and open areas across the country. For the best homegrown, country entertainment, featuring rustic local fare and music is the Klien Karoo Kunstefees, usually held in Oudtshoorns in late March. Then there is the Aardklop (Earthbeat) Festival held in Potchefstrrom in late September, and the FNB Vita Dance Umbrella held in Johannesburg in late February. In Lenasia just outside Johannesburg an annual Muslim music festival, the Ijitma, is held between 23 and 25 March, attracting huge numbers of local Muslims and Muslim music enthusiasts.

Added to this, the number of clubs and music venue scattered across the country are too numerous to name, and everything from world music, to every shade of South African traditional, hop hop, mbaqanga, iscathamiya, kwaita, a capella and reggae is available to the determined rhythm seeker.

‘The Kaapse Klopse’

The last word in South African arts and culture perhaps belongs to the Kaapse Klopse, or the Cape Town Coon Carnival, an annual celebration of the variety and vitality of local ‘colored’ culture. In South Africa the word ‘colored’ does not specifically imply people of color, but is an umbrella term for the vast spectrum of those in South Africa of mixed race who occupy a sub-culture entirely of their own, owing much to all, and little to none, and yet always proudly independent. Owing its origins broadly to the black and white minstrels of the post reconstruction period in the US, the Kaapse Klopse is not an accommodation, but a celebration, and is one of those quintessentially South African experiences that should not be missed. Look out for it in early January, and eat, drink and be merry with the spice and vivacity of unapologetic, unabashed and unadulterated Cape Town groove and culture.