Flight Lieutenant Jerry
John Rawlings photographed in 1984 (CREDIT: Genevieve Chauvel/Sygma)
It would be no exaggeration
to assert that Jerry John Rawlings dominated the politics of Ghana as no other
leader did, with the sole exception of Kwame Nkrumah.
As with Nkrumah, Rawlings
rode the crest of an enormous level of national popularity, the product of a
personal charisma that he was able to project to the masses. Yet, in life and
death his legacy as a military ruler and civilian leader is often the subject
of polarised debate.
For some he was the saviour
of Ghana, the man who rescued his country from the pit of economic degeneration
and enabled it to regain by large measure its previous mantle as the ‘Black
Star of Africa’. To others he was a demagogue and an authoritarian who held his
country hostage for two decades during which he betrayed the principles he had
enjoined his countrymen to embrace when he first came to national prominence.
The contradictions in both
the personality, as well as the leadership of Rawlings are stark: many who saw
him up close considered him humble and down-to-earth. A man with the common
touch. Yet his extravagant ways of expression and theatrical public presence
were more than suggestive of a flamboyant egotism. He consistently spoke as an
idealist, but often had to justify many of his major decisions in the realm of
pragmatism. In a 1981 interview, he described himself as a “moderate” who
believed in “peaceful revolution”, an irony given the political violence that
characterised his first stint in power and the first decade of his second
coming. He promised a “people’s democracy” but ended up presiding over an
autocracy.
The blood spilled during
his regimes made some dub him an African Robespierre. For them, Rawlings was
the principal author of a form of diabolical vengeance when the Armed Forces
Revolutionary Council, of which he was elected Chairman, sanctioned the
execution of senior military officers.
A dominating,
larger-than-life presence, he alternately charmed, cajoled, inspired, beguiled,
and terrified Ghanaians.
But Rawlings was as much a
phenomenon of self-invention as he was shaped and moulded by the forces
propelling Ghanaian political history. Many refuse to acknowledge or seek to
downplay the serious fractures in the severely politicised Ghanaian military
which pointed to an inevitable ugly explosion with or without the agency of
Rawlings.
And while his detractors
point to his coup of 1981 as an illegal and hypocritical enterprise driven by
egotistical ambition, they fail to give appropriate consideration to his putsch
as a bold attempt by Rawlings to innovate an alternative system of governance
to that which had failed Ghana and other parts of Black Africa.
For Rawlings was, at least
at the outset of his second stint in power, determined, with the ideological
tutoring of the “Legon Left”, to map out an economic programme that would
remove Ghana from a harmful, but seemingly ineradicable dependence on the West.
Therefore, any purposeful
and objective examination of the legacy of Rawlings cannot be solely based on
the man alone and his perceived successes and failings but must necessarily
comprehend an honest reflection on the part of his countrymen about enduring
problems of tribal sentiment, endemic corruption, and institutional failings
that have prevented Ghana from transforming itself into an economically independent
post-colonial African nation.
My appearance on "The Write Now Show", a cable TV
show hosted by Judy Saxon and Charles Redner in Laguna Woods Village in
southern California.
It is a show dedicated to "Writers, Writing and the
Arts".
It was recorded on Friday, October 23rd via Zoom and
uploaded online after it was shown on the cable channel.
We discussed a range of topics that included my biographies
on the world boxing champion Dick Tiger and the one on Frankie DePaula, the
boxer who was murdered by the Mafia. Also mention is made of my essay
contributions to the Cambridge Companion to Boxing.
The Former
Military and Civilian Head of State of Ghana photographed in contemplative mode
during a press conference held on January 20th 1982 after seizing power in a
military coup on New Year’s Eve 1981.
A cropped photo of the then Rear Admiral Wey at a social gathering at
our home in Hendon, London during the early 1970s which presumably was taken by
my Father who was then serving as the Deputy-Defence Advisor at the Nigerian
High Commission.
The passing of James Bond icon Sean Connery reminds me of a
visit by Vice Admiral J.E.A. Wey to our home in Apapa, Lagos in the 1970s.
This was after his retirement following
the overthrow of General Yakubu Gowon in whose regime he had served as the
Chief of Staff Supreme Headquarters.
A video tape of the James Bond movie
"From Russia, With Love" was playing in the sitting room during which
time Wey and my Father, his former aide-de-camp, were often in quiet
conversation. That is apart from when Wey broke off from the conversation to
use his walking staff to playfully poke me or other youngsters around on our
sides or behind our necks.
He was always teasing kids.
He also kept referring to himself as the
"Old Man", his nickname among the senior military officers; making an
accompanying joke on each occasion.
Anyway, when late in the movie, the fight scene between Sean
Connery (James Bond) and Robert Shaw (Red Grant, the SPECTRE assassin) was
happening, Wey and my Dad stopped chatting and became absorbed in the movie.
When Connery finally overcomes Shaw, he's
about to leave the train compartment before he decides to go back and retrieve
the wallet containing gold sovereigns which Shaw had earlier relieved him of at
gunpoint. Then as Connery is leaving he says to the dead Grant:
"You won't be needing this, old
man".
The mention of "old man" was
cue for Wey to let off his trademark deep, throaty laughter.
Although this film is silent you can see
a Royal Navy admiral turn to look in the direction of Wey when he laughs at the
14-second mark:
It is no
exaggeration to write that as the star of the first movies about the British
Intelligence agent James Bond, Sean Connery was part of a cultural phenomenon
that shaped the 1960s. And in defining the physical and spoken character of Ian
Fleming’s hero, he became the standard by which all the other actors who have
followed him in the role are judged. It is also no exaggeration to place him on
the mantle of among the great cinematic stars of the 20th century. This
achievement was due to his persistence in successfully transcending the
limitations which the extraordinary success of the Bond movies threatened to
place on his range and competence as an actor.
