Death Row in Paradise

The Untold Story of the Mercenary Invasion of the Seychelles 1981-83

Aubrey Brooks

• Publisher: Helion and Company
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781911096771
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire moderne

This is the story of an attempted coup d'etat more than twenty years ago on the Seychelles, an idyllic but obscure group of islands in the Indian Ocean. At the time, the attempt made headlines across the world, partly because it involved names still famous or notorious from the mercenary involvement in the Congo in the 1960s, partly because it involved the hijacking of an Air India jetliner, partly because South Africa, the international pariah, was involved, and partly because the incident was perceived as another small skirmish in the Cold War. However, this is more than a behind-the-scenes account of those faded headlines. It is the story of one individual's personal growth. The author writes, `I was wounded and captured in the Seychelles. I was severely beaten on a daily basis, stood trial and then was sentenced to death. I eventually served two and a half years in prison, a time, which I value with hindsight because I now realize it was then that I discovered hidden depths in my comrades and myself. I discovered humanity in my jailers and in the president of the Seychelles, whom my group had set out to depose. Cut off from my wife and family, I treasured their support from a distance and today do not for an instant take for granted the strength and joy of a loving family. And I deepened my religious faith, which today lights my path. It seems an odd thing to say, but I owe a lot to that escapade in the Seychelles. I realized how shallow and crass the racial attitudes are that exist in this world we live in. Human courage and kindness, I discovered, knows of no racial barriers. I experienced the unbelievable magnanimity and greatness of spirit of President Albert René, the man to whom I owe my life. I also experienced support from a distance from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a person I had been conditioned to expect nothing from except hostility. It was an illuminating and humbling experience. I also experienced the fickleness of the apartheid regime. I suppose, it would have been expecting a bit much for them to admit they backed the Seychelles attempt and supplied the weaponry, but as far as I am aware, they subsequently did not stir a finger, officially or unofficially, to ameliorate our condition or secure our release. What they did do was put sinister and unpleasant pressure on my wife, alone in Durban with two young children, for reasons I am still at a loss to understand.`

1

The Opening Salvo at the Gate

It was like something out of a bad movie. War is not supposed to be like this. Roger, Charlie, Ken and I were going up to the guardroom of the barracks as if we were troopies checking in after a pass. Charlie was holding out an AK 47 to the guy on sentry duty and saying, ‘Has anyone lost this?’ Yet we were there to take the place, or at least hold the armoury to stop the Tanzanians getting out with weapons to attack the main force. It was unreal, almost embarrassing.

‘Don’t panic, just put your weapons down and nobody will get hurt,’ said Charlie, as I was still getting out of the car. At that, the guy just emptied his magazine at us, firing blindly from the hip. Charlie took one in the left shoulder and I took one in the right thigh. I went down right away and rolled behind the vehicle for cover. I was in a relatively safe position, so I opened up on the guardhouse. I had lost sight of Ken but he was firing from somewhere pretty close by; Charlie was firing from behind the cover of a bush, away to the left; but Roger was standing out in the open exchanging fire with the Tanzanian from about twenty paces, like it was the Gunfight at OK Corral.

‘For God’s sake get some cover!’ I yelled at him. Then he ran across to a little house on stilts beside the driveway and carried on firing from there.

This was a bad situation to be sure, but for the moment I did have good cover under a tree. Nevertheless, we would have to move fast. Any moment the Tanzanians would be pouring out of there, armed to the teeth, with only us – holding the puny, butt-less AK 47s they had equipped us with, along with a few clips of ammunition – standing between them and the main force at the airport. Suddenly my good cover began to disappear as a 14.5 mm anti-aircraft gun opened up on us from within the barracks. My tree was being shredded about my ears; with every loud explosion more of the shrubbery would go walkabout and I was becoming badly exposed. But I kept on firing. I was determined to get the little bastard who had shot me. I could see him there; he was hiding behind a low wall on the veranda, which was in front of the guardroom. He was just shooting bursts randomly in my direction and it was one of those random bursts that he had been firing at Charlie that had hit me in the first place. At this point I was not pleased, but try as I may, I could not hit him. First the rounds would hit the roof above his head and the next they would hit the ground in front of him, sending up little puffs of dust in the process. Those stripped-down AKs had been perfect for close quarters combat, but were pathetic for accuracy.

We then crawled under the stilted house for better cover. That anti-aircraft gun was becoming a menace. Fortunately for us, probably due to a lack of proper maintenance it was jamming every few shots and this gave us a bit of a breather, but it was not nice to have the heavy stuff whining about our ears like that. Time was running out, not to mention ammunition. So we decided to move up the hillside and try to work out a way to get into the base and silence the gun. It was imperative that we seize the armoury and soon; our plans had come badly unstuck but if we could manage that, we were still in with a chance. We could see movement at the back of the barracks, but could not be sure whether it was people being issued with weapons or whether they were running away.

