RHODESIAN HOME DEFENSE
October 3, 20249 minute read
By Alex Brigham
21 December 1972. 3:00 am. Central Rhodesia.
The road leading to Marc de Borchgrave’s farmhouse was rigged with RussianTM46 anti-tank mines. His telephone lines were cut. Inside the home, he and his family were fast asleep, unaware of the ZANLA militants that now had AK-47s and RPG rocket launchers leveled at their windows from the bushes outside. An order was given; triggers were pulled. Thus began Operation Hurricane and the formal armed struggle of the Rhodesian Bush War.
Meanwhile in the Rhodesian Midlands, the isolated Jameson family who had already been exposed to the reality of what was to come in 1966 with the murder of nearby Hartley farming family, the Viljoens, were about to wake up to the realization that a significant escalation was happening. When, a couple of nights later, the same gang stuck at Whistlefield Farm where the unfortunate de Borchgrave family were staying, it was clear that Rhodesia’s farming community would need to assume a very large proportion of responsibility for their own security and defense of their homesteads, farms, and labor forces.
The Rhodesian conflict was a civil insurrection by ZANLA and ZIPRA nationalist dissidents (Chinese-backed and Soviet-backed respectively) against the long standing (as a self governing British colony since 1923) white Rhodesian government, who favored a staged move towards Universal Suffrage rather than the immediate One-Man-One Vote elections proposed by Great Britain which had proven to have disastrous consequences for much of newly independent Africa.
A primary tactic of the ZANLA and ZIPRA forces would be to target the farms of white European settlers from dusk until dawn. The guerrillas would travel in small, quiet groups and attack randomly and without warning. Everyone living on the property would have some burden to bear in defending the homestead from these militant attacks. This included every person down to even the children, and in the case of the Jameson family, 9-year-old Andy.
19 January 2023.
I was sitting in a spare office room that had been converted to a temporary storage unit, my computer resting on a stack of boxes and photo frames, when I first heard Andy’s voice break through the static of a WhatsApp audio call. I was in a rural Georgia town in the Appalachian mountains; he was in a remote area of the United Kingdom with poor comms.
It had been five decades since the night of the de Borchgrave farm raid. To many, the span of fifty years is like the length of many lifetimes, every year bringing with it its portion of new experiences, each piling up on top of the last until you’re left with only a vague reckoning of what lies buried underneath. This problem of attrition of memory is one that Andy is all too familiar with and was the reason for our conversation. One of the aims of his life is to keep the history of Rhodesia and the lessons learned in the Bush War alive. And as I sat in that storage room and listened to him describe what it took to protect their homesteads and survive the brutality that came by night, I was struck with the realization that while he’s specifically referencing his experience with war, what he’s actually talking about is so much more.
ELEMENTS OF HOMESTEAD DEFENSE: GEOGRAPHICAL
The Jameson farm was situated on 21,000 acres in central Rhodesia, an area that was initially removed from the bulk of guerrilla activity. However, its remote location and the size of the property put the Jameson’s at risk of being attacked without hope of immediate military or police response. Their first line of defense when the war reached this part of Rhodesia was to do anything and everything possible in order to make their farm look unattractive target. The guerrillas were mostly amateur soldiers. They had no sophisticated equipment or expert training. They would most likely attack the homesteads that made little-to-no effort to defend themselves beyond installing the government subsidized chain-link fence.
As Andy explained during our conversation:
“The people who get killed more often than not are the people who don’t make the time and effort to defend themselves adequately in the first place. They’re blatantly, obviously soft targets.
“When you’re dealing with people [like the guerrilla fighters], they’re generally cowards. They come in the dead of night or they come when you’re least expecting it, and they will go always for the easy target. They won’t go for the person they know will be prepared and will fight back. It’s the nature of the beast.”
To protect the family home from taking fire like the de Borchgrave’s had, Andy’s father created rock and earth embankments that created a safety perimeter around the house. These natural walls featured firing points on the back in the areas where attacks were most likely to come from. In the most vulnerable spots, like an expanse of wall that stood between the Jameson dining room and main gate, a small window was cut from the embankment and a steel screen was installed to detonate any rockets fired at the wall while still allowing for safe monitoring of the main gate and visitors arriving.
[Side Quote:]
“So the basic premise was we had to be able to defend ourselves for twelve hours until the sun was up and they could get some kind of aerial support to us. Because of that we had massive earthen embankments that surrounded the living area of the homestead. It was defense against RPG-7s and 75 mm recoilless rifles.”
PHYSICAL & COMMUNICATION ELEMENTS
The creation of the earthen embankments was only one of many steps taken to protect their home. In January of 1978, the area where the Jameson ranch was situated was designated as ‘operational’ following another midnight attack on a farm in the district. Given this ‘operational’ status, the farmers immediately received financial subsidies for the erection of tall chain link security fencing around the homestead and automatic weapons were issued to them for defense; in Andy’s family’s case the GM-15 Sub-machine gun became his mother’s weapon while his father carried his Police Reserve FN FAL.
Finally they had the all-important radio communications. Every farmstead in an operational area was linked by the VHF Agric Alert Radio Network which connected to a control room monitored 24/7 in the local BSAP Police HQ. Everyone in the Jameson family down to 3 year old Clare were familiar with using it, doing the daily Roll-Call check-in; a benefit of the roll call was strengthening the critically important sense of ‘Community’.
