SNAPSHOT IN HISTORY: IAN SMITH AND KENNETH KAUNDA HOLD A SECRET MEETING AT STATE LODGE, LUSAKA.
ON 14 August 1978, Three Rhodesian Air Force Alouette III helicopters landed on State Lodge grounds, on board were 10 Selous Scouts and the white Rhodesian leader Ian Smith who had flown to Lusaka for a secret meeting with President Kaunda and guerrilla leader Joshua Nkomo to discuss a role for the Patriotic Front guerrillas in a Rhodesian settlement. His coleader in the Patriotic Front, Robert Mugabe, did not attend the Lusaka meeting.
Also in attendance was Major General Joseph Nanven Garba the Foreign Minister for Nigeria. Nigeria was a major financial of the liberation movements in Southern Africa.
On 3 September 1978, the conflict took a turn that outraged even war-weary Rhodesia.
Nkomo’s forces shot down a civilian jet carrying 56 passengers. Eighteen people survived the 1978 crash but 10 of them were murdered by guerrillas. Ten of the survivors, who included women and children, were then butchered on the ground.
Five months later, his men shot down another civilian plane killing all 59 on board.
White Rhodesia demanded revenge. On Good Friday 1979, a column of Rhodesian SAS soldiers dressed as Zambia Army soldiers crossed into Zambia, bound for the country’s capital, Lusaka. Their mission – codenamed Operation Bastille – was to assassinate Joshua Nkomo.
(Credit: The Washington Post, BBC)
why wasn’t Nkomo killed?
His house was bombed. Former Zamcell HQ is where Nkhomo was housed. I wish further information on the issue could be published. This was no the only isolated incident at the time.
Appreciate the history lesson, but the story is incomplete.
Too short