I was making heavy going: my right leg felt numb and I was bleeding badly. But Roger said it was just a flesh wound and he put a tourniquet, torn from my shirt, on my leg. That 14.5 gun was following us up the hillside with its fire, but at least there we had decent cover in the bush. This was more like what we had been used to in Rhodesia. We had just finished the first aid when we spotted Colonel Hoare and Barney Carey, down below on the road quite a long distance away. The Colonel looked cool as a cucumber, still in his blazer, and Barney had what appeared to be a radio. They were directing things, not caring a damn about the bullets that were flying around. We had lost Ken somewhere in the bush and it was getting toward dusk and starting to drizzle. My leg was also beginning to play up worse and worse. This was more than a flesh wound, and I was becoming a hindrance to the party, especially as the hill became steeper. We decided I should go down again and meet up with the main body.

I set off on my own down the hillside, getting cut to ribbons by the thorns, and then I blacked out; I suppose because of loss of blood. I came to, what must have been hours later, woken, I think, by the sound of a large jet coming in to land at the airport down below. There was an absolute din of small-arms fire coming from the airport, as well as the lower slopes of the hill I was on. But you could not tell which side was which. We were all using AKs, not like in the Rhodesian bush where you could always pick out the R1s, R5s or SLRs of our own fellows. There was no way I could get through that lot to the main force. I decided to get higher up the hill again to see if I could make out the lights of the Reef Hotel, where some of our party had been staying. I had to work out some way of getting there and I also needed to get some medication quickly. I guess I did not think far enough ahead. How does one stagger unobserved into a holiday hotel with a gunshot wound, pick up one’s key at the desk and go upstairs to call room service for a doctor and a cold beer. This was indeed a pickle. I dropped to my knees and said the Lord’s Prayer. I also prayed for deliverance from this mess. I felt calmed and, strange to say, I believe that in spite of what lay ahead, things began to change for me in the long run. It would be a very long run though. Just then a Seychellois and his sister came up the footpath and almost fell over me.

‘Stop, stand still and you won’t get hurt!’ I said.

But the woman started screaming her head off, which was the last thing I needed. Her brother and I managed to quieten her down and they gave me a metal mug, a bottle of orange juice and a piece of cloth, which I made into a better tourniquet. The pair slipped away into the bush, eager to put distance between themselves and the action, because by now bullets and ricochets were beginning to ping through the treetops about us. The orange juice was like nectar. I crawled a distance up the hillside, then found what I thought was a small cave; I quickly squeezed myself in the small space and tried to gather myself. I could see the lights of the Reef Hotel – so near and yet so far – but the airport sector was a complete blackout, from where you could hear a war raging. I pulled my leg up on to the branch of a tree to try to stop the bleeding. I knew that with the possibility of shock setting in, I should not fall asleep. However, it was not too long before I dosed off. I do not know how long I slept for, but I was suddenly awoken by the sound of a big jet aircraft taking off. The noise seemed to drown everything else out. I was not to know it at that time, but it was carrying the main party back to Durban and safety. Nor was I to know that my buddy, Barney Carey, who I had earlier spotted down on the road with Colonel Hoare, had refused to fly back with them and had come to look for me. In fact, he was on the same hill, not all that far from me, and we were about to share the hardship of the next three years in very close proximity. What a guy! Would I have made it without him?

2

The Approach

How did I get involved in this escapade? There were several factors that coincided: I was more or less at a loose end at the time that I was approached to join the operation; I had just been swindled out of a great deal of money; and like many whites in southern Africa – liberals as much as racial hardliners – I was alarmed by what was seen to be communist encroachment in the Indian Ocean and on the east coast of Africa. (It was not all South African government propaganda.) Anything to turn that back just had to be a good cause. But first let me tell a little about my background.

I am a religious man, humble before God. I grew up as a formal Roman Catholic. I was an altar boy and all that kind of thing. I drifted away from the Church as the Bush War developed, because I just could not understand why the Church was sheltering and supporting communist terrorists; this went against everything we were taught to believe. But I did not drift away from God. Right through that terrible Bush War, I never did lose faith and today I wear round my neck the crucifix given to me by my wife, Diane (Di), when I was a prisoner on the Seychelles. Now whenever I worship, I go to whichever church is the nearest. I have also since studied eastern religions and philosophies. I do not pretend to have the answers, but of this I am convinced: we are all answerable to God and in some way, we all worship the same God. I mention this, because religious faith has played a big part in my life and it certainly got me through the rough days, during the Bush War and the Seychelles.

