Evidence has been received by IDAF that Zimbabweans serving prison terms under the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act have been approached by the regime and offered their release in return for co-operation with the internal settlement. Detainees have also been exposed to this kind of bribery, in an apparent attempt by the internal leaders to win friends and supporters during the run-up to elections planned for 20 April. The regime is in acute need of manpower to contain the military situation and is clearly prepared to use a variety of unorthodox methods to win recruits who can subsequently be presented as "volunteers".
According to information from detainees in Wha Wha, members of the Rhodesian Special Branch have been visiting a number of prisons to interview prisoners with a military background, i.e. former guerilla fighters. The prisoners are apparently being offered their freedom on condition that they join the Rhodesian army as "auxiliaries" to train new recruits in counter-insurgency tactics. (The introduction of compulsory national service for Africans at the end of 1978 has meant that black conscripts are now entering the security forces, though clearly not in the numbers that the regime may have hoped for).
In the terminology of the internal settlement, "auxiliaries" is the word used by the regime to describe members of the private armies built up by Bishop Muzorewa and Rev. Sithole in the course of the last year and sent into the rural areas to enforce the "ceasefire". Bishop Muzorewa and Rev. Sithole also seem to have been doing their own recruiting in the prisons. According to a letter received from a political prisoner in Khami prison, Bulawayo: "The prisoners who are being released here are only on conditions that they join private armies (auxiliaries). So far only Muzorewa people have been released and have already joined the so-called auxiliaries in the war of genocide. Ndabaningi Sithole paid a special visit to Khami prison last January (1979). He promised to release political prisoners shortly. His remarks were received with continuous jeers by prisoners".
Africans awaiting trial are also subject to this sort of inducement. The Rhodesian security forces have for a number of years made use of captured guerillas who are prepared to cooperate, as an alternative to prosecution and imprisonment. They have been used as spies and informers or as showpieces in the Psychological Warfare Department's "hearts and minds" campaign. The Selous Scouts in particular are believed to include former guerilla fighters. Sometimes it appears that false promises are made in an attempt to elicit information from captives, as for example in a trial before the Salisbury High Court in September 1978, at which an unnamed defendant revealed that, rather than going to prison, he had (erroneously) been led to expect that he would be "attached to the security forces so that I would help them". (FOCUS 19 p. 13)
More recently, a 19-year-old member of the Rhodesian African Rifles stated in an interview subsequently screened on British television that he was a former guerilla fighter with the liberation forces. He had been captured by Rhodesian security forces and underwent seven months of torture at the hands of the Special Branch. He had then been offered the choice of execution, life imprisonment, or switching sides and joining the security forces, and had opted for the last. (New Statesman 19.1.79)
According to General Walls, the regime's Commander of Combined Operations, "it had once taken Rhodesian forces seven minutes to convert a terrorist after capture and use him to return fire at the people he was initially fighting for". (Interview given in Cape Town in September 1978, RH 8.9.78).
