77 — Fun and Games with Zimbabwe Immigration—Again!!! (Harare: Jan 1984)

After my two-day career as a programmer in Zimbabwe, it was time to visit Immigration again.  We were coming to the end of our extended visitor’s visa.  Frankly, I was tired of the conflicting “stories” I had received from the Zimbabwe Consulate in D.C., the low-level clerk at Immigration when we first arrived, the daughter of the Chief Immigration Officer, and everyone else who claimed to hold the keys to our future in Zimbabwe.

To be fair, Zimbabwe was in a confusing swirl of constantly changing policies as the Rhodesian Front had given way to first Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and now Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.  It was just three years since the transition from white minority rule to black majority rule.  Significant white flight had left government ministries and businesses without experience at all levels.  There had been a war after the “war” in which Mugabe’s Mashona armies laid waste to the Matabele supporters of Joshua Nkomo in southern Zimbabwe.  In addition, the Rhodesian-financed Renamo guerillas who had fought against Samora Machel’s communist government in Mozambique had been raiding the eastern border areas.  

Former members of the disbanded Rhodesian Light Infantry were now fighting side by side with former terrorists in the new Zimbabwe Army.  The Rhodesian African Rifles had been used to subdue “rebellious” Matabele supporters of Nkomo before being themselves disbanded.  The Zimbabwe Air Force was also merged with pilots trained on aircraft in Soviet-bloc countries.  

Both whites and blacks sought to ignore a century of white hegemony and 15 years of bush war.  Unfortunately, some of the emergency war powers enacted by Ian Smith’s government were now being used against white Zimbabweans to establish black dominance.  Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the prime minister of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia (1979) was imprisoned in the maximum security Chikirubi prison.  He had been critical of Mugabe.  

There was an undercurrent of fear among blacks and whites which surfaced whenever Mugabe’s armored motorcade drove through the streets.  All cars immediately pulled to the curb as his armored Mercedes sped past.  He was escorted by trucks bristling with the automatic weapons and wild glare of 5 Brigade soldiers whose reputation for brutality had begun with their North Korean instructors.

Farmers and business owners had to get permission from the Workers’ Committee before they could dismiss an employee.  Although the government continued to maintain a free-enterprise style economy, Marxist rhetoric dominated the political discourse.

For the demobilized white members of the Rhodesian Security Forces, jobs were as scarce as they were for unemployed whites in general.  There was an understandable effort to give preference to black job candidates.  Nevertheless, the discrimination against whites engendered greater insecurity and increased emigration, especially to apartheid South Africa. 

And then here we were, former members of the Rhodesian Army [23 — Honeymooning in a War Zone], trying to get permission to work as “missionaries.”  Even the role of the missionary was confusing.  During the war, many missionaries had been tacit supporters of the guerrilla forces.  Now, many missionaries seemed to be sympathetic to the ways of old Rhodesia, especially Americans influenced by Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell.  There was no way that Immigration could know that we were apolitical.  Indeed, since most missionaries were American and all but a handful were white, there was justifiable suspicion as to what our real “mission” was.  

As a recruit to the Rhodesian Army in 1977, I was suspected of being a CIA operative.  In 1983 Zimbabwe, I was now suspect as a missionary CIA operative.  Is it any wonder that we kept getting different stories at Immigration?

Anyway, a face-to-face discussion was warranted.  I wanted to talk to someone directly and have them explain exactly what we needed to do to stay in Zimbabwe.  

We took our place in the queue behind a fifty-something African-American dressed in a dark suit and tie.  As we waited, I struck up a conversation.  He was originally from Philadelphia and had been in Zimbabwe for several months as the head of a large humanitarian relief agency.  He too was seeking a five-year residence permit, and had gone through several cycles of visitor visas by traveling back and forth to his office in New York.  He was frustrated with the same confusing morass of advice and regulations.  More importantly, every return trip to New York was draining much needed funds for relief work on the border of Zimbabwe and Mozambique.  [South Africa was not a good option for visa return trips if you were not white in 1983.  Mandela was not released from prison until 1987.]  

I listened as he spoke with the clerk behind the counter who demanded a copy of his university transcripts before considering his application for residency.  My American friend replied that he would have to contact his 80 year old mother to see if she could find the copies and ship them to him.  Otherwise, it would take more than a month to get transcripts from the schools themselves.  If his mother couldn’t get the transcripts to him within the week, he would once again have to return to New York.  He told the clerk:  “If I have to go back to New York, that means that we place the 3 million dollar school building project on hold until I get back.”

