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Horrors and honours

While few can doubt the military effectiveness of the Selous Scouts’ clandestine operations, the political and human fallout was often disastrous. A devastating cross-border raid conducted in Mozambique in 1976 illustrates this duality. Though the operation was regarded as a military success, it led to horrors such as hospital patients being burned alive in their beds and elicited international condemnation.

On the night of 8 August 1976, a Rhodesian column commanded by Captain Robert Warraker raced deep into hostile territory in Mozambique. Their target: a 4 000-strong guerrilla training base at Nyadzonya. The operation was in response to a ZANLA raid days earlier that had left four Rhodesian soldiers dead.

Warraker’s column consisted of 85 Scouts in four Ferret armoured cars and seven armoured Unimogs disguised as belonging to the People’s Forces of Liberation of Mozambique (FPLM), the armed forces of the governing Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO). With a turned former ZANLA commander, Moses Morrison Nyati, showing them the way, the pseudo-FPLM column simply breezed into the FPLM-ZANLA training camp at Nyadzo­nya. After Nyati blew a whistle, signalling the guerrillas to muster, the Rhodesians mowed them down with heavy 20 mm cannon and other weapons.

The raid, known as Operation Eland, remains one of the most controversial military actions of the Rhodesian Bush War: the Rhodesians claimed they killed 300 ZANLA and 30 FPLM guerrillas, but later evidence suggests the death toll was actually 1 028 ZANLA members, mostly trainees.1 It has been termed a ‘false-flag massacre’.

As Lawrence Cline notes: ‘Militarily, it was a remarkable feat. Unfortunately, the camp was formally registered with the United Nations (UN) as a refugee camp. Also, even by Reid-Daly’s account, most of those killed were unarmed guerrillas standing in formation for a parade. To make matters worse, the camp hospital was set afire by the rounds fired by the Scouts, burning alive all the patients. The international condemnation of this raid almost certainly outweighed its military success in the long term.’

Yet, in the eyes of the Scouts, Operation Eland validated the pseudo-ops strategy of using turned guerrillas to give accurate targeting information – allowing for punishing assaults on the enemy. Warraker was awarded the Silver Cross of Rhodesia for this action, his citation claiming 300 to 400 dead.2

Meanwhile, Captain Chris Schulenburg would shortly become one of only two Rhodesians ever awarded the Grand Cross of Valour. His medal citation3 states that Schulenburg, accompanied by Sergeant Stephen Mpofu, conducted four recon parachute drops into Mozambique to secure targeting intelligence for Rhodesian military strikes and to sabotage FRELIMO and ZANU bases.

In the first example cited, in October 1976, Schulenburg and Mpofu were dropped 80 km inside Mozambique to reconnoitre a large FRELIMO/ZANU base, pass on information to a Rhodesian armoured assault column, and to sabotage the road and railway south of the base to prevent its being reinforced once the column attacked. The column was delayed, threatening the Recce team’s limited water and food supplies, but Schulenburg refused a resupply, which could have compromised his position. The column entered Mozambique on 1 November 1976. As soon as the fighting started, the two-man team sabotaged the road, rail, and telephone systems, but then, exceeding his orders, Schulenburg decided to draw enemy troops away from the defence of the base by revealing himself and Mpofu. The two drew the enemy into an ambush but came under withering fire and were soon pursued by some 50 guerrillas, forcing them to split up and hide until they could be extracted the next morning.

In another mission, on 10 January 1977, Schulenburg’s team placed flight-approach and bomb-drop marker flares at exact locations at a large enemy base believed to contain a thousand guerrillas preparing to infiltrate into Rhodesia. To accomplish this, they had to move undetected in the dark on an almost featureless plain between enemy outposts. The base was successfully bombed, killing ten guerrillas and wounding 102. The citation stated it was significant that ‘the vast majority of the wounded were amputees’, meaning they could not continue as guerrillas.

On subsequent raids, Schulenburg’s team, together with other Selous Scouts teams, destroyed 220 km of railway line and four locomotives complete with trains. The citation reads: ‘In the execution of these tasks, Schulenburg has once again demonstrated extraordinary powers of tenacity, single-mindedness of purpose, and an ability to sustain the extremes of mental and physical pressure. Above all, throughout these tasks, which have involved a high-risk factor in dangerous and lonely circumstances, he has displayed a brand of cold, raw courage which has inspired members of his unit and served as an example to all.’

Mpofu was awarded the Silver Cross of Rhodesia for his actions in Schulenburg’s team, as well as for another mission in which he had to creep to within 15 m of an enemy outpost deep in Mozambique to overhear the conversation of enemy guerrillas and correctly identify their numbers and affiliation. His citation states: ‘Mpofu has proven to be an invaluable member of the Selous Scouts reconnaissance team. Over a series of hazardous operations, he has displayed continuous courage of a high order in difficult circumstances.’4

Also to receive the Silver Cross was Corporal Martin Chikondo, for a series of dangerous pseudo-operations, including one in October 1973 in which he had brazenly approached a guerrilla team of about ten men, attempting to lure them towards a planned killing ground. However, the guerrillas grew suspicious and Chikondo opened fire, killing two and wounding one. In another incident in November 1973, Chikondo had initiated a conversation in the bush with a guerrilla team leader when he became aware that a rebel machine gun was trained on him. He killed the guerrilla leader, precipitating heavy fire on his team from the guerrillas. Remaining ‘perfectly cool and using his tactical skills to best advantage’, Chikondo extracted his team without injury.5