Connery always
wanted to be known as more than a beefcake or a matinee idol, and he was quick
to appreciate that the character of Bond presented an albatross from which
needed to escape. He proved his abilities in ‘serious’ roles such as The Hill (1965) and The Offence (1972). He was excellent as Danny Dravot in John
Houston’s version of the Kipling story The
Man Who Would Be King. Houston had wanted to film it in the early 1950s
with Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable, but which thankfully for cinema audiences
was “delayed” for almost a quarter of a century. Some critics posit The Hill as his best ‘serious’ role, but
there are many other roles from which to choose, including from his earlier
work when he was developing as an actor such as Hell Drivers (1957), and those when he was on the cusp of stardom
such as his starring role as an 11th century Scottish king in the TV version of
the Shakespearean tragedy Macbeth
(1961).
His ineffable
style of delivery of one-liners in the Bond movies were part of his skill which
revolutionised the screen hero, as was his projection of masculinity. One of
the highlights of Connery’s screen career surely has to be his train
brawl with Robert Shaw (‘Red Grant’) in From Russia, With Love (1963). It was a
realistic mix of choreographed boxing, hapkido and street fighting techniques
that breathed new life into the tired formula of big screen fights which
Hollywood favoured up to that period in time.
Later in his
career, his screen presence remained intact when sharing the spotlight with
rising talents such as Kevin Costner and Wesley Snipes. There were many
accolades along the way, but his greatest triumph was when in 1988, he won an
Oscar for his performance in The Untouchables”;
the judges, like the audiences, evidently forgave his portrayal of an Irish cop
with his trademark Scottish burr.
His Scottish
heritage as well as his birth into urban poverty defined him. The son of a
factory worker whose Irish Catholic forebears had migrated to Scotland,
Connery’s relentless quest to be somebody never left him. The willingness of
the media to portray him as the archetypal “stingy Scot” rode roughshod of the
fact that his shrewdness was not remarkable for many who lived a childhood of
grinding poverty. And it was a forgivable aspect of his personality given the
predatory con artists which pervade the show business industry. Connery himself
would suffer from poor financial advice which led to several costly legal
entanglements that almost left him bankrupt.
Less forgivable
were the allegations of misogyny including physical violence against his first
wife, the actress Diane Cilento. Others charged him with hypocrisy for not
living in Scotland, the country for which he remained an avowed proponent for
national independence, while enjoying the life of a tax exile from the United
Kingdom.
But these
imperfections did not dim the view of many in his homeland who once voted him
as the “world’s greatest living Scot”, and who in death persist in acclaiming
him as not only one of the greatest ever Scotsmen, but also the last of the
truly great cinema actors.
Thomas Sean Connery KBE was born on August 25th
1930 and died on October 31st 2020.
Commander James Bond, C.M.G., R.N.V.R. (Source: Alamy Photos)
Sean Connery (1930-2020) wearing the
uniform of a Royal Navy commander in a publicity photograph for "You
Only Live Twice" (1967), the fifth in the film series inspired by the
books authored by Ian Fleming, who served as a naval intelligence officer
during World War II.
Cartoon caricatures of former world heavyweight champions Floyd Patterson, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. (Image: Detroit Free Press, Friday, November 2nd 1984).
The rapper 50 Cent recently created a furore over his endorsement of Donald Trump during the present U.S. presidential campaign. That the print and online media found it noteworthy to report and discuss his and other endorsements from a number of other rappers was interesting not least because it bears similar undertones to the reaction of Muhammad Ali’s 1984 endorsement of Ronald Reagan, a right-wing Republican presidential candidate who was perceived by many in the Black American community as a “racist”.
The controversy which followed the recent endorsement by the Black American rapper and actor 50 Cent of Donald Trump provoked a severe backlash from many in the Black community, as well as from Democratic Party-supporting White Liberals. It was on many levels reminiscent of the backlash which followed similar endorsements by Black celebrities of right-wing presidential candidates of the past such as that which followed Sammy Davis Jr’s support of Richard Nixon in 1972 as well as Muhammad Ali’s approval of Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Whereas 50 cent based his support of Trump on what he claimed was Joe Biden’s draconian tax plans for the wealthy, Ali, who had earlier endorsed the left-leaning Jesse Jackson during his landmark presidential bid, based his decision not on economics but on religion; saying that Reagan was “keeping God in schools, and that’s enough.”
The reaction towards Ali was littered with expressions of "disappointment", as well as barbs related to his declining health, which his political critics attributed to brain damage caused by a lengthy career in the ring.
Ali's endorsement of Reagan came alongside that of two other Black former heavyweight champions, Joe Frazier and Floyd Patterson. Headlined "We're Voting For the Man", billboards appeared showing Reagan playfully aiming a punch at Ali and superimposed photos of Frazier and Patterson. Ali had specifically referred to both rivals as being "Uncle Toms" because they had received widespread support from Whites in the contests that he had with Frazier and Patterson respectively in 1971 and 1965. And it seemed rather odd and insulting that the marketing team who placed the billboard in Black neighbourhoods would use the designation of Reagan as “The Man”. “The Man” was of course a Black colloquialism which referred to a figure of state authority who was perceived to be an instrument of “White oppression of Blacks”.
It seemed striking that Ali, who at the peak of his powers was a member of the separatist Nation of Islam organisation and who was perceived by many White Americans as a racist and a radical, would actually take the step of endorsing a figure such as Reagan.