Unfazed, the clerk dismissed him and turned to me with a snippy “Next!”

I handed over our passports and asked for another 30 day extension on our visitor’s visa.  Mulling over our documents, he informed me that an extension would require authorization from a senior officer.  He instructed me to come through to the back and have a seat to speak to his superior.  Actually, this was what I was hoping for—someone who could hear my story and tell me exactly what I needed to do.  I was hoping that we would not be forced to return to the States—we couldn’t afford that!

After about 30 minutes, I was ushered into the private office of a black officer who actually offered me a cup of tea!  That was a pleasant change from the officiousness of the clerk.

I poured out my heart to him, telling him the whole story of my having come to Rhodesia five years before, my discomfort with the discrimination and segregation that I had seen, and my desire to share the kingdom of God with rural Zimbabweans.  After hearing of my frustration with the confusing information that I had received, he extended our visas another 90 days.  

Then he gave me a tip:

You know, you don’t have to have a residence permit to stay here in Zimbabwe.  As long as you are not taking employment in Zimbabwe and get your finances through gifts to your ministry, you can stay here for up to six months at a time as a visitor.  And, it is not necessary for you to go back to the States.  You can just go to South Africa for a week and then come back on another visitor visa.  Then, if you are offered employment by a church or mission organization, you can still apply for residency while you are here as a visitor.

As I left his office, I couldn’t help smiling.  Somehow, the Lord had brought me together with a sympathetic official.  I wondered if he were a Christian.  I knew that Felix’s Family of God ministry had touched the lives of many of the new African urban elites.  There was just no way to know for sure, but I was reassured that we had not erred in telling the whole truth of our original intent to fight in the Rhodesian Army and the change of heart which had led us back to Zimbabwe to work with those we had previously sought to destroy.

We were finding that the truth was more powerful than prejudice or a history of bad blood.  It was as if the mercy in our hearts caused others to be merciful to us--not a bad basis for ministry!

Next:  78 — The Beginnings of Ministry (Harare:  Feb 1984)

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28 -- The Convoy (Rhodesia: Dec 1976)

 

The following morning, we left the judge’s home for Bulawayo, Wankie and Victoria Falls.  This would be the “dangerous” part of our trip as there was daytime terrorist activity on the road to Victoria Falls.  About 90 minutes outside of Bulawayo, we would travel in “convoy” the rest of the way. Traveling in convoys of vehicles escorted by soldiers reduced the likelihood of a terrorist ambush.  

The “freedom fighters” did not take on well-armed targets.  Rather, they preyed on unarmed and defenseless civilians.  The last thing the “Terrs” wanted was to run into some of the well-trained citizen soldiers of the Rhodesian armed services.

It was really an adventure now!  We roared down the two lane highway, trucks and cars alike at top speed, ignoring posted speed limits.  In front and at the rear of our small convoy of 20 vehicles, were camo-painted trucks with four or five soldiers armed with their Fabrique Nationale 7.62 mm automatic weapons and a 30 caliber machine gun on a mount where the canvas roof had been removed.  

In addition, each car was also armed.  I had my Colt 45 automatic that I had brought from Texas. The other vehicles had an assortment of handguns, locally manufactured Uzi submachine guns and R1 rifles (FNs of South Africa manufacture). 

No Terr in his right mind was going to take on a convoy like this!  Needless to say, we arrived at our hotel in Wankie without incident.

 

The hotel looked like something out of Disneyworld.  It had obviously been built with the tourist trade in mind just before the onset of sanctions in 1964.  It was several miles inside the game preserve and elephants and giraffes would graze a few hundred yards from the balcony in your room.  The 1976 tourist season had not gone well and the events that we had planned such as a camera safari had been cancelled.  The man to lead the safari had been called up by the BSAP to chase some Terrs who had attacked a rural village just outside the preserve.  Since there really wasn’t anything we could do there, we decided to go on to Vic Falls the following morning. 

The next morning another convoy took us to the town of Victoria Falls on the border of Zambia and Rhodesia.  In past decades, Zambia had been known as Northern Rhodesia. 

When the short-lived Federation of Northern Rhodesia (1953-1963), Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland broke up with independence coming to Northern Rhodesia as Zambia and Nyasaland as Malawi.  Southern Rhodesia became known simply as Rhodesia—still a British colony.  It was not much later that Rhodesia broke away from the British who refused to allow them independence.  In 1964, Rhodesia made its Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI).  The United Kingdom would then lead the UN in declaring trade sanctions against the newly formed republic.

