Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0423/04238.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 34KB | 537 lines

$Unique_ID{COW04238}
$Pretitle{371}
$Title{Zimbabwe
Chapter 5B.   The Armed Forces: Adjusting to New Realities}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Frederick Ehrenreich}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{military
forces
rhodesian
army
war
african
guerrillas
white
zanla
air}
$Date{1982}
$Log{}
Country:     Zimbabwe
Book:        Zimbabwe, A Country Study
Author:      Frederick Ehrenreich
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1982

Chapter 5B.   The Armed Forces: Adjusting to New Realities

     In 1982 the Zimbabwe Defence Force was in the midst of a transition as
the former Rhodesian Security Forces and the former guerrilla armies were
adjusting to their reconstitution into a single military organization under a
unified command. The primary mission of the defense force was to defend
Zimbabwe against outside enemies and, like its Rhodesian antecedent, to back
up the national police in the maintenance of internal security. But in
actuality the main task of the Zimbabwe Defence Force was the effort to
integrate its component parts. Success in this endeavor would support national
unity; failure could break it. In mid-1982 most observers were cautiously
optimistic, but the long-term result of the amalgamation effort could not be
determined with certainty.

     Thirty months after independence the national army had a personnel
strength of about 49,000-down from 60,000 six months earlier-with the
headquarters of major units located in five of the country's major cities. The
air force was authorized a strength of 2,900, over twice the size of the
service during the civil war, but it was largely composed of trainees and
nontechnical ground personnel. Former guerrillas made up the bulk of the armed
forces' manpower. Almost all of the more than 7,000 Africans who had served
with the Rhodesian army and air force remained; but of the whites who formerly
dominated the armed forces, less than 1,000 of 6,000 remained in the regular
military establishment, and about half of them were in the air force. During
the 1980s it was expected that the character of the Zimbabwe Defence Force
would continue to change as white personnel departed, as other soldiers were
gradually demobilized and, Zimbabwean officials hoped, as it assumed the
identity and military effectiveness of a unified establishment.

Development Before 1965

     Some observers trace the development of the modern armed forces to the
1890s when officers trained in British and South African military doctrine led
the Pioneer Column of white settlers from the Cape Colony northward to what
later became Salisbury. Armed with rifles, machine guns, cannons, and other
weapons, the few hundred settlers and soldier-police of the British South
Africa Company were able to defeat much larger numbers of African warriors
when they moved into Matabeleland in 1893.

     Other observers, including many who served in the guerrilla armies in the
civil war of the 1970s, prefer to link modern Zimbabwe's military development
to the bloody African military resistance to settler rule that reached its
height in 1896 and 1897. The uprising, which spread from the Ndebele to the
previously peaceful Shona and resulted in considerable loss of life on all
sides, proved to be the last major African armed challenge to white rule until
the 1960s.

     In 1896 the soldier-police were removed from the direct control and
employ of the company, and their name was changed from the British South
Africa Company's Police to British South Africa Police (BSAP). After their
change of status in 1896, they continued to function as a military as well as
a police organization, participating as military units in the Anglo-Boer War
(1899-1902). In 1900 the still relatively small settlements had 1,700 men
under arms in support of the British cause in southern Africa.

     BSAP units also served Britain in German South-West Africa and German
East Africa during World War I, assisting in the defeat of German forces on
the African continent. During the 1920s and 1930s the military role was
shifted from the BSAP to the British defense staff and to territorial troops
called to duty when needed. The colonial government during this period also
appropriated money to form an air training unit that became the nucleus of the
air force.

     In World War II military service was compulsory for white men between
eighteen and forty-five years of age, and some 6,000 of them-two-thirds of the
white male population between fifteen and forth-five-served overseas on active
duty. The Southern Rhodesian Air Force was absorbed into the Royal Air Force,
where it performed with distinction and suffered a 20 percent loss rate. White
troops in a unit known as the Rhodesia Regiment spearheaded several difficult
campaigns, especially in Ethiopia and North Africa. Two thousand Southern
Rhodesian Africans were also enlisted into a separate regiment, the RAR, which
was commanded by white officers and achieved notably good combat records in
the campaign to recapture Burma.

     When the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was formed in 1953, the
military units of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zambia),
and Nyasaland (present-day Malawi) were combined. As Southern Rhodesia was the
dominant member of the federation, its officers were the senior commanders in
charge of all federation units. During this period Southern Rhodesians served
overseas on behalf of the British Empire, most notably in Malaya where
counterinsurgency tactics later used against Zimbabwean guerrillas were
developed.

     When the federation was dissolved in 1963, Southern Rhodesia retained all
of the forces that had been raised in its territory-3,400 of the 7,000 men who
had been in the army of the disintegrating federation. Over the objections of
the black leadership of soon-to-be independent Northern Rhodesia and
Nyasaland, as well as other African heads of state, it also kept the majority
of the men and almost all the aircraft in the Royal Rhodesian Air Force, the
air arm of the short-lived federation; most of the 1,100 personnel in the air
force had originally been from Southern Rhodesia.

Civil War and the Three Armies

     The civil war, which lasted for roughly seven years until the end of
1979, resulted in the formation of two major guerrilla armies, the growth of
the Rhodesian Security Forces, and the militarization of the society. As a
result of government policy to integrate the three forces, the Zimbabwean
military establishment in 1982 was composed almost exclusively of veterans
from the conflict. The structure and performance of the postwar forces in
large measure had resulted from the different wartime experiences of their
component parts. It was expected that the political and ethnic diversity of
the veteran soldiers would continue to shape the character of Zimbabwe's
military for at least several years.

Guerrilla Forces

     The guerrilla armies that fought to topple the white Rhodesian government
were an outgrowth of groups that conducted limited random political agitation
and violence for African political rights in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Guerrilla operations began after Zambia's independence in 1964 and, at first,
typically consisted of infiltrating a column of soldiers from bases there.
Black nationalist fighters were forced to cross the confining Zambezi River
valley or Lake Kariba where Rhodesian Security Forces concentrated their
efforts and where many of the few local Africans were unsympathetic to them.
Often lacking clear objectives, they were invariably routed by mobile
Rhodesian troops and their air support or were demoralized and deserted.

     With the failure of the African nationalists' policy of inducing "fear
and despondency," military operations virtually ceased by late 1968. The
externally based nationalist leaders concentrated on rebuilding their forces
and reevaluating their tactics. To replace losses and to ensure the continued
funding of the Organization of African Unity (OAU