There were compelling reasons as to why this should have been the case.
A former film actor and governor of the state of California, Reagan was perceived as a "racist" because when bidding for the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 1980, he chose to start his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the place where three civil rights workers were brutally murdered during the height of the movement. This alongside Reagan's frequent references to "states' rights" appeared to many to have been a coded message to White segregationists.
One other noteworthy incident which confirmed for many Reagan’s racial bias occurred two years prior to Ali’s endorsement when Larry Holmes, a Black world heavyweight champion, fought Gerry Cooney, an Irish-American contender. There had not been a White American world heavyweight champion since Rocky Marciano had reigned in the 1950s. The bout is remembered in boxing circles for the heightened atmosphere of bitter racial rivalry which surrounded it, and this was not helped by the fact that it was discovered that Reagan had made arrangements to call and congratulate Cooney in the event of the challenger winning the bout.
No similar arrangement was made with Holmes.
More evidence of Reagan’s racial attitudes was unearthed last year through the discovery of a taped conversation with Richard Nixon in the early 1970s. Complaining about a vote against the United States in the United Nations which had been supported by many African countries, Reagan told Nixon:
Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on television as I did ... To see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!
Nixon responded with laughter.
This was of course unknown at the time of Ali’s endorsement, but the other points of evidence along with Reagan’s history of opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were enough to direct a great deal of opprobrium towards Ali.
In a syndicated column published in October 1984, and titled "Once a Champ, Now a Loser", Eileen O'Connor concluded that Ali's athletic talents had faded years ago and "It's a shame to see him lose his dignity as well." (1)
(1) It was not the first time that Ali had been criticised in this sort of manner. Some years previously, his decision to accept the role as President Jimmy Carter’s special envoy tasked with encouraging African nations to boycott the Moscow Olympics after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was met with incredulity by several of the African nations he visited. Nigeria’s Shehu Shagari refused to meet him, and a Tanzanian diplomat famously offered the following criticism of American policy by asking whether the United States would “send Chris Evert to negotiate with London.”
Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England. He is the author of the books Jersey Boy: The Life and Mob Slaying of Frankie DePaula and Dick Tiger: The Life and Times of a Boxing Immortal. He contributed two essays to the Cambridge Companion to Boxing, part of the Cambridge Companions to Literature series published by Cambridge University Press in January 2019. They were “The Africans: Boxing and Africa” and “Jose Torres: The Boxer as Writer”.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. PHOTO
CREDIT: Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images.
Turkish President Recep Erdogan’s recent
comments regarding his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron’s mental state has led
to the recall of the French ambassador from Ankara. His assertion that Macron
was “in need of mental health treatment” was not his first barb aimed at the
French president. Back in August, he accused Macron of having “colonial aims”
in Lebanon and referred to Macron’s visit to Beirut as a “spectacle”. But if
there is any truth to Erdogan’s accusation, it is almost certainly a case of
psychological projection. Erdogan himself has been explicitly engaged in a
perennial quest aimed at restoring Turkish grandeur and influence to the great
cost and the irritation of his country’s neighbours and traditional allies.
That Recep Erdogan would be sensitive to comments
construed as anti-Muslim in sentiment, is not particularly surprising. He is by
all accounts a devout Muslim. Further, many consider his ideological roots when
he began a path into politics as akin to that professed by members of the
Muslim Brotherhood. He is today perceived by many to be an al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun in a suit.
But his publicly uttered umbrage at President Macron’s speech
cannot merely be interpreted as a spontaneous reaction of a pious statesman.
His failure to express regret over the beheading of a French History teacher by
an Islamist student who was offended by the display of two cartoons depicting
the Prophet Muhammad alongside other cartoons during a discussion on freedom of
speech speaks volumes. Those who know the man well will be bound to see it as a
calculated move geared toward building up his image at home, as well as
promoting himself as a righteous leader of the Muslim world.
Erdogan is a man who is adept at self-promotion. He is
also consistently involved in one or other conspiratorial endeavour aimed at
expanding Turkey’s geopolitical sphere of influence. It is neither inaccurate
nor lazy to attribute his agenda as being that of attempting to facilitate the
emergence of a neo-Ottoman state.
Yet, all his designs have so far
ended in failure.
His attempt at weaving this Ottoman dream in Central Asia
went awry in the 2000s because his Turkic cousins wanted more money than
Erdogan could afford. Erdogan was knee-deep in the attempt to balkanise Syria
in concert with the Saudis, Israelis, and US-led NATO states. But this was
frustrated by the actions of Russia, Iran, and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah.
More recently, Erdogan tried to bolster his prestige at home by asserting a
Turkish sphere of influence across the Mediterranean by threatening the Greeks
and intervening in the Libyan mess created by NATO's overthrow of Gaddafi. He
was frustrated in this endeavour not only by Egyptian and Greek actions which
called his bluff, but also by Macron's stated intent to militarily oppose any
overt acts of Turkish aggression in the region.
Ever the troublemaker, Erdogan has been revealed as an
active backer of the Azeri attack on Armenian-controlled Nagorno Karabakh, an
action that has brought back memories among the Armenian populace and the
Armenian Diaspora of the Ottoman orchestrated anti-Armenian genocide of the
early 20th century.
Back in July, Erdogan's decision to sign a decree which
will turn Hagia Sophia into a mosque will signal the final nail on Christendom
in what used to be the Christian city of Constantinople. An ineradicable opportunist, he likely chose this moment
in time to capitalise on the recent schism in the Eastern Orthodox Church,
which is based on the geopolitical animus between Russia and Ukraine.