The issue that kept Rhodesia in a colonial status was the number of European and African members of any future Rhodesian Parliament.  Rhodesia’s European Prime Minister, Ian Smith, was not opposed to African participation in government.  It was the proportion of European Rhodesians and African Rhodesians and the timetable for power sharing that led to the eventual break between Rhodesia and the UK.

After UDI, Smith would harden his stance against African participation, often saying that African rule would come “over my dead body.”  But, to me as a newly-minted conservative American, steeped in the soaring idealism of Texas-style Christianity propounded by RB Thieme, Rhodesia’s UDI was analogous to our own American Declaration in 1776.  And, I saw the issue of African power analogous to our own history with Native Americans.  Indeed, the Rhodesians were much more progressively minded toward Africans than we had ever been toward Native Americans.

For all its detractors, the Rhodesian Army was composed of Europeans and Africans alike, united against a common Communist foe—the terrorist forces under Mugabe, Sithole and Nkomo.  In the short time I had been in Rhodesia, I had learned that the volunteer regular army was composed of about 3000 Europeans.  There were thousands more African volunteers in the BSAP and the Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR).  This “all African” force of volunteers was more feared than any other unit of the Rhodesian Army.  These were highly motivated African soldiers who were determined to drive the terrorists out of their country.  Just after our arrival in Rhodesia, the RAR commissioned its first African officers. 

There were also the Selous Scouts, an elite all volunteer mixed race unit.   A Selous Scouts force of 70 men had just carried out a raid in Nyadzonya, Mozambique where they had killed a thousand terrorists in less than an hour with no loss of life to themselves.  [Many years later, Gen Edgar Tekere who was Mugabe’s defeated commander of these forces, said that Mugabe was so disheartened by this series of raids that he had considered giving up the armed struggle.  This explicit interview contains his interview along with Lt Col Reid Daley, the Scouts’ commander.]  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs7V_IBQcDg  3/3/26 Note:  Unfortunately, this video this is no longer available on YouTube.

The “territorial” forces were similar to what our American National Guard used to be before the Bush administration re-tasked them as frontline combat troops.  The Territorial Regiments were composed of draftees.  These draftees were all white Rhodesians.  Not a single African was ever conscripted into the Rhodesian Army.  [By the end of 1977, as many as 100 Africans were volunteering for duty with the Security Forces every day.]  

The only African “conscripts” were those who were stolen from their villages and force-marched across the border to Mozambique and Zambia.  These schoolboys were co-opted as terrorists, indoctrinated and trained by Chinese, Soviet and North Korean soldiers.  Then they were set loose on their own people to rape, pillage and plunder.

The only analogy to these terrorists in American history at the time was to be found in our recent experience with the Viet Cong.  In fact, the similarities were striking between the training and tactics of the Viet Cong and the Mugabe/Sithole/Nkomo “freedom fighters.”

Since I had missed my chance to fight the Communist Viet Cong, it made sense to me that fighting these African terrorists was really the same enemy—just a different continent.

Next:  29 — No Umbrella for the Rain Forest (Victoria Falls, Rhodesia:  Dec 1976)

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25 -- Fit or Fat? (Salisbury, Rhodesia: Nov 1976)

I was feeling a bit sluggish and very guilty about my early morning gluttony as I slid into a taxi to take me to my 8:00 am appointment with the chief recruiting officer of the Rhodesian Army, Major Nick Lamprecht.  I was also feeling a bit bloated and felt like I needed to suck my stomach in a bit to be more soldier-like.

The taxi ride was my first time on the left hand side of the road in a right-hand drive car.  This felt a bit better to me than my experience with RSM Springer in his American left-hand drive car.  As we wove our way through the Monday morning traffic, the left-side driving began to make some sense to me.  But as we approached the intersection of two four-lane roads, turning right across traffic—all my reactions were upside down.  Good thing that I wasn’t driving!

As I was paying the driver, (with Rhodesian currency this morning!), he gave me a tip for driving on the left:  "Always keep yourself as the driver the near the center of the road."  This tip works!  It even works when you come back to the States and need to readjust to driving on the right again.

[No extra charge for this driving tip.  Consider it an added benefit of reading my book!]

The recruiting office was on  the fifth floor of a downtown office building.  I guess the only difference between the recruiting office and any other business would be the Army posters on the walls and the personnel behind the desks wearing uniforms. 