I was born in the old Rhodesia and grew up in Salisbury in fairly privileged circumstances. My father was a successful businessman, although he was a very stern and demanding man. This was balanced out by my mother, also a hardworking person, who showered us with love and a self-belief that we were capable of doing anything and doing it well. As a youngster I used to race powerboats on Lake McIlwaine and go-karts in the junior events at race meetings. I did all right academically at school but, as I grew older I became almost obsessed with sport and did even better there – rugby, cricket, athletics and boxing. Soon after leaving school I became the amateur middleweight champion of Rhodesia. After that I qualified as a printer and worked for a firm in Salisbury. Meanwhile, I took up car racing and rallying, often travelling to events in South Africa and Mozambique, as well as Rhodesia. I gained my private pilot’s licence and got very involved in flying. I guess I was a junkie for the adrenalin rush. That kind of thing needed money of course, but I have always believed in working hard and playing hard. I am a party animal. To fund my racing and flying I had to work much overtime at the printing works. In fact a workmate and I used to vie with each other in setting a new Rhodesian record for overtime worked in the printing industry. Sometimes I would not go home for three days at a stretch. As I say, work hard, play and hard. I have done it all my life.

I moved from the printing trade to join the Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation, where I received training in master control at the television studios and was stationed in Salisbury. But then opportunities beckoned on Lake Kariba. With my background in power boating, I decided Kariba was the place to be. I moved up there and started a boat hire and lake charter business, serving the tourist trade. There I met all kinds of celebrities – film stars, singers and the like. They were relaxed days. I had a fleet of fourteen boats on the lake. I also had all kinds of sidelines. As international sanctions against Rhodesia developed, I made a pretty good living out of manufacturing, in a small way, all kinds of gadgets we could no longer import. We Rhodesians were pretty resourceful. I think that sanctions in fact opened many business opportunities for a lot of people in Rhodesia.

But during my time at Kariba, the Bush War was beginning to turn ugly. It had been bad enough even before the Portuguese decided to pull out of Mozambique, because they had virtually lost control of the interior by then. It meant our forces had to stage operations deep inside Mozambican territory to strike at terrorist bases and staging posts to try to keep them away from our farming areas in the east and northeast. After the Portuguese left it became worse, desperate really. We had this long frontier to defend, in heavy bush. It would have been bad enough in conventional warfare. In guerrilla warfare you had no option: you had to attack the enemy across the border on his own ground, as far as possible to keep him on the defensive. That was where units like the Selous Scouts came in. Like any Rhodesian man, I was called up for service with the Territorial Army, eventually serving three months on and one month off. I served in the Corps of Signals, where I became a colour sergeant specialising in training. I felt Signals was not quite my bundle and managed to get a transfer to the Police Anti-Terrorist Unit (PATU) stationed at Kariba, where I was living. During this period the Tracker Combat Unit (TCU) was holding selection courses and so I applied. This was more like it. The TCU developed into the Selous Scouts, and after selection I eventually got back my old rank of colour sergeant.

All kinds of experts have written about the Selous Scouts and their role in the war. I am not about to compete with them. All I want to say is that I agree with the view that the Rhodesian special force units were probably the most effective counterinsurgency forces in the world at that time. We were at the sharp end of a very rough and very ugly war, against opponents who had never read the Queensbury Rules. Some nasty things happened, inevitably. I also want to say my conscience is clear. Every operation we conducted – sometimes deep inside Mozambique or Zambia – was militarily necessary and under orders. I never took pleasure out of killing and destruction. Nor did my fellow Scouts, I am sure. But war is a horrible business and, as far as we were concerned, we had not started it. I ended up in the Grey Scouts (the mounted horse unit); this was also an elite counterinsurgency unit.

As far as I am concerned, we never did lose on the battlefield. We lost politically and economically. The ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) people feared and hated nobody more than the Selous Scouts. We had been right there at the sharp end. They knew us – we knew them. After Lancaster House, and the election, which was won by ZANU, there was no place in the new Zimbabwe for people of my war background. I was one of the many who were told that it may be in our best interest to look for another place to live. We moved to South Africa. Not so much because we did not believe in the new deal, but because we had no option. Di and I packed the jalopy and headed south with our elder son Rory and baby Roy. I had R900 in my pocket, which was all we were allowed to take with us.

We wound up in Amanzimtoti, a seaside town just south of Durban, in the South African province of Natal. I urgently needed work, partly to pay the rent and support my family and partly to qualify for a residence permit. There was a lot of sympathy in Natal for ex-Rhodesians, who were seen as kith and kin; Natalians also being mainly of British stock. I did not have too much difficulty landing a job in Amanzimtoti as a car salesman. I liked the people who gave me the job. Although I was successful, selling cars was not my bundle. I looked around for something else.