Through all of this he has lost friends: Erdogan has
fallen out with President Bashar Assad of Syria, President Vladimir Putin of
Russia, as well as the Saudis. The European Union, which Erdogan once aspired
to join, has become wary of him -if not hostile- because of his intermittent
attempts to extort money through the threats of coercive engineered migration.
And his relationship with the United States has been poor since the 2016 coup
which he believes was a NATO-backed operation using the followers of the exiled
Fethullah Gulen.
Through all his adventures, he has burnt bridges as well
as his fingers. The “Zero Problems with Neighbours” policy which he trumpeted
at the beginning of his tenure in office has long been in tatters. But the
parlous state of the Turkish economy which had been steadily contracting prior
to the global recession caused by the covid-pandemic may mean that his endless
scheming and posturing will not abate.
The question that now remains is when will the world be
finally rid of this meddlesome and mischievous neo-Ottoman sultan?
Chilean
Stamp commemorating the second anniversary of the death of General Rene
Schneider
The assassination of Chilean
General Rene Schneider who died on October 25th 1970 from wounds sustained in
an attack three days earlier is worth recalling because of his stand in
protecting the constitutional process in his country, as well the circumstances
of his murder.
He was a pro-democratic military
official who affirmed that the role of the armed forces should be apolitical.
During a General Staff meeting on July 23rd 1970, Schneider said the following:
The armed forces are not a road to political power nor an
alternative to that power. They exist to guarantee the regular work of the
political system and the use of force for any other purpose than its defence
constitute high treason.
Schneider had issued this
powerful statement at a time when there was agitation within the Chilean army
to block the confirmation of Salvador Allende, a Marxist-influenced politician,
as the President-elect of Chile. It came to be known as the "Schneider
Doctrine".
His murder, at the hands of a
right-wing faction of the army led by General Roberto Viaux, a retired officer
who had previously engineered a mutiny over
soldiers pay and conditions, was a state-sponsored enterprise involving the
United States Central Intelligence Agency with the knowledge of Henry
Kissinger, the National Security Advisor during the Nixon presidency.
The “Schneider Doctrine” would be
challenged and finally destroyed on September 11th 1973, when a violent military
coup deposed President Allende and
brought to power a military dictatorship led by General Augusto Pinochet. And
on March 30th 2004, Schneider’s murder was the subject of a legal complaint brought by his estate against Kissinger in the United States.
The action
was dismissed and finally ended in 2006.
The threat of the rise of
governments which could be perceived as anti-American in Latin America, had of
course obsessed the United States for decades before the enunciation of the
Schneider Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine, through which the United States demarcated
its Western Sphere of influence, applied not only to the old European powers
but to the emerging power of the USSR. The reported plan by the Socialist Junta
to confiscate wealth while operating a soviet form of government caused a great
deal of apprehension in Washington when the Government Junta of Chile was
established in June 1932. American interventions in Latin America were
persistent and in the Cold War era, Allende, who pursued a policy of
nationalisation, and who was a self-described “implacable enemy of Yankee
imperialism” drew the ire of the United States which subsequently aided his
overthrow.
Although the era of the military
junta appears to be in the distant past, the relevance of the Schneider
Doctrine remains. The military coup which overthrew Honduran president Manuel
Zelaya in 2009, has been followed more recently by the pivotal role played by
the Bolivian military in securing the resignation and resulting exile of
President Evo Morales, as well as President Jair Bolsonaro raising the prospect
of military intervention in Brazil to protect his hold on power.
Emblem of the Selous Scouts Special Forces unit of the Rhodesian
Security Forces. Although nominally part of the Rhodesian Army, the Scouts were
directly under the control of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) and
not the Rhodesian Army.
The war fought during the 1970s in the nation state formerly known as
Rhodesia was an asymmetric conflict which pitted the Rhodesian Security Forces
against the militias of Black African liberation movements, most prominent of
which were ZANLA and ZAPU. Alternately known as the Rhodesian Bush War and the
Zimbabwe War of Liberation, it was characterised by an unceasing brutality
which claimed the lives of many non-combatants. Both government and guerrilla
forces participated in the brutalisation of civilians. However, with the
passage of time, many Old Rhodesians, who feel vindicated by Zimbabwe’s
political and economic malaise, have sought to characterise the war as having
been prosecuted by the White minority government in an ethical, rules-abiding
manner. Among its forces, the Selous Scouts is often touted as a model of martial efficiency
and resourcefulness, whose codes of behaviour were beyond reproach. This could
not be further from the truth. While the Scouts were effective in destroying
enemy guerrillas, they were at the heart of a counter-insurgency strategy which
waged chemical warfare not only against guerrillas, but the wider African
population. The unit was also responsible for initiating False Flag attacks
which it sought to blame on Black Nationalist groups; a mode of operation which while central to
its founding aim of providing the Rhodesian state a dimension of psychological
warfare, its supporters erroneously claim was alien to the unit.
The Selous Scouts were a multi-racial unit formed in 1973 to wage
unconventional warfare. The methods employed included infiltration,
assassination, abduction, torture, sabotage, and blackmail. The unit committed
“False Flag” atrocities as part and parcel of their modus operandi. The
Rhodesian “Bush War”, as is the case with a multitude of wars, had a
psychological dimension in regard to which the Selous Scouts, with their
expertise in “pseudo operations”, consistently undertook missions which relied
on deception, and such deception was utilised to either kill a large number of
the insurgent enemy (Black Nationalist) or to kill specific civilian targets in
order to blame the Black African insurgents.
