induce death ‘within a few hours after the onset of symptoms’.
There is little doubt that it also used the Shell organochloride pesticide Telodrin – originally intended to poison baboons – on clothing. Prior to death, Telodrin caused ‘convulsions, seizures, coma, and respiratory depression’. Chillingly, the poisoned clothing was wrapped in bundles and distributed to stores, whose owners were instructed to put the items on their top shelves and never under any circumstances sell them. The intention was that when guerrillas raided the stores, as frequently occurred, they alone would take the contaminated clothing, but the deadly risk to the general population is obvious.
To poison canned food, maize meal, beverages (especially beer), medicine, and virility tablets, the CBW operatives used thallium sulphate, ‘a mercury-based poison which caused a terrible and painful death’, and most probably Warfarin, a blood-thinning agent that in sufficiently large doses causes death by severe haemorrhage. Cross notes a dramatic increase in Harari Hospital medical reports of Parathion poisoning of unknown origin in 1977. He also details the admission of 35 ZANLA insurgents to the Central Hospital at Beira in Mozambique in April 1978. Fifteen of them subsequently died, apparently of Warfarin poisoning.
Biological pathogens were also produced – but not at Bindura. These included cholera, botulinum, and, allegedly, anthrax. Wells and rivers were poisoned, mostly in Mozambique, with security forces given frequent updates on which ones to avoid.
The Rhodesian CBW programme tested its products at the Mount Darwin fort after it fell out of operational use by the Scouts, and from 1979 botulinum was produced there. According to Cross, ‘indications are that the Rhodesians certainly did experiment on captured guerrillas who could not be turned’. He mentions the Zimbabwean government’s announcement of the discovery in mid-2004 of some 5 000 bodies in a disused mine shaft 28 km from Mount Darwin and in mass graves found in the area – though the bodies reported probably included previously undiscovered combat remains.11
Cross estimates, using a 28 June 1977 Combined Operations report of 809 guerrilla deaths due to poisoning until that date, that insurgent deaths due to poisoning were between 1 239 and 2 427 from 1977 to 1979. However, civilians, including farm workers, were also often the victims, mostly after finding and wearing abandoned contaminated clothing, eating poisoned canned food, or drinking infected water, and the death toll in Mozambique and southeastern Rhodesia soared into the hundreds. Death bonuses were regularly paid to those who distributed poisoned items, based on verified resulting deaths.
Cross notes, however, that indigenous knowledge of natural toxins far surpassed the knowledge of the CBW team and was used both to punish guerrilla gangs who extorted villagers, and to take vengeance on civilian rivals in ‘muti’ and witchcraft killings.
Based on clinical and epidemiological data, Cross did a detailed study of the Rhodesian anthrax outbreak. He concluded that it was in fact a natural outbreak exacerbated by the collapse of rural health and veterinary services in the closing phase of the war.
Several members of the Rhodesian CBW programme would seemingly reap a bitter harvest later in their lives.
Wolhuter and his wife emigrated to South Africa when Rhodesia gained independence as Zimbabwe in 1980. Cross states that she ‘died of a cancer she believed was due to her handling of chemicals in Rhodesia. Wolhuter died of a similar cancer soon after. Before his death, Wolhuter passed on documents related to the Rhodesian CBW effort to Peter Stiff.’
Secretive and embittered at having lost both of his legs, allegedly due to the poisonous chemicals he handled at Bindura, Vic Noble went on to work at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg. He mostly refused to discuss his CBW work, dying in Cape Town on 8 December 2011 after a long illness.
Robert Symington, Rhodesia’s ‘Professor Death’, moved to Cape Town in 1981 and died a year later at the age of 57, reportedly of a heart attack. According to Cross, Symington was on sabbatical from the University of Zimbabwe (as it had been renamed) and was working at the University of Cape Town (UCT). He apparently had no plans to return to Zimbabwe at the time of his death. ‘According to a former BSAP officer, Symington experimented extensively (“tinkered”) with poisons and toxins and had nearly died once of a laboratory accident involving a poison … The officer further stated that Symington’s death in South Africa was due to another laboratory accident involving poisons.’
4
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