My break came when a small printing works came up for sale at a very reasonable price. I was, of course, a trained printer. It was a small shop just off the Esplanade, in Durban, at the edge of the harbour. I managed to borrow the money from the father of a very good friend. He gave us an incredible amount of support and with that, we threw everything into this venture, all the energy we had. It worked. The business grew fast and I repaid the loan in just a few months. We were working very long hours but making good money. It seemed I was at last carving some sort of spot for myself. The war in Rhodesia was in another life.

Just along the Esplanade from my printing works was the Riviera Hotel, owned by the father of Ken Dalgliesh, a former Rhodesian policeman who had also come south. I often dropped in there for a drink on the veranda. It was a place where I bumped into all kinds of ex-Rhodies. But I never was a ‘When-We’ (the boring folk who would start a conversation with ‘When we were in Rhodesia …’). All that was in the past; I was making a new life.

However, the growth in my printing business was beginning to present a few problems. The money was good, but it was wearing us ragged. As our business kept expanding, the contracts were getting bigger, then the payments were taking longer and longer to come in. We were very much a one-man show. I had a small staff, but largely it was just Di and me. The actual printing side of it, the sales, the customer relations, credit control, deliveries – all of that was done by us. We were working ridiculously long hours and not spending much time at home. Also, our print shop overlooked the harbour and every day I found myself looking out over one of the most beautiful harbours in the world. Durban harbour comes right into the city; when you are travelling down the Esplanade in your car, you see ships moving along as if they were in another lane of traffic. They have got a world-class yacht basin and three main yacht clubs. They also have wonderful offshore sailing facilities from where they launch Hobie Cats and other dinghies into the open sea. I began to think along the lines of getting back to something more like what I had been doing at Kariba. The printing business was going great guns. I had the figures to prove it. If I could sell it, I should have enough capital to get back into the boating and leisure business, even if only in a small way. I could get my life back.

I put the word out that I was open to offers. Some folk from a much bigger printing company came down to see me. They looked around and they said they liked what they saw. Then they made me a different proposition: why not merge with them, in return for a senior partner’s position and a share in profits? Salaried position! To a refugee from Rhodesia that was bait I could not resist. They talked me into it and my printing equipment got moved up to their plant. For a month or two I was ‘happy as larry’. But then it turned out they were a bunch of shysters. Their company was actually on the skids at the time they merged with me. Pretty soon it went insolvent and I lost every cent, not to mention our wasted effort. I was sore, but cowboys do not cry.

You and your family have to eat, so I got a job with an insurance company. I was selling quite a few policies and I did enjoy it, also my boss and my workmates were very nice, but I could not see myself doing this the rest of my life. I was becoming dissatisfied and restless. The bottom had fallen out of things. It was at this time that I was approached about the Seychelles operation. It was not the first time I had had this kind of approach. Africa is a continent of tin pot dictators, civil wars, coups, and mineral exploitation by the multinationals. Mercenaries are often in demand to tip the balance here, hold the line there, prop up so and so in power and protect the expat workers. The money usually comes from the multinationals or from the offshore funds of the particular dictator. It is all very discreet and low-key, and the mercenaries always call an operation like this a ‘funny’. People like me with an active military background are always in demand for this kind of thing. During the time I had been in Durban I had been approached at least half a dozen times by people asking if I was interested in a ‘funny’ somewhere in Africa.

I always turned them down. I was not interested. My Bush War days were over. I had a wife, two sons and all I was interested in was getting my life together. But this time it was a little different. The approach came from Ken Dalgliesh, who was managing the Riviera Hotel for his dad. The man behind it was Colonel Mike Hoare, the legendary mercenary commander in the Congo in the 1960s, who I knew by reputation to be a very honourable man and a highly professional soldier. (He had not been behind any of the other approaches.) I needed the money to make up for what I had been swindled out of in the printing business, so I could make a fresh start. The money on offer was R10,000 for an operation that would be a cakewalk, lasting no more than a few weeks. In 1981, that was an enormous amount. As I say, I was at a loose end, very discontented with what I was doing and I had no doubt at all that the operation would be on the side of the angels.

This was during the Cold War. Soviet and Cuban troops had invaded Angola. The Chinese communists had supported ZANU against Rhodesia, and the Soviets had supported ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People’s Union). You read in the papers every other day about the Soviets and the Chinese moving into the Indian Ocean, and it was not just propaganda. This came from serious writers in Britain and the United States. We had all read in the papers about how a left-wing revolutionary in the Seychelles had overthrown a legitimate, elected government and was installing a socialist – for that read communist – dictatorship. We had read how Western interests in ...