1951 to 1953. Its staunch anti-communism would prove as influential as its unconventional warfare tactics.
The roots of Rhodesian pseudo-operations
During late 1971 and early 1972, Sachse, by then a lieutenant, was briefed to conduct pseudo-operations against ZAPU in Zambia, under a Rhodesian Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) controller named Jack Berry, assisted by Detective Inspector Michael ‘Mac’ McGuinness of the Terrorist Desk of Special Branch of the BSAP.4 These were the first of many Rhodesian pseudo-operations against enemy targets in Zambia, Botswana, and Mozambique that increasingly shifted from pure intelligence-gathering to combat strikes.
The Special Branch (SB) was the section of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) that tracked potential threats to law and order and collaborated closely with the South African, colonial Portuguese, and – prior to UDI – British and American intelligence services. Initially, the C-Squadron was the Rhodesians’ only special forces unit and the SB/CIO the only entities flirting with experimental pseudo-operations. As Cline writes, ‘Police made an early attempt to use pseudo-operations in October 1966, but the effort was stillborn. The first formal pseudo-team was formed in January 1973 as an all-African team, with two African policemen and four “turned” insurgents. The early teams did succeed in bringing in some valuable intelligence, but their overall impact was slight.’
Then, in November 1973, in the midst of a lengthy Rhodesian counter-infiltration campaign in the north of the country called Operation Hurricane, a new special forces unit built specifically for pseudo-operations was set up. It was founded by Captain Ron Reid-Daly, who was coaxed out of retirement after a two-decade-long career. The unit was named the Selous Scouts, in honour of the colourful colonial-era explorer Frederick Courteney Selous, on whom novelist H Rider Haggard had modelled his Allan Quatermain character.
‘The original strength of the Selous Scouts was about 120,’ Cline writes, ‘with all officers being white and with the highest rank initially available for Africans being colour sergeant,’ though one founding member, Sergeant-Major 1st Class (WO1) M Stanlake Mavengere, started out as company sergeant-major for the ‘African Scouts’. He would later become the black troops’ regimental sergeant-major, a formidable position in any combat regiment. The colour distinction appears to have been primarily for motivational and cultural-linguistic reasons, though the men ate, slept, fought – and died – alongside one another.
‘One major recruiting incentive for African volunteers,’ Cline writes, ‘was that their pay was nearly doubled from their normal army salaries due to special bonuses … Ultimately, the unit reached a strength of somewhere around 1 500.’ This pool of counter-insurgency expertise would later be drawn on in South Africa’s own evolving Border War.
Former operative Winston Hart recalled that the Selous Scouts were formed at an ad hoc tented base erected around a small farmhouse at the Trojan Nickel Mine. The remote location was chosen with security concerns in mind because the unit would in part consist of turned terrorists. At the base, Reid-Daly and his sidekick Jerry Strong, later a major, were ‘busy recruiting new officers: Neil Kriel, Dale Collett, Tim Bax, Keith Noble and Mick Hardy’.5
Tall, with fluffy blond hair and big, dark sideburns, Hart was to form the core of a small group of counter-terrorism Special Branch police permanently attached to the Scouts as intelligence-gatherers and interrogators. Hart had joined the uniformed branch of the Rhodesian police in 1958 and, in 1963, had transferred to the Special Branch. He said that on the SB’s Terrorist Desk, Detective Inspector Pete Stanton, nicknamed Stroppy (for obstreperous), had been ‘building up a database which included a card system on which he manually recorded all known terrorists, complete with code names and weapons’ serial numbers, a system which would later prove invaluable in the formation of the Selous Scouts.’
After four years in the field, Hart had joined Stanton and his colleagues Vic Opperman, Peter Dewe, and John ‘Bomber’ Davison on the Terrorist Desk commanded by Peter Tomlinson and reporting to Brigadier John Hickman. Hart says the use of pseudo-terrorists was one of the suggestions offered to counter terrorist infiltration, using as example the Kenyan operations run by Special Branch officer Ian Henderson. Henderson had been instrumental in the development of pseudo-gangs to undermine the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya from 1952 to 1960. Military experts have argued that it was the introduction of these gangs that turned the war in the authorities’ favour.6
The Rhodesian military had given the green light for the Terrorist Desk’s idea and three small Special Branch pseudo-operations teams were formed by white trackers and black soldiers from the Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR). They were trained in ‘the ways of terrorists’ by Stanton and given unmarked Land Rovers, Soviet AK-47 assault rifles and Tokarev pistols, and communications equipment. To get rid of the ‘scent of the city’, the men were made to sit in a smoke-filled hut.
Although largely ineffective, this early pseudo-ops concept was incorporated into the new Selous Scouts. In the Scouts, Hart and his SB team reported to Mac McGuinness, by then a superintendent. Hart himself was later trained as a parachutist by the South African Recces at Fort Doppies in the Caprivi Strip. He was personally handed his wings by Major-General Fritz Loots, commander of the Recces.
The idea for the Recces had originated with Commandant Jan Breytenbach, whose military career included stints in South Africa’s Union Defence Force tank corps and the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm. He resigned his commission as a second lieutenant in the Royal Navy when South Africa exited the Commonwealth and became a republic in 1961. He was persuaded to join the new South African Defence Force (SADF) as a parachutist.
In 1967, Breytenbach convinced SADF Chief of the Army Lieutenant-General Willem Louw to allow him to start an experimental special operations team of himself and eleven men – the ‘Dirty Dozen’ – who were then trained by the Rhodesian SAS. From June 1970, the unit was stationed at the Oudtshoorn infantry base as the Irregular Warfare Branch (IWB). It employed several cover names, including the Operational Experimental Team7 and the Alpha (later Delta) Operational Test Group.8 In 1972, it transferred to the Bluff in Durban and was formalised as 1 Reconnaissance Commando, or 1 Recce. In 1975, Breytenbach, by now a colonel, was transferred to form what became 32 Battalion, the famous deep-raiding light infantry battalion that, after the Recces, was the second-most decorated unit of the Border War.
As the Selous Scouts conducted reconnaissance of ZAPU, ZANU, and ANC bases deep into anti-white-rule Frontline States such as Zambia, the connections between the Rhodesian pseudo-operators and South African Recces would strengthen.
How to turn an insurgent
Recruits for the new Scouts – mostly black RAR soldiers – were put through their paces at the Wafa Wafa base on the shores of Lake Kariba where they had to pass a gruelling endurance-and-bushcraft qualifying course. Many of the successful candidates were put through parachute courses to earn their wings either in Rhodesia or in South Africa.
Hart said the initial intention was to recruit guerrillas already in detention, but after interviewing several, he realised none had knowledge that was sufficiently current, so he and Reid-Daly abandoned the idea in favour of gaining new potential recruits.9
The freshly minted Selous Scouts soon relocated to new barracks at Inkomo, named the André Rabie Barracks after one of Hart’s Special Branch pseudo-terrorists killed in a friendly-fire accident. Two corrugated-iron ‘forts’ were built for them to operate out of at Bindura and Mount Darwin in the northeast of the country, then at other locales.
The forts, with walls between 4,3 m and 5,3 m high, were based on a rectangular floor plan with a courtyard in the centre, around which were clustered (in the example of the Buffalo Range fort) a mess hall and kitchen, ops room with neighbouring radio room, six bedrooms with their own ablutions for the officers and non-commissioned officers, a barracks for the troops with
