ZIPRA’s NSO
ELLIOTT SIBANDA, THE ZIPRA MAN captured by Selous Scouts in Botswana, had undergone successful stomach surgery before revealing the existence and location of ZIPRA’s Department of National Security and Order (NSO). This fancy name was for ZIPRA’s central intelligence organisation that was structured and controlled by Moscow’s KGB. Commanding NSO was Nkomo’s number-two man Dumiso Dabengwa (the ‘Black Russian’), who was reputed to be a KGB colonel.
The SAS was given the task of taking out the NSO, situated in a suburb of Lusaka southeast of the city centre. Planning commenced immediately to meet the following requirements:
1. Capture Dumiso Dabengwa, his deputy Victor Mlambo and the counter-intelligence officer Gordon Butshe.
2. Capture all radio and cipher equipment.
3. Capture all documents and
4. Destroy everything else.
The SAS planners were acutely aware that their return to Lusaka so soon after the attacks on Nkomo’s house and Liberation Centre was fraught with perils. The Zambian Army and Air Force were expected to be alert and better prepared and ZIPRA would surely be fully primed to repel attacks at every one of its many facilities in and around Lusaka. Surprise alone was the key. The biggest question was, “What if the unidentified mole in Rhodesia lets the cat out of the bag?” So many ideas were explored on how to get to target secretly and safely. Consideration was given to many modes of transport such as a furniture removal pantechnicon with motorbikes aboard, railway wagons, hijacked cars, maybe Sabres again, parachuting in and so on. However, CO SAS, Lieutenant-Colonel Garth Barrett, who would command the operation, discarded these in favour of going in and coming out in our newly acquired Cheetah helicopters. Consequently, Squadron Leader Ted Lunt, OC 8 Squadron, was brought into the planning to assess the feasibility of doing this.
Running a Canberra photo-recce of the NSO target was discounted, as this would warn the enemy of an impending action. Instead, old survey photographs were dug up which showed NSO buildings and surrounds to be just as Elliott Sibanda remembered them. So, despite Brian Robinson’s concerns, there was no alternative but to use them for planning. The photographs showed a house and two office blocks surrounded by a security wall with a road running past the front gate. Unoccupied plots surrounded the rear and sides and, according to Elliott Sibanda, Dumiso Dabengwa and his men actually lived in the house and should be there when the attack went in.
Ted Lunt, who would lead the Cheetah formation, was satisfied that there was plenty of space to land the four helicopters allocated for deployment and recovery of the force. His main concerns centred on fuel endurance, night navigation for a dawn attack, and air defences that included MiG jets and British Rapier missiles. The Director-General Operations at Air HQ was Air Commodore Norman Walsh who, unlike his predecessors, involved himself deeply in the detailed planning, would be flying in the Command Dakota with Wing Commander Peter McLurg and SAS Major Graham Wilson.
By this time the Cheetahs had been stripped down to their last components and painstakingly rebuilt by a team of 8 Squadron technicians under Warrant Officer Johnny Green. To repeat what has already been said—considering that they had no technical manuals for this difficult task, it says much for dedication, ingenuity and technical expertise that all seven helicopters had been standardised and that all of Ted Lunt’s pilots were trained and ready.
Preparations for the operation, codenamed ‘Carpet’, included full-scale rehearsals using old buildings on an isolated farm west of Salisbury. Although the Cheetahs partook in these rehearsals, this could not prepare the pilots for formation without the aid of navigation lights and flying low level in very dark conditions. This they had to manage when the time came in the early hours of 26 June 1979. Included with the SAS assault and defence parties was Elliott Sibanda. Elliott’s job, using a loud-hailer, was to call upon the men inside the NSO to surrender themselves to the troops. He would then identify whoever responded.
Ted Lunt and his pilots did a great job of navigating their way from Makuti in Rhodesia to a point well to the northeast of Lusaka where they then flew west before turning south for the run to target. A diversionary attack by Hunters against FC camp, now reduced to a small ZIPRA contingent, was planned to occur a little after first light when the helicopters would be approaching that location from the north. The purpose of this attack was twofold. Firstly it was intended to draw any armed reaction to the northeast of the capital and away from the NSO in the south. Secondly, Rhodesian helicopters seen flying south from that location would appear to have come from the attack on FC camp, thereby obscuring their true mission.
Navigating the route did not work out perfectly. Probably due to an incorrect wind forecast, Ted had flown further north than planned and map-reading was almost impossible as he struggled to establish his exact position in marginal light. Because of his uncertainty, Ted asked Norman Walsh to put in the Hunter attack on FC camp on time, in the hopes the Golf bomb flashes would give him a position fix. Norman politely disallowed this, preferring Ted to be at the right point before the Hunters attacked.
The formation was running late, which was just as serious for the ground force as it was for helicopter fuel states. Norman Walsh and Graham Wilson were actually considering cancelling the operation when Ted positively identified his position. A quick assessment was made and the go-ahead was given, even though the troops would be landing twenty minutes behind schedule. The Hunters did their trick and the helicopters, now seriously low on fuel, passed FC heading for the NSO.
As the NSO came into view, everyone saw that there was a new building there, but otherwise the layout was correct. However there were more defence positions than expected, these having been established after the raid on Nkomo’s house. Whilst the Cheetah pilots concentrated on landing in their pre-planned positions, they had to put up with closing-range fire from ZIPRA and very noisy return fire from SAS troops in the cabins behind them.
As soon as the troops deplaned, the helicopters lifted off and headed south. Ted located an isolated dambo only eight minutes flying time from target and set his formation down in a box pattern with machine-guns facing out in an all-round defence posture. Engines were run down but the motors were left at idling rpm as precaution against potential starting problems. Fuel was transferred to main tanks from drums the helicopters had carried to this point. Being much lighter now than when they left Rhodesia, the helicopters were set to carry higher loads from NSO than they had delivered there. Out on the cold dambo, the helicopters waited patiently for Norman Walsh’s call to return to target.
Unbeknown to the helicopter crews, things had not gone according to plan at NSO. Some of the explosive charges intended to blow access holes through the outer security wall had failed to function causing delay in the assault on buildings. All resistance had been overcome by the time the assault force commander, Captain Martin Pearse, threw in a delayed-action bunker bomb to blow down a wall to gain access to the guard room. He had moved around the corner of the building, where he should have been completely safe from the explosion, but the quality of the building was so poor that the wall behind which Martin was sheltering collapsed on him. The death of this truly superb and much revered officer stunned everyone, though it did not prevent them from continuing to work with typical SAS efficiency.