One example of a Selous Scout False Flag
operation was conducted in February 1980. Named “Operation HECTIC”, it involved
two Black African Selous Scouts named Lieutenant Edward Piringodo and Corporal
Morgan Moyo bombing churches in the Salisbury area. Piringodo and Moyo used
explosives captured from ZANLA guerrillas to blow up two churches; taking care
to leave behind ZANU literature near the ruins caused by each blast. However,
both Scouts died after a third bomb they were carrying prematurely exploded
inside the car they were driving. They were near an Anglican church at the time
of the final explosion which took their lives.
“Operation HECTIC” was designed to
discredit Robert Mugabe’s ZANU at the forthcoming elections by making his
organisation appear to be anti-Christian and anti-freedom of religion. The
irony is that although influenced by Marxist-Leninist thinking, Mugabe did not
totally cast off his Jesuit upbringing. For instance, he named one of his
younger children, a son Bellarmine, after a not-very-well-known Catholic Saint.
The 1980 operation suggests that the frequent
allegations made by Black Nationalists that the Selous Scouts carried out
atrocities against African villages and Catholic missions are extremely
credible. They would have used Black African members of the force in the way
Piringodo and Moyo were used to disguise themselves as guerrillas to carry out
such atrocities. Mugabe, who revelled at Piringodo and Moyo being “caught and destroyed in their own
devilish trap”, specifically blamed the Selous Scouts for having carried out the
attack against the Catholic missionaries in February 1977, as well as for the
gunning down of 27 Black African tea workers on a White-owned estate in the
Honde Valley in late 1976.
Why would the Selous Scouts have
committed these deeds? The answer is that alongside the war of bullets and
bombs was the propaganda war. The Rhodesian state sought to discredit the Black
African guerrillas among the Black populace, as well as in the international
court of public opinion. History is replete with examples of states using
militarised sections to carry out acts of terror. The Red Hand, the terror
organisation which assassinated members of the Algerian FLN, and its West
German arms suppliers was a creation of the French Secret Service. And the
Military Reaction Force (MRF), a construct of British Army Intelligence, was
formed by Brigadier Frank Kitson to not only gun
down Irish Republican guerrillas, but to stage operations that would discredit
them.
This does not mean that the disputed
atrocities may not have been committed by Black African guerrillas who murdered
those who they considered to be traitors to their cause, but it ought to
encourage those disbelieving Old Rhodesians to remove their rose-tinted lenses
and confront the brutalities perpetrated by their side.
Lt. Colonel Reid-Daly, the Commander of
the Selous Scouts, was a veteran of the Malaya conflict during which time he
would have seen and imbibed the more nefarious aspects of counterinsurgency
employed by the British Army. While Frank Kitson’s name is often projected as
the key authority in the practice of British Army counter-insurgency, the
foremost exponent of what came to be known as anti-Maoist rural
counter-insurgency warfare, was applied in Malaya by General Robert Thompson.
The Selous Scots were created precisely
to conduct ruthless and “ungentlemanly war”. In fact, the unit came to be known
for “murder, rape, smuggling and poaching”, and its members gained a reputation
as “psychopathic killers” and “vainglorious extroverts”.
The Rhodesian military began to develop
counter-insurgency chemical warfare in the early 1970s, and the Scouts
metamorphosed from being a tracking unit to being the central purveyors of the
Rhodesian state’s chemical warfare strategy. Glenn Cross’s 1999 book, Plague Wars gives a good account of this
aspect of the war. An academic article
written in 2002 by Ian Martinez for Third World Quarterly which was titled “The
History of the Use of Bacteriological and Chemical Agents during Zimbabwe’s
Liberation War of 1965-80 by Rhodesian Forces” is also very enlightening about
the role of chemical warfare in the counter-insurgency.
The Selous Scouts were instructed to
poison watering holes, stagnant water, slow moving streams, and other bodies of
water near guerrilla camps inside Mozambique, near the border. In one
operation, the Selous Scouts poisoned a well in Mozambique which led to the
deaths of at least 200 civilians because the well was the only source of
drinking water in the area. The Scouts were also instructed to spread cholera. Under
cover of “Operation Long Walk” in August 1973, members of the unit poured
cholera agents into the Ruya River. This also caused deaths among innocent
civilians in Mozambique but was discontinued because the agent dissipated
quickly in water, and it could spread back to Rhodesia including areas where
the Scouts were operating.
The unit was responsible for injecting thallium
into canned meat which was given to insurgents under the deception that they
were being supplied from a friendly source. In one situation, the guerrillas
gave their poisoned canned meat to villagers on Tribal Trust Land who were short
of food, and the villagers subsequently died.
The authorities acquired double agents
within the structures of the Black African guerrillas who soaked clothing and
food in toxic organophosphates. This resulted in many newly recruited
revolutionaries dying on the journey to guerrilla training camps in Zambia and
Mozambique. This meant that those who had not yet engaged in attacking the
Rhodesian state (they could after all have given up or have been told they were
not guerrilla material by instructors) were pre-emptively murdered in a cruel
manner. Also, because the double-agent perpetrators could be easily fingered,
they were themselves killed.
Those captured Black African guerrillas
who the Selous Scouts could not “turn” were either subjected to an extrajudicial
execution or were used as human guinea pigs in biological experimentation,
which of course inevitably led to their deaths.
While certain Old Rhodesians may claim an
‘end justifies the means’ rationale, the results contradict their frequent argument
that the war was fought to defend Black Africans as much as Whites, for the
Rhodesian authorities did not seem to mind that their chemical warfare
programme was by the end of the 1970s causing health problems among the Black
civilian population.
