[Editor's note:  Africa correspondent Jan Lamprect is writing a book entitled Government by Deception.  Below is an excerpt.] 

A Brief History of 
Sub-Saharan De-Colonization

    One of the best-kept secrets of Africa is the cruelty shown by black Marxists towards those whom they were supposedly trying to liberate.  The de-colonization of Africa was not a pretty process. The British washed their hands of Africa as quickly as they possibly could. They showed little interest in giving their colonies over to the best black people, and did their utmost to absolve themselves of responsibility for Africa. Instead, any pretender to the throne was good enough. 

    The irresponsible, power-hungry Marxist liberators loved this approach. It suited them down to the ground. Now they could waltz in and pretend to be the “voice of the people.” Whites, of course, were completely aghast by this. African colonies like Rhodesia, for example, were very efficiently run. A country like South Africa had annual growths in GDP second only to that of Japan. All the colonies were developing quickly and showing great promise. Into this stepped nobodies who had no experience of government and who only knew Marxism-Leninism. 

    The whites were completely opposed to a handover involving people whose policies would destroy the countries in question. Whites argued that these people had no real interest in uplifting the blacks. Furthermore, the blacks would actually be worse off under their rule. So-called "white reactionaries" said, from the start, that the pretenders were only after power and that they had literally nothing positive to contribute to the long-term development of Africa. This is how the friction developed which led to the liberation wars in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa.

    The Marxist pretenders wanted complete power, immediately. The whites opposed this irresponsible demand. It should be said that once the communists started financing wars, the whites began a process of inclusion, and of finding the most suitable black people to hand over to.  This happened in both Zimbabwe and South Africa. In both cases, there were suitable anti-Communists whom we wanted to hand power over to. These were people we believed could rule the country successfully. Bishop Muzorewa won a free and fair election and became the first black ruler of Zimbabwe/Rhodesia (as it was called for a time). But the Marxists did not like this and continued a war against him until they won. Similarly, in South Africa, Chief Buthelezi of the Zulus seemed to be the most promising pro-Western man. But the ANC was quick to attack him and fight bitterly against him so that he could never gain the support of the majority of blacks.

    It is worth noting the attitude of the blacks themselves, the masses in whose name all this was being done. The race relations between blacks and whites in the colonial days were far better than now. It is true there was racism and true that there was a certain amount of unhappiness, but it was nothing like the problems of today.

    There is a popular mythology which has been spread around the world by communist propagandists which creates the impression that black people were so frustrated that they were ready to “storm the Bastille” in order to remove themselves from the yoke of colonialism. This is not true, especially among the older blacks. The communists got most of their support from the impressionable youth. But, the darkest secret of all is that in order to win the blacks to their side, the Marxist Liberators had to use extreme forms of violence. Terror was the tactic. The terror was gruesome and hideous.

    We whites were outraged by the use of Marxist terror, and we saw these Marxist pretenders as being nothing more than terrorists who would stoop to any level -- to murder, torture or lying in order to come to power. Often, people in the rest of the world were amazed at why, a mere 250,000 whites in Rhodesia held out so bitterly against the likes of Mugabe and Nkomo. But that was because we believed them to be the embodiment of evil. If they were the voice of the people, then why did the people not flock to them? If they were the saviors of the black masses, then why did they have to beat and murder black people and terrorize them into subjugation in order to win their support? 

    If the black people were so keen to get rid of white rule then why did six million blacks not swamp 250,000 whites and murder us all? They outnumbered us twenty to one. They could have killed us with spears and pangas if they hated us so much. But they didn’t. 

    Why? 

    The truth is, many blacks were not too keen on the Liberators. So the Liberators had to conduct an “ethnic cleansing,” or to be more accurate, a purging of the blacks. Anyone who opposed their Marxist-Leninist nonsense had to dealt with. Any black man who was friendly to whites or a supporter of the whites had to be murdered or intimidated. Black policemen and black soldiers and their families were attacked. What is hardly ever mentioned is that in both Rhodesia and South Africa, one found thousands of black men who were either Policemen or who fought in our armies. Right to the end, there were blacks fighting to keep the whites in power. There were blacks who were not impressed with the Marxist pretenders or their methods. 

    Some of the finest troops in the Rhodesian and South African armies were blacks who were opposed to communism. The deadly Selous Scouts for example, were composed mostly of blacks in a counter terrorist role. In South Africa, 32 battalion consisted of blacks and Portuguese who were opposed to Marxists.

    The Liberators considered anyone who co-operated with the whites to be a “sellout” or a traitor. They used sheer terror to prevent blacks from being friendly towards the whites. Any moderate black, who cooperated with the whites, was in danger of being beaten, or, worse still, murdered in the most brutal fashion imaginable. The Liberators were not nice, kind, democratic people. They were people who were hungry for power and who used any means to get it. They killed black and white civilians alike in a reign of terror in order to get their way.

