The Sunday Mail
Peter Stiff
On March 18, 1975, Zanu Chair Cde Herbert Chitepo was assassinated via a car bomb that detonated as he was pulling out of his home in Zambia’s Chilenje South township. In the aftermath, Zambian authorities arrested his colleagues in the party, including General Josiah Tongogara, the commander of Zanu’s military arm – Zanla. Wednesday March 18, 2015 marked the 40th anniversary of Cde Chitepo’s death. Our News Editor Morris Mkwate travelled to South Africa last week to speak to ex-British South Africa Police Superintendent Peter Stiff, who related his knowledge of the assassin and the operation to kill Cde Chitepo. Stiff – a prolific military historian who subsequently became the assassin’s close friend – has published the book “See You in November”, a detailed account of the killer.
The following is Stiff in his own words.
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I met Herbert Chitepo before he was an advocate in Salisbury.
When he qualified as an advocate – so I am led to believe – there weren’t white attorneys ready to brief him. An advocate cannot just go and operate in a court. He has to have an attorney to brief him. But there was one newly-qualified black attorney, Walter Kamba.
He (Prof Kamba) was the Vice-Chancellor of the University (of Zimbabwe) at one stage.
I was doing the prosecuting at Hartley, now Chegutu. In those days, you had the Native Commissioner’s Court also plied as a magistrates’ court. So, I was prosecuting there and this case came up with some 25 counts of stock theft from Mhondoro.
He was defending and I was prosecuting.
The case went on for three days and I won, which was satisfying. It was interesting how he got that sort of brief because the attorney’s father was the court interpreter at Hartley. So, when this case was coming up, his father tipped him off and he briefed Chitepo. It was a big case: 25 head of cattle.
If there had been any funny business, Chitepo should have won because the attorney’s father might have misinterpreted things to help his son. (Chuckles)
But, of course, I had a sergeant sitting in court listening so that couldn’t happen (Chuckles). He was very friendly with me. It was the only time I met him.
But he was very friendly; a decent sort of guy. He was a lot younger then.
Meeting an assassin
It was publicised in the newspaper that he had been killed. In fact, it was done, really, by the CIO.
He was the chief of Zanu in Zambia and the CIO knew this. So, they wanted to kill him to break up the organisation.
The idea was to disrupt everything that they could. This was how they came to the idea of assassinating him.
I know that you hear of all these different stories about how he was killed, but I can assure you he was killed by this guy “Taffy” who was of the British SAS. He died two years ago of cancer of the oesophagus aged 62.
He had left the SAS, come to Rhodesia and CIO got hold of him, and he worked for them. He did things like that. He was an assassin. That’s what his job was when he was in the British SAS. He was even going to assassinate (Muammar) Gadaffi. That was an operation organised by the British MI-6 together with the US’ CIA.
But then at the last moment, the CIA pulled out, and they let it be known that if the MI-6 carried on with this operation they would blow it.
So, Gadaffi wasn’t killed then.
Taffy’s name was Alan Brice.
He was doing these sort of operations for which he was very highly trained. You still had Zapu and Zanu in Zambia. His job was to disrupt things, cause trouble between the Zanu and Zapu people there.
He would go and spend a few weeks there. He would drop a grenade in a Zapu house or something similar. He would then leave behind, for instance, an AK with a name of a Zanu man scratched on it. (Chuckles)
And he would do all this; he was doing it all the time.
He would blow up a car and leave clues all around as to who did it. It would always either be Zanu or Zapu.
The final one was Chitepo.
Alan Brice had a team. There was Hugh “Chuck” Hind and Ian Sutherland; the three of them. Sutherland was a farmer up in Zambia. They used his farm as a base when they were doing these various raids.
Chuck Hind was also ex-SAS. He was highly decorated as well. And then, of course, he later got killed by accident.
Taffy went to Chitepo’s house. They knew where it was; they would recce it (carry out reconnaissance) all the time. He put an explosive device under the front wheel of the car. He thought then that Chitepo would drive forward to get out.
The idea was he would explode the device if he went over it.
And it did that.
Chitepo’s bodyguard was arrested for it by the Zambians. They beat the hell out of him.
