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Zimbabwe targetted by sabouters
Posted: Thu, 09 Mar 2006 17:00:53 +0200
Zimbabwe has been a target of former Rhodesian forces who have tried on many occasion to sabotage and destabilize the country since its attainment of independence in 1980.
Newsnet chronicles the relentless terrorist and subversive activities by the former Rhodesians which include bombings ,assassinations and attacks at military installations in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe has been a target of former Rhodesian forces who have tried on many occasion to sabotage and destabilize the country since its attainment of independence in 1980
Newsnet chronicles the relentless terrorist and subversive activities by the former Rhodesians which include bombings ,assassinations and attacks at military installations in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe’s independence was received with joy by many black people who had suffered under colonial oppression.
But the joy was not shared by the majority of Rhodesians who had fought tooth and nail to maintain an unjust system of racial, political and economic oppression.
The whites spurned the government’s policy of reconciliation and in association with the former Rhodesian element which had relocated to apartheid South Africa began a campaign to bring down the black majority government of Cde Robert Mugabe.
In August 1981 ex Rhodesian agents aided by their apartheid South African counterparts attacked the Zanu PF Headquarters, killing 7 people and injuring over a hundred others.
Also in the same year 4 former Rhodesian soldiers on a sabotage mission were killed inside Matabeleland in a contact with the Zimbabwean army.
The ex Rhodesians shot dead ANC’s chief representative in Zimbabwe Joe Gqabi in 1981.
In July 1982 the former Rhodesian agents bombed the airforce of Zimbabwe’s fleet of 13 aircraft at Thornhill air base in Gweru in an sabotage act to neutralise the country’s air defense.
In August 1981 Inkomo barracks was sabotaged by SA and former Rhodesian agents, destroying ammunition worth over $50 million.
In the eighties the agents again teamed up with those in South Africa to destabilize Mozambique and Zimbabwe by backing the dissident RENAMO group in Mozambique.
Renamo made cross border raids into Manicaland in an attempt to create chaos in the newly independent republic.
Sabotage and destabilization activities by the Rhodesian element intensified in the late eighties. In 1988 the agents Mike Smith and Kit Bawden ,Kevin Woods who was head of the Central Intelligence Organisation in Bulawayo and Philip Conjwayo set off a car bomb in Bulawayo which killed one person and injured several African National Congress ANC cadres operating in Zimbabwe.
On the 18th of November 1988, agents Woods, Smith and Conjwayo were sentenced to death for the Bulawayo car bomb attack.
Woods, Smith and Bawden were also sentenced to 40 years imprisonment for the car bombing of another ANC facility in Harare.
On 28th October 1993, on appeal, Agents Woods, Smith and Conjwayo had their death sentence commuted to life imprisonment, and Bawden's 40 years cut to 25 years imprisonment.
Going by these attempts and the arrest of several others suspects including that of former Rhodesian servicemen Peter Hitschman and Roy Bennet, together with MDC legislator Giles Mutsekwa and a white farmer , all linked to the Zimbabwe Freedom Movement and the opposition party in connection with the arms cache, Zimbabwe’s security and defense forces should be on high alert at all times. |
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