At this time of each year, I remember those who perished in the shooting down of the Civilian Air Rhodesia Viscount named the Umniati. It was shot down shortly after take off from the Holiday Resort Town of Kariba in a beautiful Country known as Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The plane was full of holiday makers and was on it's way to Salisbury. Aboard were families, husbands, wives and children. The pilot, Captain Jan Andre du Plessis, had recently lost his son, who also was a pilot in the Air Rhodesia Air Force. The first black Air Rhodesia Air Hostess, Regina Chigwada was undergoing training on board.
Mercilessly evil men had planned a mass murder to further their political agenda without regard to the sanctity of life. With communist supplied weapons they sent forth their footmen, trained in Syria, to carry out their evil plans and shoot down this aircraft in the evening of 12 February 1979. All 58 on board perished in the crash.
Mercifully there were no survivors. I say mercifully because this was not the first time a civilian plane was shot down. Just five months earlier on 3 September 1978 the Viscount called Hunyani was shot down with the same type of weapon, a Sam7 hand held land to air missile, in almost the same place. On that occasion the Captain, Captain John Hood, who died in the crash landing, managed to bring down the stricken aircraft onto a flattish piece of land in this hilly countryside. There were 56 on board the Hunyani, miraculously 18 survived the crash. Ten of the survivors, including two wounded Air Hostesses, children and an old man were then brutally murdered by terrorist on the ground.
This photo was taken Thirty years after this terrible event, on the very spot where the Viscount Hunyani came to rest in the crash landing.
We Will Remember Them.