In 1979, Rhodesia recorded the largest
recorded outbreak of anthrax, a development which has been interpreted as the
deliberate use of a weaponised biological agent. Ken Flower, Chief of
Rhodesia’s Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) and a CIO officer named
Henrik Ellert confirmed in their memoirs that the Ian Smith-led regime used
biological and chemical weapons against the guerrillas, against rural Black
Africans to prevent their support of the guerrillas, and against livestock like
cattle in order to reduce rural food stocks.
The application of chemical warfare*, at
the heart of which was the Selous Scouts amounted to war crimes because it arguably
contravened The Hague Convention of 1907. Furthermore, the deliberate and
systematic killing of livestock in Black African populated areas infringed
Common Article III of the Geneva Convention, 1949. Additionally, the Biological
Weapons Convention (BWC) of 1972 embodied the renunciation by the world
community of nations of the use of biological weapons against human beings.
There are of course difficulties
associated with specific application to Rhodesia which was not a signatory to
the Geneva Convention and, after its Unilateral Declaration of Independence in
1965, was an illegal regime. Nonetheless, the use of such weapons in both
internal and international conflicts is now recognised to be a violation of customary
international law. The problem of affixing the successor state to Rhodesia,
Zimbabwe, with the responsibility of these crimes can be overcome by affixing
responsibility of these actions onto individuals who acted on behalf of the
Rhodesian state. This would mean that members of the Rhodesian Security Forces
including those who served with the Selous Scouts could be prosecuted by a
Nuremberg-style court for a range of offences including the murder and
ill-treatment of prisoners of war, the use of biological weapons of war against
both civilian and military targets as well as compelling prisoners of war to
serve with a hostile army.
It should be noted that as part of the
war of deception, the deaths of humans and cattle from these poisoning
incidents were used as Rhodesian government propaganda to blame the guerrillas.
Thus, part of the strategy of the state was geared towards sowing discord
between the insurgents and rural populations. On the one hand, villagers were conditioned
to believe that food shortages were been caused by guerrilla activity, while the
insurgents were encouraged to believe that their food was being poisoned by
villagers. In several instances, they launched attacks on those villages they
held responsible.
Admissions by Selous Scouts veterans in
regard to these actions and objectives have been rare, but a U.S. Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA) cable from Harare to Washington D.C. in 1990 revealed
that a member of the Selous Scouts admitted in 1978 that they had “tried both
chemical and biological warfare techniques to kill terrorists”. And the
recollections of the likes of Ken Flower and Henrik Ellert regarding Selous
Scouts atrocities are highly relevant because the Scouts were directly under
the control of the CIO and not the Rhodesian Army. What is more, the Rhodesian
government had a tight control over the media which facilitated the psy-ops
motives of the Selous Scouts. The White population were thus subject to
brainwashing by government propaganda which included a great deal of
disinformation.
This partly explains the reluctance of
many Old Rhodesians to accept this less than salubrious aspect of the fight to
maintain the status quo.
* A key aspect of the chemical warfare
programme concerns its funding. Researchers have pinpointed Britain as the
point of origin, from where the money was funnelled through Saudi Arabia and
South Africa before reaching Rhodesia. The “British-betrayed-us” mantra by Old
Rhodesians forgets that the “Kith and Kin” attitude remained strong until the
end when the British and the government of Ian Smith realised that the
financial and manpower burdens imposed by the war on the Rhodesian state, made
it impossible to continue. The emigration of Whites who wanted to avoid
compulsory service, sanctions, as well as the moral contradictions inherent in
maintaining a racial state, made its continuation impossible.
It is about
having faith in the forces controlling fate and destiny. A man’s determination
to persevere.
His plea has to
be contextualised in the Yoruban cosmological paradigm of the spiritual &
supernatural realm ("Eleda") on the one hand, and the earthly one on
the other ("Ori").
"Ori",
while literally meaning "head", is a metaphysical concept in Yoruba
which not only refers to a person's intellectual abilities, but also to his
spiritual intuition and destiny:
"Ja Fun
Mi" literally translates from Yoruba as "Fight For Me".
A member of the
Rhodesian Special Forces unit, the Selous Scouts in training (PHOTO CAPTURE
from Getty Images).
The following
is part of the text of my thoughts about the comments posted at my YouTube
Channel in regard to a newsreel I uploaded over four months ago which was a
1977 report on the training and activities of the Rhodesian Army Special Forces
unit known as the Selous Scouts.
. The Content
of the Newsreel
The original
source gives very little details except to name the news reporter, identify
Major Ronald Reid-Daly and provide short descriptions of what is happening in
the reel. The title of upload and the brief elaborations within the text are my
creation.
I will go into
details later about the allegations of Selous Scouts involvement in False Flag
operations. Needless to say, some comments here which have dismissed this as
anti-Rhodesian “BBC Marxist Death Cult Propaganda” are wide of the mark. The
ITN report gives a sympathetic portrayal of the Selous Scouts. Any rational person
can hear the allegations regarding the massacre of the missionaries to Major
Reid-Daly and his denial. I uploaded a short interview with Reid-Daly conducted
by another news agency and the same question was put to him, and the same
denial was issued. There was good reason for him to be asked based on
circumstantial evidence. What is more the subsequent failure of a Selous Scout
operation involving the bombing of churches in Salisbury in 1980 and to which I
alluded to in the description box vindicates that line of questioning.
If anyone
simply sees this newsreel as merely “anti-Rhodesian” then it speaks of an
inflexible and ineradicable mindset of indoctrination -the very mindset which
such people accuse both their real and perceived opponents of having.