Major Lamprecht rose to greet me as I entered.  I introduced myself and handed him the packet of information that Roy Hurst had given me in Houston.  I had filled out all the personal information and included all the documentation he needed (birth certificate, marriage license, etc).

I don’t remember the details of our conversation, but we began with a discussion of my motivation for coming to Rhodesia saying:

I really believe that the struggle of the Rhodesian people is my struggle.  I missed the war in Vietnam, but that struggle against a Communist insurgency was similar to the insurgency that I believe is going on here.  Terrorists are attacking soft targets:  rural villages, stores and medical clinics.  They rob buses filled with unarmed African civilians, often shooting the driver, raping the women even bayoneting babies.  They torture and kill village leaders who have any contact with the government.  And when the Rhodesian security forces show up, the terrorists scatter in all directions, casting aside weapons and uniforms, seeking to hide themselves among the very population they terrorize.

I also understand that Rhodesia has 96% of the world’s strategic-grade chromium.  So, for me, defending Rhodesia is defending America’s ability to develop high-grade weapon systems.

I also understand that this is not a race war as it has been portrayed by the world press and even my our own UN Ambassador, Andrew Young, who seems to have President Carter’s ear.  I know that Rhodesians, both black and white are fighting together to defeat the threat of Communist terrorists led by Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo.

I have been here less than 24 hours, but have already seen how black and white interact peacefully.  One thing that my wife noticed is that the blacks here do not seem angry or tense.  She has remarked at the amicable interaction between black and white here.  Everyone seems to get along without any undercurrent of racism.

I just couldn’t sit around in the prosperity of America while Rhodesians, both black and white fought, often to the death, to stop the spread of world Communism.  As a born-again Christian, I know that the Gospel can spread most effectively in a free society.  I also know from history that no freedom is ever won without sacrifice on the battlefield, indeed all freedom comes only through military victory.  The politicians may squander that freedom, but it is the military that always wins it back.

I want to be a part of Rhodesia’s military victory that will lead to even greater freedom for black and white.

[This reflects my thinking at the time as a 27 year old.  Obviously, the situation was not as cut and dry as I thought.  And, just as obviously my feelings about Rhodesia, the war, the politics and the people there would evolve as I grew in knowledge and experience.  Please hang in there with me as I tell the rest of the story over the coming months.]

Major Lamprecht seemed satisfied with my motivation.  We moved on to the subject of my training.  I was to start with 18 weeks of basic commando training at Cranborne Barracks, the home of the Rhodesian Light Infantry (RLI).  Assuming all went well, I would continue on to Officer Training School and finally to the SAS Selection Course.  If I passed SAS Selection, I would be posted as a Second Lieutenant (pronounced “leftenant”) to Squadron “C”, Rhodesia Special Air Service.  The whole course of training would take about a year, but I would see action as soon as I completed my training at RLI.

The links below are short documentaries on SAS, RLI and other branches of the security forces:  the black volunteers of the Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR), Selous Scouts composed of black and white Rhodesians, Grey's Scouts-horse cavalry, the Rhodesian Air Force, and the Rhodesia Regiment among others.  Since they document a virtually unknown piece of world history, I highly recommend their viewing. These were gallant soldiers, black and white, defending their homes and their way of life.

Rhodesian Light Infantry - "The Saints"

The Rhodesian Bush War - The Air War (1966-1980)

Finishing up our interview, Major Lamprecht took the receipt from our airline tickets for reimbursement.  He asked me to drop off our passports to get our residence permits.  Finally, he welcomed me to the Rhodesian Army, saying that it would be about three-four weeks before my training would begin.  He suggested that we find a place to stay quickly and spend the next few weeks touring Rhodesia—finally having that long-delayed honeymoon.

I commented that I had some work to get in shape since Salisbury was several thousand feet above sea level.  He smiled and made a remark that I misunderstood with the British clip of his accent. 

I thought I heard, “Well, you look fat!”   

I responded that I needed to lose a few pounds from traveling.  Then I realized that he had said that I looked “fit” meaning “in good shape.”

I really was feeling guilty about that breakfast!

We both chuckled when we realized the confusion.  I thanked him and wandered out, a little humiliated by my own idiotic guilt.  I was with people who were fighting for the survival of their way of life.  I was still thinking about breakfast like a typical tourist!

Next:  26 — A Rhodesian "Rebel" I Loved (Salisbury, Rhodesia:  Dec 1976)

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