Death Flight. Michael Schmidt
flew according to a map that was given to them outside the window by Sachse. No logbooks are available for this flight, so the route is unknown. But it is most likely that they flew south-southeast, heading for a drop zone that was near Mapai in Gaza province, Mozambique, some 180 km from Buffalo Range.
Such a route would have taken them over the Hippo Valley North Estate, the Matimbi No 2 Tribal Trust land and the Sabi-Lundi Controlled-Hunting Area – this border zone was nicknamed the ‘Russian Front’ – before crossing the border into Gaza province. I am proposing a speculative drop zone near Mapai, as it was the heavily defended headquarters of the FPLM’s No 2 Brigade and the control centre for ZANLA – which perfectly fits the apparent objective of the flight: to poison the ZANLA and FPLM intelligence chains of command. Whatever the actual drop zone was, Pessarra’s tale continued: ‘They made the drop, returned to the air-field …14 They dropped the terrs out on the parachutes; Desblé pulled the stuff [static lines] in. They never spoke to the pilots again.’
Pessarra would leave the Rhodesian Army in about 1980 and, like many parachute-qualified foreigners in Rhodesian service, joined the SADF’s 44 Parachute Brigade at its Tempe base in Bloemfontein. After a brief career there in the early 1980s, which I confirmed with the retired former Officer Commanding 1 Parachute Battalion, Pessarra claims he then became a police informant on the far right, providing information on the murder of two soldiers during the theft of weapons from the Tempe base by the shadowy Die Volk (The Nation) group in June 1998. He then returned home to Texas where he adopted the lifestyle of a heavyset biker.
Asked about the Buffalo Range incident, Sachse said: ‘Jean Desblé? It’s starting to ring a bell … I know we did things like that; we actually dropped guys … I know the parachute thing, it’s ringing some sort of bell … Ja, it’s ringing a bell, but sorry, it’s not very clear. I can remember something like that in fact, but I don’t think that particular operation … on that date was actually planned from where we were [at Buffalo Range].15 We did similar sorts of operations where people were “left behind”, if one can use that expression, in various states. And this one you’re talking about now does start ringing a bell – but I’m not too sure of the facts, and why it was done … or whether they were actually dropped … I can recall an incident where we actually put guys in by helicopter … you can call them doped … it’s very hard to talk about this sort of thing … the guys who were left behind were people that were already, put it this way, gone to meet their maker, and dressed up and sorted out and disposed of or dispatched [i.e. dropped by parachute] or sent home, wherever they were sent.’
Sachse said the purpose of such operations was similar to that of Operation Mincemeat during World War II, which involved dumping a John Doe corpse dressed as a Royal Marine officer whose briefcase contained false information about a pending Allied invasion of Greece and Sardinia. The body was dumped off the coast of Spain, where it was certain to wash ashore, the intention being to divert the Nazis from the true invasion target of Sicily. Likewise, the Selous Scouts would insert poisoned corpses, people ‘of suitable backgrounds’, as chemical or biological warfare carriers into guerrilla-controlled areas.
‘They were taken out of the cages [cells] and put in those areas … but you … couldn’t keep a stiff for three or four days whilst you’re planning. The [enemy] contacts [in the Chiredzi area] weren’t that frequent that you always had “fresh meat” so to speak … you’d [have to] send them back [to their home district] the same night; the planning cycle takes time and you’ve got to have the right individuals and they have to be suitably chosen … If you want to put it in very broad terms you can say, “Ja, we found the guy in the morgue” – that’ll cover a multitude of sins. In an organisation like this, the Scouts, a lot of things went on that one doesn’t want to speak too openly about because, like any organisation, people come and go; a lot of people go under very strange circumstances – or under controlled circumstances – and that was very much part of the war and one of the responsibilities of some of the Scouts, and from there, the responsibility of SB. I for one – I will just clarify the situation now – was dead against that sort of thing and [Mac] McGuinness and their … guys, they handled that, that was their side.’
Some poisoned corpses were even left at railway lines to fake an accident with a train, he said. Buffalo Range did not keep CBW agents in its armoury, Sachse said. Such dangerous substances were rather delivered ‘by courier’ from Bindura.
The unauthorised use of the five parachutes caused great consternation at New Sarum the next day, and Air Force brass and an Air Rhodesia manager flew down to Buffalo Range to interview all involved, which led to an official board of inquiry – at which Pessarra told his tale, leaving out the part where he had sneaked on board the plane for its mysterious flight.
The Buffalo Range incident is crucial, as it ties together the elements that would soon define Delta 40: Selous Scouts pseudo-operators and South African combat medics united in a common purpose involving captured enemy guerrillas, clandestine flights, and some type of sedative and/or poison (the ‘pale horse’ of South Africa’s planned counterinsurgency apocalypse). Another element present at the Buffalo Range incident that was also linked to the founding of D40 appears to have been – as we shall see – the CIA, though the CIA later turned away from its support for the SADF’s war in Angola. A year later, these six elements would recombine – to devastating and deadly long-term effect.
PART II:
A secret killing machine takes shape
7
Black-ops boon for South Africa
By 1979, the old order in Rhodesia was hurtling towards its end, leaving many of its staunchest military defenders stuck in a no-man’s land where they would be ripe for the picking by the South African Defence Force, which was increasingly hungry for counter-insurgency expertise.
South Africa’s hawkish military strategists realised the writing was on the wall for the unrecognised country of ‘Zimbabwe-Rhodesia’, which came into being as part of an attempt by Ian Smith to gain international recognition by surrendering power to Bishop Abel Muzorewa’s moderate black United African National Council (UANC) on 1 June 1978. The attempt failed, as it excluded the ZANU and ZAPU extremists upon whose inclusion the international community insisted.
Meanwhile, the tempo of South Africa’s own Border War in Angola was speeding up. Guerrillas from the Peoples’ Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), the armed wing of the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO), backed by conventional forces of the People’s Armed Forces of Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) and their Soviet, Cuban and Eastern Bloc allies, were launching increasingly daring raids into South West Africa. This pressure led to the formation of two key South African pseudo-operations units and one feared counterinsurgency battalion. In each case, the earlier British, French, and Portuguese colonial experiences and the contemporary Rhodesian experience would prove vital in determining the operational logic and functions of the units involved.
According to Lawrence Cline, a 1978 study by South Africa’s Directorate of Military Intelligence showed that 68% of all insurgent deaths in Rhodesia could be attributed to the Selous Scouts: ‘With this record, the Scouts emerged as the most potent factor in Rhodesia’s counterinsurgency campaign.’ This made the Scouts a subject of intense fascination for the South African military, which continued, as we have seen, to conduct Recce operations alongside it.
With white rule dead on the vine in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, the battle-hardened Rhodesian military and police forces turned their eyes south. For some, it was not merely a bolt-hole safe from the perceived threats of looming black-majority rule under a radical Soviet-backed regime, but also a redoubt from which to continue waging the battle to maintain white supremacy and/or defeat communist insurgency.1 The Selous Scouts’ Major Bert Sachse was one of those who made the move, joining 1 Reconnaissance Commando at the Bluff in Durban in January 1980. However, the final act had yet to be played out in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and he was sent back as part of D-Squadron SAS for a last series of actions aimed at clearing designated zones of guerrillas, thus attempting to alter the balance of forces.2
In October 1979, Lieutenant-Colonel Pat Armstrong,