. Rhodesia: A
Colonial Settler Project Against Which Rebellion Was a Perfectly Natural
Reaction
Rhodesia was a
colonial settler project. This involved subjugation, land expropriation and the
imposition of a caste system within which the subjugated Black Africans were
exploited by Whites of mainly British descent.
The social and economic system may have appeared a benign one to the
Rhodesians who favourably compared it (and still do so) to the Apartheid system
in neighbouring South Africa, but it was nonetheless a system based on the
Whites monopolising access to the country’s natural resources and keeping the
Africans whose lands they acquired by force in their place.
Judging by many
comments made by supporters of the late Rhodesia on this upload, it may come as
a shock to more than a few, but human history is replete with societies who
have rebelled against such a state of affairs. This was the case with Algeria,
Palestine, the Slavic lands of Eastern Europe, and Kenya. And where the native
populations who were looked upon variously as “Untermensch” or “uncivilised”
(the White Nationalist term today would be “low I.Q.” peoples), avoided
extermination, they fought back to reclaim their native lands.
The Black Africans
of what came to be the territory of Rhodesia were no different from Catholic
Irish resisting British colonisation; the Muslim Algerians resisting French
domination, the Black African Kenyans resisting the British or the Palestinians
resisting the militias of the Jewish Agency in Palestine and the State of
Israel once it was established.
This allusion
to Marxist-thinking as the root of the evil which stimulated Black Africans to
fight against the Rhodesian “paradise” is as absurd as it is lazy in its
construct. The fact that the Soviet Union and China gave aid and support to
liberation movements in Africa and Asia, and to some extent in Latin America,
was more an accident of history. Resistance against any colonial settler entity
such as Rhodesia, is an ineluctable facet of the human psyche.
The Poles and
other Slavs who were referred to as subhuman by the Nazis were not concerned
about Hitler’s assertion that Germany’s Slavic neighbours owed all the
achievements in culture to the German race. The Irish who were lampooned as
ape-like, rowdy, and prone to fecundity did not care too much about
British-English civilisation which under Cromwell had massacred them. It was
under British rule after all that the devastating famine took place. Today,
this mentality persists in Irish Republican communities who perceive Israel as
an unjust and oppressive colonial settler state and support the Palestinian
cause, while the Unionists take the opposite view.
The Kenyans
correctly wanted their land back, as did the Algerians and as do the
Palestinians. Why do Old Rhodesians resent the idea that the Blacks would want
their land back? As with the aforementioned peoples, the Black African resented
the paternalistic and oppressive system, and resisted.
Cecil Rhodes,
the man who gave the country its name, was at the heart of the system through
which Black African workers were brutally exploited. If such a statement
strikes any one as being somehow “Marxist”, it proves the point of the
distorted lens through which some Old Rhodesians choose to view the world. The
massacres of Ndebele people prior to and after the Rudd Agreement using maxim
guns was a deliberate cruelty which went further than the prosecution of war.
It was genocide.
Land
expropriation, labour exploitation, and genocide: that was the foundation of
Rhodesia.
. The
Insurgency in Rhodesia: False Flags, Black Propaganda and Psychological Warfare
I note comments
relating to the news reporter’s reference to the murder of European Roman
Catholic Missionaries in 1977 as having possibly been an operation carried out
by the Selous Scouts have been met by disbelief and recourse to the tired
mantra of the “biased Marxist media”. As I wrote in the description box, the
Scouts specialised in irregular warfare with its methods including
“infiltration, assassination, abduction, torture, sabotage and blackmail”.
For those who
are ignorant of the concept of the “False Flag” operation i.e. the carrying out
of a mission designed to discredit the opposition, I would simply ask you to
find out about “Operation Susannah”, an operation conducted by Israeli Military
Intelligence in 1954. Known as “The Lavon Affair”, it was a botched attempt by
the Israelis to disrupt closer relations between Nasser of Egypt and the
Americans and the British. The Israeli attack on the USS Liberty was part and
parcel of this sort of playbook. You are also invited to find out about
“Operation Northwoods”, a diabolical plan approved by the Pentagon which sought
to stage terror attacks on American soil to blame on Cuban Communists in order
to present an opportunity to invade and overthrow the government of Fidel
Castro. Again, read up on the Anni diPiombo (or “Years of Lead”) in Italy from the late 1960s to the middle
1980s when NATO’s Gladio network enabled Fascist-sympathising militias to
murder innocent civilians in order to blame Marxist and Anarchist groups. The
bombs in Piazza Fontana (1969) and Peteano (1972) provide examples of this
diabolical “Strategy of Tension” (“La Strategia della Tensione”). The
Bologna bomb in 1980 was also an example although there was no question from
the outset that it was the responsibility of a neo-Fascist group.
Now
interestingly, Major Reid-Daly served in Malaya where Frank Kitson, the
exponent-in-chief of the counter-insurgency doctrine of the British Army, was
developing (after his experience in Kenya) his methods which encompassed the
aforementioned specialisms of the Selous Scouts, added to which was the use of
“Black Propaganda”. Kitson used his colonial experiences in Northern Ireland
against the Irish Republican Army. Feel free to search for information on the
activities of the Military Reaction Force (MRF) which apart from assassinating
suspected Republican guerrillas, murdered innocent civilians in order to blame
the IRA.
