newsAUGUST 25, 1975: MEMORIES OF A BRIDGE OVER ONCE VERY TROUBLED WATERS
John Vorster and Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia on the morning of August 25, 1975 (Picture: Trevor Grundy archives)
South Africa’s John Vorster and Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda billed it as the ‘peace in our time’ conference. Julius Nyerere said it was attended by Africans who thought power came from the barrel of the mouth and not the barrel of a gun.
By Trevor Grundy
Soon after six o’clock on the morning of August 25, 1975 journalists watched as a red South African diesel engine nudged five carriages onto the most famous bridge in the world, one that had been built on the orders of Britain’s best- known Empire builder, Cecil John Rhodes.
Rhodes said that the train would run so close to the Victoria Falls that passengers would feel the spray from the mighty river below on their faces as it moved between the white-dominated southern Rhodesia and the copper-rich territory to its north, today’s Zambia,
The train, where whites from Rhodesia and South Africa were to hold talks with a group of black nationalists sponsored by South Africa’s John Vorster and Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda, was 200 metres long.
It hung 90 metres above the River Zambezi.
The bridge was officially opened by Professor Sir George Darwin, son of Charles Darwin and President of the British Association (now the British Science Association), on 12 September 1905
At 7am, a dining car stopped by a white line which marked the border between black-ruled Zambia and white-dominated Rhodesia.
Three hours later, the conference meant to avoid bloodshed which Vorster and Kaunda said was ‘too ghastly to contemplate,’ started.
Fourteen hours later it was all over.
The Rhodesian rebel leader Ian Smith refused to allow Rev Ndabaningi Sithole and James Chikerema to attend a follow-up conference in Rhodesia.
He threatened them with arrest if they put their feet on Rhodesian soil.
That caused the talks to first stall and then end.
The two “terrorists” at the centre of an accreditation row (Top) James Chikerema and the Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole (Pictures: TREVOR GRUNDY)
And the presence of Smith’s number two man – the flamboyant PK van der Byl (whose upper- class accent made Queen Elizabeth 11 sound like a cockney) didn’t help because he told waiters to push the drinks trolly from the Rhodesia to the Nationalist side of the train shortly after a break for something to eat as the sun went down.
It was a crafty ploy which had disastrous consequences for millions of people.
At around midnight, the Reuters journalist Fred Bridgland, the Johannesburg-based bureau chief of Argus Africa News Service (AANS) Wilf Nussey and myself watched black nationalists stagger from the train and wobble back to their hotel rooms.
When James Chikerema emerged from the train, he was furious.
He turned his back on his sozzled colleagues and said to us, sotto voce so everyone in his Bishop Muzorewa’s party could hear –
“This is all our fault. Why did we let the waiters push the drinks trolly to our side of the train?”
1975 was the year of sliding doors – the “only if” year for so many who could have brought about peaceful change not only in Rhodesia ut also in South Africa.
It was the year Herbert Chitepo was murdered in Lusaka.
It was the year that saw the panicky withdrawal of the Portuguese from Angola and Mozambique.
It was the year when recently released black leaders from Rhodesian prisons flexed their muscles and their long supressed voices.
In short (and with apologies to Charles Dickens) it was the best of years (for the few) and the worst of years (for the many).
That it was the year of foolishness for those who sought meaningful change and peace in Africa is beyond doubt.
Ken Flower – Rhodesia’s spy boss who had close and friendly relations with Britain’s MI6
In his book Serving Secretly (John Murray,1987) the Rhodesian spy boss Ken Flower said that it was Vorster who persuaded Ian Smith to attend the conference.
Smith said it wouldn’t last 30 minutes and made it clear from the word “go” that he would not allow “terrorists” such as Chikerema and Sithole, to set foot inside Rhodesia.
Leading nationalists detested Kaunda’s main political adviser, Mark Chona who on August 8-9 met Smith and Vorster in Pretoria and said he spoke for the governments of Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia and all nationalists fighting the Rhodesian regime.
Black nationalists (but not Mugabe or Zanu) were forced to attend otherwise they would have lost their bases (and safety) in Zambia.
James Chikerema with his life-long friend and political colleague, George Nyandoro (Picture: TREVOR GRUNDY)
The intrusion of Lonrho executives and Smith’s deliberate inclusion in his delegation of PK van der Byl could be relied upon to upset the South Africans, the Zambians and the Bishop’s men.
George Nyandoro and James Chikerema were the planning brains inside the bishop’s short-lived ANC.
They thought he was weak and that his habit of breaking off at key moments during the talks to go to his room at the Mosi-oa-Tunya Hotel and ask Jesus for advice was idiotic.
James Chikerema saw himself as the real leader of the back nationalists.
Sadly for him and his tiny movement FROLIZI, no-one else did.
Inside the whites only coach of the train over troubled waters. PK van der Byl is on the left of Ian Smith
When Vorster flew into Livingstone on the morning of August 25 most seasoned African watchers could hardly believe their eyes.
Said Bridgland,”There was the squat figure of the South African prime minister standing next to the towering figure of General van den Berg head of BOSS. I blinked. Impossible to believe it was happening.”
