Representatives of the Zimbabwean nationalist movement have frequently accused the Smith's regime's Selous Scouts of perpetrating atrocities in order to discredit the liberation forces. In November last year, Edward Kazembe, who was described as having deserted from the Selous Scouts to join the guerilla army, was interviewed on the Mozambique English-medium radio programme, Voice of Zimbabwe. He said that "one of the special tasks of the Selous Scouts was to go to the operational zone disguised as freedom fighters (and to) try to find out how the freedom fighters get their support from the masses. Then they go back and tell the security forces. He said another task was to kill the local people in order to discredit the Zimbabwe People's Army".
More recently, Voice of Zimbabwe has alleged that "the racist Smith regime is now going to use other methods in a bid to confuse the people of Zimbabwe. Besides... the notorious Selous Scouts, there now are certain black paramilitary groups. Their main objective will be to present the Zimbabwe national liberation army as an unprincipled force inside Zimbabwe. We know the notorious Selous Scouts' objective is to murder and harass the unarmed Zimbabwean. They carry out operations aimed at eliminating progressive personalities, churchmen, traders and so on, who are believed to have contacts with the nation's liberation army. These latest settler regime's units have aims which are more political... In this slight change of tactics the enemy will come carrying ZANU-type weapons pretending to be a member of the people's forces. The aim is to infiltrate not only the People's Army but even the strong cells that (?have been built) in order to facilitate the prosecution of the armed struggle. This goes for all the other areas in Zimbabwe, in towns and in the rural areas".
One of the murders for which Albert Sumbo Ncube claimed responsibility was that of Mr. Arthur Ross Cumming, who died on 8 November 1976 at his farm near Victoria. According to Soldier of Fortune, a mercenary recruiting magazine produced in Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A., Mr. Cumming was killed by "three black men in the uniforms of the Rhodesian Army – complete with camouflage cloth caps". Members of the editorial board of Soldier of Fortune visited Rhodesia in October/November 1976, and met Mr. Cumming a few days before his death. The magazine has since published a detailed account of the attack on the Cumming farm, in which it is claimed that Mrs. Cumming's first words of surprise when the three attackers entered the room were, "Arthur, what is the Army doing in the house?"