Anyone who
researches the murder of the missionaries will find out that it was not an open
and shut case for affixing responsibility to any of the parties. As in all
wars, a propaganda war was being fought, and Rhodesia was no exception. Using the
dark arts of false flag operations was evidently part of this. In fact, as I
mention in the description box, two Black African members of the Scouts who
were involved in planting explosives in churches in Salisbury in February 1980,
were themselves accidentally blown up by one of their bombs. The aim of this
Selous Scouts operation was to make it seem that operatives working for the
military wing of Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF organisation had planted the bombs (ZANU
literature was left at the various locations) because as a Marxist, Mugabe (the
Jesuit Marxist) was “against” Christianity. This was an attempt to discredit
Mugabe’s political party in the run up to the elections in what was to become
Zimbabwe.
Therefore, it
is not inconceivable that Black members of the Selous Scouts disguised as
African guerrillas were used to conduct the massacres of the missionaries in
order to present the African militias as anti-clerical.
At least one
comment refers to the “savageness” of the guerrillas when dealing with
“uncooperative” African villagers. I do not know the ins and outs of every
single facet of the Bush War in Rhodesia, but that commentator and others
reading this should be aware of cruelties practised by the Rhodesian side.
There is a film I have yet to upload about a British mercenary hired to combat
poaching. This man was allowed to shoot at Black Africans at once a 6PM curfew
came without considering whether his target was a poacher or late getting home.
And to claim his bounty, he did not have to produce a dead body, only the right
ear from it.
The Selous
Scouts acted with savagery, killing innocent civilians in neighbouring
countries -not by mistake i.e. the euphemistic “collateral damage”, but as a
means of psychological warfare. A good example of this was in the Scouts raid
on a ZANLA camp, situated at Nyadzonya-Pungwe, Mozambique in August 1976. They
got to the camp by disguising their armoured vehicles in the colours of the
Mozambique Army (a classic False Flag tactic) and, according to Major Reid-Daly,
massacred up to a thousand.
It was
seemingly an impressive tally, except that the Selous Scouts had shot many
guerrillas who were unarmed as they stood in formation for a parade. The camp
was formally registered as a refugee camp with the United Nations. Guerrillas
were present, but the Scouts raiding party saw fit to set fire to the camp
hospital following which all the patients were burned alive.
The thinly
veiled racism among some of these comments seek to promote the idea of savagery
being the preserve of Africans while forgetting European-originated depravity.
It is interesting how the brutalities inflicted on Africans by European
colonial powers prefigured those visited on their fellow Europeans including
Jews during the period leading up to World War 2 and of course during the war
itself: the genocide against the Namaqua and Herrero by Kaiser-era German
colonisers, and the use of bodily parts in experiments are just two. The Boer
has not forgotten the British concentration camps and neither have the Ethiopians
who endured Italian camps in Somaliland and who were massacred by Black Shirts
in Addis Ababa in 1937.
In the case of
Rhodesia, how can the facts of the brutal counter-insurgency campaign employed
in the 1970s be ignored? Bulldozers and flamethrowers were used to defoliate
54,000 square miles of countryside. The “Free Fire Zones” set up by the
Rhodesian Army meant that any Black African found within them would be shot on
sight. There were curfews imposed on the Black population (effectively martial
law) and there was internment and forced resettlement.
There was a
campaign of terror which did not stop with killing Black African guerrillas -
many of whom were not killed in action but tortured prior to being murdered- it
also extended to Black African civilians.
. The
Insurgency in Rhodesia: A Lost Cause
Some of the
commentators on this page are Black. They have objectively stated that the
Selous Scouts were a formidable fighting force. I have acknowledged this fact
in the description box. But they were fighting a lost cause. The frequent
references to being “betrayed” by the British (and the Americans) has a hollow
ring to it. It is redolent of the “stab in the back” rationale popularised by
German Nationalists in the aftermath of World War 1.
The war in
Rhodesia, as was the case with the wars in Angola and Mozambique, came at the tail
end of the decolonisation of Africa. The Selous Scouts doubtlessly had many
victories, but so did the French military in Algeria, the British in Kenya and
Aden and the Portuguese in southern Africa.
Rhodesia would
have collapsed without the support of the British whose kith and kin policy
essentially held sway right to the end. They did not invade Rhodesia after UDI.
The British bypassed sanctions by supplying Rhodesia with oil through
Mozambique until the Portuguese withdrew.
. Modern Day
Racial Warfare & Identity Politics
It seems to me
that those who yearn for old Rhodesia have fused their ideological raison d’etre
with the present-day manifestations of identity politics. They are White
Nationalists or in the parlance of many on the mainstream political left,
“White Supremacists”. The use of the term White Supremacist is in many ways an
objective one. White Rhodesians after all enjoyed a great amount of privilege;
real, tangible privilege. Not the asinine expressions utilised in today’s
“Culture wars” where terms such as “White Privilege”, “Black Privilege'',
“Jewish Privilege” and so on are frequently used. They enjoyed a standard of
living which owed a great deal to the subjugation and exploitation of the indigenous
Black African population. The linkage with White Supremacy comes from the use
of the old Rhodesian Flag as a source of militant White identity as was the
case with the mass murderer Dylann Roof. There was also the case of the
Alberta-based Canadian soldiers who were discovered to be selling White
Nationalist-Supremacist flags, badges, and literature.
. Conclusion.
The truth is
that Rhodesia was no beacon of democracy which offered its Black African
population a vision for the future. Rhodesia collapsed under the weight of its
contradictions. Some such as quite a number of commentators on this post can
gloat about the failings of the political leaders of Zimbabwe, but the truth is
that they are living in denial about the nature of the system and the fact that
that system was doomed to failure. And as was the case with the French-Algerian
Pieds-Noir and the Boer, they must face up to this.
