The Tally of Terror
These samples have been taken entirely at random, by thumbing through a file. White farmers have been and are being attacked and murdered. Travellers by the score have been ambushed. African school-superintendents have been doused with inflammable liquid and burned to death, in one case while the terrorists danced to a radiogram. Schools, churches, stores, council offices and homes have been looted and burned by the dozen. Men have been tied together and a grenade exploded between them. One had his mouth filled with explosive, which was ignited. Black children have been blown to smithereens with their oxcarts. There has been a case of burning at the stake. Old men are beaten to death, women raped and bayoneted. Men have had their ears and lips cut off, while their wives have been compelled to cook and eat them. Urban terrorism has been attempted, but very quickly dealt with by the police. I myself visited the scene of the first Honde massacre in December 1976, where twenty-seven tea-eastate workers were bayoneted and shot before their families by followers of Robert Mugabe who crossed the Mozambique border and fled back again. They had dared to work for whites. Like all other terrorist victims, they were called "sell-outs." I have never found it harder to pray with anyone than with the survivors. Whole families were my former parishioners. Nobody prayed with the victims of one of the most horrific attacks of all, at lonely Chiriwa in the Rushinga area near Rhodesia's northern border. Their charred remains were not found until days later. A family of twenty-three (the head of the clan, nine women and thirteen children) were beaten, driven into a hut and burned alive. A note was left behind by the terrorists saying that "Zimbabwe" would come through the barrel of a gun. It referred to "Smith's soldiers" as "pigs, dogs arid baboons" and added: "On this day you are going to see how bad we can be." This attack was made by Mugabe's ZANU, which is supported by the WCC, but has occasioned no comment by officials of the "Programme to Combat Racism." The machinery
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