Kaunda smiled and waved his arms at the small crowd of children who’d been given the day off from school.
A small black schoolgirl in a spotless white dress waved a flag.
The boy next to her held up a cardboard placard.
On it was written – “Vorster. You have become great today.”
Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda. Before the conference, he told his ministers to sing psalms. Number 23 was his favourite.
Vorster and Kaunda didn’t stick around for long. The two men went off for private talks. It is believe the subject was how to deal with the growing presence Cuban soldiers in Angola.
The two men and their top advisers had lunch at the five start Mosi-oa-Tunya hotel on the Zambian side of the Falls.
Vorster knocked back several glasses of his favourite drink – neat brandy – and Kaunda told Vorster several Van der Merwe jokes, all of them about the way a rough Afrikaner saw the world he lived in.
Ian Smith leading his MPs into the Zimbabwean parliament after elections in 1985 (Picture: TREVOR GRUNDY)
Before the conference started, South Africa pulled all of its troops out of Rhodesia to remind Ian Smith how dependent he was on his powerful neighbour.
A Reuters report the following day said the men who were really responsible for outing warring whites and blacks on a train linking two countries in Africa were nowhere to be seen.
Harry Oppenheimer of Anglo-American and ‘Tiny’ Rowland of Lonrho (who spent a chunk of the Second World War on the Isle of Man alongside several hundred imprisoned supporters of the British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley) had pushed and shoved white and blacks to try and end decades of fighting to make Southern Africa safe for big business.
Joshua Nkomo was seen by most Zimbabweans as the man who would lead them to freedom. He had little time for Bishop Abel Muzorewa, was a fierce opponent of the Rev Ndabaningi Sithole and distant from his once number two in ZAPU, James Chikerema for forming FROLIZI and splitting further the nationalist camp. (Picture: TREVOR GRUNDY)
They wanted moderate black leaders to run the place, men and women with “safe hands” to take-over first Rhodesia, then South West Africa and finally South Africa.
Ordinary people were never consulted.
How could they be?
In Rhodesia very few non-whites had the vote, same as in South Africa.
Before August 25, 1975 John Vorster was portrayed by the supporters of the anti-apartheid movement as the epitome of evil.
Then, fast as a flash and without warning, they were told by Kaunda that on August 25 Vorster had suddenly become great.
What were those two really up to? What were they talking about? What were they planning?
Half a century down the line I wonder who knows.
More to the point – who cares?
The Victoria Falls and the famous Bridge – today it is more popular with sports enthusiasts than historians
Charles Mohr in a special report to the New York Times on August 26, 1975 wrote: “ Mr Vorster and Mr Kaunda has private talks during the day on a whole range of Southern African questions, including the future of disputed South-West Africa and apartheid in South Africa.
Neither man cared much what was going on inside a train on a bridge,
Like everyone else, Mohr hadn’t a clue what Vorster and Kaunda talked about.
Rumour spread that they were discussing Zambian support for a South African military intervention into Angola.
That came soon after the Victoria Falls Conference.
Isn’t it time we were told what went on and who would be sacrificed on the altar of expediency?
But rumours in Africa are ten a penny. Truth is – no-one know what they were talking. We didn’t know then. We don’t know now. Will we ever know?
Don’t hold your breath,
In his book Rise up and Walk (Sphere Books, London, 1979) Muzorewa tells a story that’s true, funny and dad all at the same time.
He wrote: ”When the Zambian Information Service van went around Livingstone’s suburbs broadcasting that Mr Vorster would be coming to Livingstone, many people ran away and hid in the bush, thinking that their country was being invaded by the South Africans. Instead, the information van was attempting to invite people to come and welcome the South African visitors to Zambia.”
Kaunda and Vorster – their meeting in 1975 was the highlight (and end) of a once promising programme called Detente.
(Picture: TREVOR GRUNDY archives)
The talks ended.
Nothing positive was achieved.
Joshua Nkomo went off for private talks with Ian Smith in Salisbury.
Robert Mugabe never attended the Falls Conference because he was in Mozambique, effectively under house arrest at Quelimane because Samora Machel thought he was too close to Smith, Vorster and big business for comfort,
The bishop went on to form a government of ‘national unity’ that was (for a time) supported by both Chikerema and Sithole – the two men who were not allowed to enter Rhodesia because they were branded as extreme terrorists by the Smith regime.
Mugabe and ZANU damned them both as traitors and sell-outs,
This alone shows how badly informed Rhodesia’s so-called “experts” on the inner-working of African nationalist movements were.
Postscript:
Between 1975 and the end of the Rhodesian war in December 1979 over 35,000 men, women and children lost their lives in Rhodesia because of Ian Smith’s refusal to compromise. But also, perhaps, because of PK van de Byl’s generous gesture of telling waiters to pass a heavily loaded drinks trolly from one side of a South African historic train to the other on a bridge built by a British imperialist who shaped so large a part of southern Africa during years when the waters of the River Zambezi were not so troubled.