At the same March 1978 medal parade during which the Scouts Recces were honoured, Majors Neil Kriel and Bert Sachse were both awarded the military version of the OLM (Officer of the Legion of Merit). Sachse was honoured for his role as an operations controller, directing units that killed 101 guerrillas on Rhodesian territory in the period from September 1974 to April 1976. In addition, he personally conducted numerous sabotage raids. Sachse was commended for his ‘fine qualities of leadership in difficult and trying circumstances, often at great risk to himself’, and for his ‘coolness under fire and determination to succeed’.6

Surpassing even Sachse’s record as an operations controller, however, was Kriel. As with Sachse, running operations was not a hands-off affair. Kriel personally visited units in the field, travelling with only one escort through dangerous areas by night. ‘The nature of these operations calls for thorough, detailed research, meticulous planning, a high degree of initiative and imagination, and an unorthodox military approach. Kriel has displayed these qualities in high measure,’ his citation reads.7

Kriel’s Recce Troop teams pinpointed the locations of some 600 guerrillas and in the ‘subsequent reaction to this information by Fire Force [helicopter-deployed rapid-insertion teams] or Selous Scouts in the Darwin area from June 1974 to June 1976, 150 [enemy] were killed and sixty-three captured.’

Kriel was also cited for personally commanding an eight-man Selous Scouts team that destroyed the ZAPU headquarters in Francistown, Botswana, on the night of 18 November 1976. The citation reads that Kriel ‘displayed fine qualities of leadership, coupled with determination, and his flair for the unorthodox approach has produced an extremely high kill rate’.

Among the Selous Scouts’ other medal recipients whom we will encounter later was Major Mattheus J ‘Boet’ Swart, a square-jawed, clean-shaven officer who had retired as a squadron leader in the Rhodesian Air Force in 1971 but rejoined the military in 1974, serving the Rhodesian Light Infantry as 2IC (second-in-command) and often acting as joint ops commander at Mount Darwin. During this time, ‘the RLI inflicted heavy casualties upon the enemy and the kill rate per contact for this period has not been bettered to this day,’ his OLM citation reads.8

Joining the Selous Scouts on 18 August 1975, Swart held various command positions and led several operations against FRELIMO in Gaza province, Mozambique, being wounded in one operation. His citation concludes: ‘In the course of conducting operations in the RLI and the Selous Scouts, he has been responsible for the elimination of 320 terrorists.’

Meanwhile, collaboration between the South Africans and the Rhodesians had intensified, driven in part by the SADF’s interest in ‘pseudo-operations, small-team reconnaissance operations and the use of armed vehicle columns to execute cross-border raids’. It escalated from early 1 Recce operations with C-Squadron SAS in 19749 to Recce training with the Selous Scouts in 1976 and static-line and freefall parachute training for the Scouts alongside the Recces in South Africa.10 From late 1977 until June 1978, C-Squadron SAS was augmented by the Recces under the cover of D-Squadron, consisting of Alpha Group (1 Recce) and Bravo Group (5 Recce), which conducted joint and stand-alone ops in southeastern Rhodesia and into Gaza province, and later in the Lake Kariba area under Operation Splinter. Six members of D-Squadron were killed in action during the Recces’ deployments to Rhodesia/Zimbabwe-Rhodesia.

Among those in D-Squadron were two operators who will play a key role in this story: Lieutenant André ‘Diedies’ Diedericks of 1 Recce, with his slick bowl-cut hair, arrow-straight moustache and piercing eyes, and pint-sized, thin-moustached Corporal Neves Thomas ‘Balthazar’ Matias of 5 Recce.

Born in Pretoria on 7 December 1955, Diedericks had enlisted for training at 3 South African Infantry Battalion in Potchefstroom as a national-service rifleman on 7 January 1974. He was so impressed by a Recce recruitment team lead by the towering Captain Malcolm Kinghorn, who had shown the trainees a film on the Rhodesian SAS, that he applied to go through the gruelling selection process.

Diedericks took the oath as a Permanent Force member on 31 May 1974 and later that year qualified as a Recce operator at Fort Doppies. The following year, he qualified as an attack diver, then took part in Operation Savannah, the SADF’s incursion into Angola to attempt to topple the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the Marxist–Leninist government that had installed itself in Luanda after defeating the rival National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA). He received an Honoris Crux medal for valour as a 1 Recce corporal after directing artillery fire from a forward observation post at the critical Battle of Bridge 14 on 2 December 1975.

Hailing from Lobito in Angola, Neves Matias, on the other hand, was a former FNLA guerrilla. Following the FNLA’s defeat by the MPLA in early 1976, many of its guerrillas were absorbed into the SADF, mostly into Jan Breytenbach’s 32 Battalion. A splinter FNLA faction, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), under Jonas Savimbi, remained in the field and went from being an enemy of the SADF to its key ally in the Border War.

After 5 Recce was established on 5 December 1976, Matias and many other former FNLA fighters transferred to an old farmhouse and World War II military airfield at Dukuduku in northeastern Zululand for Recce selection. Diedericks and Matias would meet in D-Squadron in southeastern Rhodesia in 1978. From July to September of that year, the young lieutenant was in charge of teams of ten to fifteen D-Squadron SAS (actually Recce) operators who would parachute into battle. Among his teammates was Matias, who Diedericks recalled was ‘rated as one of the best operators. On several occasions, I saw him in action during contacts with the enemy. I was impressed with his calm and calculated attitude.’11

Diedericks later received the Chief of the Defence Force Commendation Medal (later renamed the Military Merit Medal) for his D-Squadron actions, including his unit’s killing of guerrilla fighters in combat, and for safely evacuating a wounded operator. Diedericks later worked at the Army College in Pretoria, then served as Officer Commanding 21 SA Infantry Battalion at Doorn­kop, west of Johannesburg. He died of cancer on 7 May 2005, two years before his autobiography was published.