    It is worth giving an example of their approach. In Zimbabwe, the war was fought in the rural areas, often far away from civilization. A gang of guerrillas would approach a village and gather together all the people who maybe numbered several hundred. They would try to convince the villagers to support them. They would even teach them politically orientated songs. They would indoctrinate them with Marxist ideology. But then they would warn them of what would happen to a "sellout." They would then pick a man from the audience, to demonstrate to the villagers what they would do to someone who cooperated with the whites. They might pick a man and then start beating him while forcing the villagers to watch. On some occasions they would begin cutting off flesh from his living body. A favorite target was to cut a man’s ears off, or cut his lips off. They might cut his lips off with a knife or a bayonet or even rip them off with pliers. Then they would call his wife and ask her to cook her husband’s flesh. Then they would make her eat it. 

    All this would be done in full view of the horrified villagers. For all to see, by way of an object lesson, they would beat an innocent man, torture him and finally bayonet him to death. This, they would declare, is what will happen to anyone who cooperates with the whites.

    In South Africa a similar tactic was practiced in order to terrify all the blacks into submission. Winnie Mandela’s infamous statement about freeing South Africa with boxes of matches is all about killing blacks who opposed the ANC and who worked with the whites. The ANC wanted a method of killing people, which would terrorize all black opposition into submission. So they invented the infamous “necklace.” They dreamed up the idea of putting a tire around a person’s neck (i.e., a necklace) and filling it with petrol, which would be set alight. The person would thus burn to death. But, it was not as simple as that. The person would often be beaten, stoned, set alight and maybe, in the end stabbed to ensure that they were dead. This is the dreadful terror which Winnie Mandela and the rest of the ANC are so proud of. For all the errors of the whites, such methods of terror were not used by whites against blacks in any of the colonies. 

    The truth is, whites never resorted to such horrific means. Many people outside South Africa may remember seeing film footage of black people being killed in such a dreadful manner. Hundreds were killed by the ANC like this and yet nobody speaks out against them. All those people who died in such a horrible manner were enemies of the ANC.

    How then can the ANC in South Africa, or ZANU in Zimbabwe, stand up and claim to be democratic? How can they claim to be the voice of the black people? They had to murder and beat blacks into submission who did not want to go along with their plans. Most of the liberation wars consisted not of attacks on whites, but attacks on blacks. They spent most of their time working on the minds of the black people either with their seductive lies or by beating them and terrorizing them. Virtual civil wars raged in black townships or in the province of KwaZulu/Natal. 

    For every one white person who died, maybe thirty or more black people were killed. The whites knew this and they armed blacks wherever they could. In Zimbabwe protected villages were set up. In South Africa various self-defencse units were formed. It is, however, hard to combat terror if one does not resort to terror oneself. Since we never used terror as a tactic we were at a disadvantage. 

    The people who won the liberation wars did not do so on a wave of popular support from oppressed blacks. They spent years playing a propaganda and psychological warfare game. They used persuasion in all its forms, starting with mere lies and graduating onwards to outright torture and murder.

    As Mwezi Twala told me, the communist view is that one must fight using all means. There is no such thing as right or wrong. Any tactic and method used in order to win is right. The ANC has stated this openly. It has said any method used to bring down Apartheid was correct. The same logic applies to the overthrow of white rule in Zimbabwe, Namibia and other southern African countries. It was not just South Africa where terror was employed. Terror was used everywhere.

    One should therefore call into question the right of communists to claim that they are the voice of black Africans. In my opinion they are not.  They no longer cut people’s body parts off, nor do they set them alight, but they still use force when it’s needed. They are not averse to murdering blacks who oppose them. The ANC has not ruled South Africa long enough for us to see them using state force to cower the black masses, but that day may yet come. In Zimbabwe, in 2000, Mugabe sent thugs into villages to beat up those who supported his democratic opposition. Others were sent to “re-education camps” (a nice old Soviet-era phrase!) In the 1980’s the Matabele tribe in southern Zimbabwe expressed its dissatisfaction with Mugabe. He responded by engaging in genocide. He sent the North Korean-trained 5th Brigade in to beat, torture and murder black people. He killed approximately 2,000 people. Entire villages were wiped out and people were thrown down wells. Not a peep was heard out of the rest of the world.

    Imagine if the whites had done such a thing? The world would have declared war on us and bombed us into submission. But, a black communist can do it and hardly anyone takes notice. Such are the double standards the world applies to us in Africa. The white man is measured by one yardstick and the black Marxist by another. Everyone wants equality and fairness, but if that were so, then one would hope that murder by a black man is the same as murder by a white man. Murder by a white man must not be seen as being more evil than murder by a black man. Murder is murder and evil is evil.

    Whites never committed such heinous crimes, but the black communists could cut people up, kick babies around like footballs until they die, hamstring men before killing them or rape and kill women -- and nobody says a thing. This is the big, deep, dark secret of the rulers of southern Africa today. The same people who wear suits and drink champagne, and are lauded across the world, are the same men who once ordered their followers to put Portuguese people on sawmills or who planted landmines to blow up white and black civilians alike. Life to them was cheap then and it remains so now.

    How can these Marxists claim to love their own people and watch out for their welfare when they indulged in cruelty beyond imagination? These hard and harsh people do not care for their own kind. They care only for themselves. They kill black people even more readily than they kill whites. But they preach human rights and refuse to hang murderers. They cannot tell right from wrong, nor are they interested in it. They rose to power by terrorizing innocent people. Now that they are in power they protect drug dealers and criminals.

    These people, from the first, never cared for right or wrong. They never cared for blacks and they find whites a nuisance.