“Generally speaking, they would attack sometime after dark. More often than not farm attacks lasted twenty minutes to an hour. But because we were isolated, because we had the river that would be an impediment to any military reaction to us being attacked, my dad decided he was going to make us a very unattractive target to attack.
“As the fence went behind a rocky outcrop that was behind the house, Dad rigged a basic alarm system on the fence that initiated a siren when anything leant against it. To keep cattle, horses, goats and smaller wildlife away from the fence, an outer 4-foot high chicken-mesh fence was installed outside the main security fence, and this was obviously gated as well. Two further modifications were added after a few months; dad built a 220-volt 2-strand electric fence between them with the top strand about 3 feet high. You couldn’t cross it without touching it, and it worked! A young colt chased by a possessive stallion at night crashed through the outer fence and landed on the electric strands, which killed it. It was a sad loss, but word spread fast locally that you didn’t screw with our security!
“As a teenager, I climbed over the main security fence at the gates without too much difficulty so we extended the overhang a further foot. Three sets of high intensity outward facing security lights were installed midway between the house and the fences, and were only turned on if the fence alarm went off (which it did occasionally with our dogs leaning on it when anything worthy of their intention was outside the fence!).
“Dad then built an underground bunker (mortar pit) adjacent to their bedroom and main corridor with the security control point with the radios, (Agric Alert and Police radio net) and security lights/Adams grenades panels. The Adams grenade is a 10-12″ long segmented anti-personnel grenade mounted above ground and initiated from within the house. depending on its location it could be left to send shrapnel 360-degrees or be placed in front of a plough-disc set in a concrete blast wall to make it directional.
“Finally we had our weapons, the knowledge of how to use them and the determination to fight off any attack, and that was how we made ourselves an unattractive target.”
[Side Quote:]
“I look at things and what could go wrong rather than what’s best case scenario. And I think a lot of people don’t live in a world that is that realistic.”
HUMAN
After the embankments and fences were built and the radio systems wired and tested, there remained one final element of homestead security that was, as Andy emphasized more than once, the most important: the human element.
The white European farmers of Rhodesia were of a rare stock. They were the definition of hardy, capable people. They didn’t watch the activities on the farm from a distance; they were in the fields with the workers day-in and day-out. It was no different when it came to protecting the homestead: everyone was able, everyone was prepared.
Andy refers to the women farmers of Rhodesia as “weaponized women,” and that’s as accurate as a description could get. They were literally weaponized and carrying a weapon at all times. They were also of the mental fortitude to move into action at any time and for any reason.
“There are stories of these brave souls on radio watch at the local Police camp taking radio sitreps from sticks in the bush, reporting that trooper X or Y (their son or husband) had just been killed in action… of mothers calmly telling their very young children while their homes were under attack that they must be brave because tonight they may die. I’ve got tears running down my face thinking back to hearing this [myself] the first time…”
The women were lethal and the children were, too. From a young age, Andy was made familiar with firearms and their ultimate purpose: to kill.
“I started at 6 years of age with a .22 rifle shooting at targets, and shot an animal for the first time at 9 or 10. Before either of these events we had been hunting with my Dad regularly, and saw first-hand what firearms do. We also learned about firearms safety and maintenance, often helped by a clip on the ear and a stern talking to! Only then did we get to shoot, and we shot quite a lot.”
And finally, the human element applied to those living in the closest proximity to the Jameson’s farm. While they were in fact isolated, they were also deeply embedded in a community of neighbors and friends who were at all times ready to drop everything to answer a call for help. The local police force would be limited in time and resources in answering distress calls, the military would have to navigate a wider expanse of terrain, but neighbors would be the nearest and most motivated to come in the dead of night.
“One of the things that made Rhodesia work was community. The nature of community and friendship is that if someone is in trouble, you get out there and help them. You don’t stand idly by and listen to someone desperately calling for help and say, ‘Well, the police will get to it.’ What happens when it happens to you?
“There is this saying in America that ‘no one is coming to save you.’ Its great to think that, but no man is an island. If you have people willing to stand up and put their neck on the line for you, you have a far better chance of surviving.”
The attacks on farms and senseless killings would continue for years. But the measures taken by Andy’s parents proved sufficient in discouraging militant aggression towards their estate. His family would all survive the war; his mother would never have to make the dreaded midnight call to report a casualty; Andy and his siblings would never have to wield a weapon against men who’ve come to do them harm.
Some might call the family lucky. But if you ask Andy, he would say that it was the result of preparation, diligence, and old-fashioned common sense, three qualities that will serve any person well in any situation. And it was this element of universal relevance that struck me during our conversation. While stories of the Bush War will always prove to be fascinating on many levels, the elements of protection used by the family extend beyond the one isolated conflict.
Whether we’re defending a homestead in the African bush or the one that we cultivate and carry with us wherever we go, the responsibility for our safe passage ultimately rests upon our own shoulders. At all times, we are given the opportunity to use the terrain of our circumstances to our advantage, whatever those circumstances may be, to manage whatever physical elements we have within our control, and to keep the lines of communication open and flowing in both directions. And when these things fall short—as they inevitably will—our greatest resource in navigating the dark nights of this life is our reliance upon one another.
