Dear Editor,
Lest we forget, South Africa was saved by Zimbabwe. Lets not forget ANC leaders who include Thabo Mbeki were here hiding inside Zimbabwe and given special protection by the Zim government. There was a massive role played by Zimbabwe during the apartheid era for which the ANC has made announcement thanking Zimbabweans for their generosity.
Let us not forget Kevin Woods who was convicted of carrying out a VBIED attack on the ANC building in 1988 in Bulawayo. Until Al Qaeda started blowing up embassies in 1998, the Bulawayo attack was one of the most controversial bombings in Africa and even today the facts of what happened on that January night nearly 25 years ago are still disputed.
Woods had been a member of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), the Rhodesian equivalent of MI5, and had stayed with the CIO after black majority rule changed the country to Zimbabwe in 1980. However he was also recruited into the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB), which despite its innocuous name was an undercover South African Special Forces unit created to assassinate and disrupt the African National Congress (ANC). His recruiter was a former Rhodesian Special Branch officer named Gary Branfield who ran the CCB’s Zimbabwean operations. Woods was part of a team of other ex-Rhodesian servicemen directed to carry out attacks against the ANC who had begun using Zimbabwe to launch attacks into South Africa. Their most ambitious one was to target an ANC safe house in Bulawayo with a VBIED.
The plan involved the use of a proxy to drive the device to the target. For this they recruited an Zambian migrant who was deceived into believing that he was taking part in a currency scam. Most accounts say the device functioned en route to the target although it must have been close as six ANC members were injured. Another version is that the CCB team detonated it by RC as soon as it on target deliberately killing the driver. Wood’s own description is that the driver was told to park the car outside the safe house and let them know he had by sounding the horn before leaving it. They would then give him a sufficient time delay to get away before functioning it with RC, but for some reason the driver stayed in the vehicle. Wood’s version defies tactical expediency; sounding the horn and then leaving the vehicle outside a building full of operatives, who were only too aware of the South African threat against them, for several minutes in order to let an unwitting and uncommitted accomplice escape. After all these were veterans of Africa’s most vicious bush war. But in 1988 suicide bombings were still a ghastly innovation of the Middle East and the idea of the British Empire’s children, no matter how recalcitrant, using a proxy operative was too unpalatable for many to accept which probably accounts for the premature detonation explanation. It should not have been so unexpected, according to Peter Stiff, the most detailed chronicler of Southern Africa’s asymmetric wars, the Rhodesians had a history of strapping PBIEDs to turned terrorists with the threat of remote initiation if they tried to change sides or escape during operations.
Woods spent nearly 20 years in Harare’s Chikurubi Prison, thanks to the Zimbabwean government’s vigilance. – Intelmsl.com/Agencies
Shonas are idiots!!
Yes indeed. But they are so quick at attacking South Africans when they become the victims; especially the Shona people.
Shonas only see evil when its directed at them, and not when its on others.
What about this” go back to KZN” we hear about everyday – thats typically unafrican and xenophobic. And this “Andinzwi” rubbish that is so common among them?
How on earth can you prefer to know a European foreign language in the name if “necessity”; and you never feel the urge to learn just one extra black African language?
Where is your pride as an African? Where is your Pan-Africanism?
Please stop with the lies and pretences. Give us a break!!
Read and understand what I wrote above. Who told you Xenophobia is ONLY about lynching?
Albert Luthuli ANC was a Zimbabwean now there name ANC Luthuli house
You are a degenerate moron – name one Malawian or Moza who was lynched by the public in Zim for being foreign ?
Not impressive.
You shallow Matebele idiot. Msunu kayihlo.
u r just a bunch of sad tribalists.unapologetic shona hater i always tell u that if u dont want to live with us shonas,go back to zululand where your fellow zulus murder african brethren in cold blood.leave our country and go back to sa
Kill that old fool and slit his wife’s throat.
yah you are speaking the truth. In Zim the first thing people raise even from the school playground – is that ndebele, that coloured, that indian and so on. God help us treat each other with love and respect.
Tshonas only know how to put their evil Tshonas in power; but are too damn scared to remove them. Idiots!!
STOP TRYING PLAYING THE VICTIM ALWYS AND BEG FOR PPLE S MERCY…..LONG TERM SOLUTION ..LETS BE BRAVE AND SORT OUR YARDY…..
you are lying
forenaz must go, foward with zenofopbia
No – its not about sympathy. Its because you have always had an inferiority complex towards Mzansi. Check the way the Shonas treat Malawians and Mozambicans. They look down upon them, call them names Achimwene, MaBrandaya etc. Mugabe’s Malawian roots are now being emphasised by Shonas because he has become an embarrassment to them.
In the 1980s when he was Gukurahunding Mthwakazi, I never heard any Shona call Mugabe a Malawian. In fact, I didn’t even know about his Malawian connections until he turned his attention towards his kith and kin, the Shonas and started messing up the country, beating up, abducting and killing them.
Xenophobia is not only about violence against foreigners. Your attitudes and name calling speak to the same thing – Xenophobia. You are even xenophobic to your own countryman. Please spare us that pretentious good hearted nonsense!!
Stop exaggerating. Zim played a very small part in helping the ANC compared to Botswana and Mozambique. The SA Airforce never bombed Zim through out the struggle down there. Zim refused to offer guerilla bases to Mkhonto We Sizwe. So stop the lies!!
And who remembers the Chiliza bombings in the avenue.
Even ana robson banda wrote and sang about the struggle in SA (pasoweto) as we sympathised with them thats ungrateful
In the 80s even the headmistress at my former high school was a black south african Hatfield high.
We had a lot of both black and white exiles in my school and comunity we never called them foreigners we sympathized with azania then
It’s the president. He must go!!!
Its only problem of our president Mugabe must go