The Smith regime's military authorities have refused to comment on reports that napalm has been used by Rhodesian troops during attacks into Zambia. There is nevertheless a mounting body of evidence that not only napalm but other methods of chemical warfare are regularly used by the Smith regime as an established part of its counter-insurgency tactics.
Published references indicate that the Rhodesian military apparatus has been fully cognizant with the use of napalm for at least a decade. Rolf Steiner, a former member of the French Foreign Legion who fought on the Biafran side during the Nigerian civil war, refers in his autobiography to a Salisbury armourer who had deserted the Rhodesian security forces and joined Colonel Ojukwu's secessionists as a mercenary: "One of his specialities was napalm, which he cooked up to his own recipe. The method was simple: into an old oil drum he put ordinary household soap and heated it gently until it was liquid, when the soap was melted he topped the drum with petrol and added gunpowder, in proportions he obviously knew by heart."
Tom McCarthy, a British mercenary who joined the Rhodesian army with the assistance of the South African Embassy in London, told the British Anti-Apartheid Movement in March 1976 that a version of napalm - which he compared to airfix glue - was regularly used by the Rhodesian air force to flush guerillas from cover.
Accusations by the Mozambique government that napalm bombs had been used by the Smith regime in attacks against Zimbabwean refugee camps were frequently made from the end of that year. Rhodesian napalm, trade name "Frantam" is manufactured inside Zimbabwe using local materials. The effects have been described by Dr. Herbert Ushewokunze, Minister of Health for ZANU (Patriotic Front) while on a tour to the USA in May 1978. He showed pictures of the havoc wrought by 'napalm porridge': "Imagine somebody dipping his arm in a jar of sulphuric acid - the pain, the agony, the disintegration of tissue, the death. If that porridge lands on you and you try to wipe it away you're in trouble - your hand falls off, gets eaten away."
Dr. Ushewokunze also revealed that he and his colleagues were regularly faced with cases of poisoning and germ warfare. Wells and other water supplies inside Zimbabwe were polluted with cholera and typhoid germs by the regime, he said, while crops grown by Zimbabwean refugees in an effort to be selfsufficient while in Mozambique had been poisoned by Rhodesian troops during cross-border raids.
The use of poison by the Smith regime - either as a deliberate tactic or as a consequence of the defoliation of strategic areas, particularly along the borders - appears to go back at least to 1974, when a number of residents of Mukumbura protected village in the Zambezi valley died from an unknown shaking sickness apparently caused by defoliants washed into the soil and absorbed by plants. In April 1976, Zambian newspapers reported that the security forces had begun to poison water sources in the south-east of Zimbabwe as a weapon against guerillas. A total of 115 Africans were reported to have died in November 1977 after drinking poisoned water in the south east and to have been buried in a mass grave.
In December 1977, 11 out of 17 African farm workers on a Shamva farm died after eating poisoned corned beef from a number of cans which they had found lying in the bush. The manufacturer, Liebigs Rhodesia Ltd., subsequently carried out tests on the meat and published warnings to the public in the Rhodesian press. The cans, the company stated, had been "lying in the Rhodesian bush for an unknown period of time exposed to the elements and the sun." According to ZANU (Patriotic Front), however, the poisoned meat had been "deliberately piled 10 miles out of Shamva by Rhodesian troops" and was aimed at "ZIPA freedom fighters operating in the area." The liberation movement claimed that 73 African civilians and school pupils had died in the preceding three months after eating this and other deliberately poisoned foodstuffs.
South Africa has been implicated in the Smith regime's use of chemical weapons. In September 1978 sources in ZAPU (Patriotic Front) reported that South Africa had donated oxygen masks to the Rhodesian army through Battle Ensign of the Transvaal, a company specialising in making chemicals. The masks, the liberation movement concluded, indicated "feverish" plans for chemical warfare. A chemical weapon plant was also reported to be nearing completion in the Orange Free State, financed by West German sources.
It seems likely that chemical methods may increasingly be used inside South Africa itself. On 1 August this year, for example, contaminants of the SADF were reported to have sprayed the Rustenberg area with chemicals, napalm, defoliants and teargas from canisters in an attempt to flush out a detachment of Umkhonto We Sizwe guerillas.
