Zimbabwe saved South Africa during apartheid
Saved under Human Rights, Opinion, South Africa, SOUTHERN AFRICA, Zimbabwe
Tags: African National Congress, apartheid, Central Intelligence Organisation, Chikurubi Prison, Civil Cooperation Bureau, Thabo Mbeki
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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