By then, Kaunda was fed up with all this trouble that was happening between the two lots. He said he was not going to have all this continuing trouble, so he was kicking one of them out. He was kicking out Zanla and they had to go to Mozambique, which stopped the war for nearly a year.
Well, that was Alan Brice.
From there, they returned to South Africa until things calmed down and then they went back (to Zambia) again.
Target: President Mugabe
He then went to London at the Lancaster House Conference. His job was to assassinate Mugabe at Lancaster House. He did a recce and found he was staying in a hotel in Kensington. He recced the hotel, and watched for several days to see Mugabe coming to the hotel and going out to Lancaster House. He saw his routes; the way he would come from the lifts. Mugabe would always walk past a pillar that was in the middle. So, he set up a bomb. It was a briefcase loaded with plastic explosives.
It was all set up to go off.
He was sitting in a café across the road, which, at that time, was the sort of Wimpy place.
He could see the thing. He was sitting there, waiting to blow it up.
And then he got a coded call, which told him that under no circumstances was he to go ahead with the operation. So, Mugabe didn’t get blown up. He was lucky. We don’t know the reason for aborting the mission. We will never know. The instruction came from CIO because Taffy was working under CIO. But nobody told him at all.
(President Mugabe was targeted because) it was looked on him that he was not going to be a good leader as far as the whites were concerned.
Out of the shadows
The interesting thing was when I met Taffy for the first time in Alberton, South Africa. At that time, he had come out of Rhodesia. He had a service station in Alberton, which he called Rhodesian Motors.
He approached me.
I was writing the book “Selous Scouts Top Secret War” and just getting ready to launch it. So, I was giving stories to newspapers. He came, very agitated, to me. I did not know who the hell he was.
He introduced himself and said: “Why do you try to break the cover of my partner who I was doing all this work with in Zambia? If they find out, they are going to hang him. As it is, he is in jail for five years.”
His partner was Sutherland who was serving five years because they caught him with weapons and explosives.
Taffy was very touchy about that, quite rightly. I said I was not doing that; it was not him. It was another guy, a Selous Scout.
He said: “That’s all right. I was really worried about this. But look, come around to my house and have a beer.”
I went around to his house and we had a few beers. He was telling me about what he had been doing; all these operations.
He had retired, really – the war was over. He was telling me all about these things. Some of them seemed a bit far-fetched: He had these plastic explosives, which he took through customs into London. I know the customs and immigration in London are very tight. To get weapons or explosives through would be just about impossible.
So, I told him so.
He said: “No, no. . .What I did is I got it (the explosive device) put into cans. I went to a manufacturer and they put it in cans. They then put a label on to show it as guavas. They put water inside the can so if you shook it, it sounded like they could be guavas.
“I had eight or 10 of these cans in my stuff and when my luggage was being looked through, they said, ‘Yeah, guavas!’”
Guavas were so popular in South Africa. They said all right and he got through.
I said: “Oh, yeah.” And he said, “You don’t believe me, do you?” (Chuckles)
I told him I had a bit of doubt about it, so he said: “Just hang on a minute.”
He went into his pantry and brought out three tins of guavas.
He got a can opener; opened them and there they were: plastic explosives.
He had brought the stuff back. When he didn’t use it, he was not going to waste it – he brought it back! (Laughs)
When he showed me these cans of guavas (I reasoned that) nobody could just have cans like that with plastic explosives in them.
I didn’t previously know much about the Chitepo assassination. I just knew he had been killed, but not the details.
It was only when I met Taffy and that was in Alberton in 1985.
As far as the Chitepo assassination (is concerned), there are a lot of people who said it was Robert Mugabe who had him killed. But he didn’t: It was nothing to do with him. It was the Rhodesian CIO and the person doing it was Alan Brice who was also known as Taffy. Tongogara and the others were arrested without a reason. They had been set up and so they suffered. But, of course, it did mean the war stopped for a year.
Taffy was quite a character – big, tall (six foot something) and tough. He became a very good friend.
He still had his AK when he died.
◆ Transcription of interview by Morris Mkwate on March 16, 2015 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
