1 Lest We Forget Hunyani Poem by Alf Hutchison

It was on the last leg from Kariba to Salisbury on the 3rd of September 1978 that Air Rhodesia Flight RH825 sent a Mayday call. The aircraft 'The Hunyani' with fifty two passengers and four crew members on board was hit by a heat seeking Sam 7 missile. It had been fired by ZIPRA men...terrorists, guerrillas, combatants, comrades, cadres, freedom fighters, soldiers (depending on your viewpoint) 18 survived the crash but later the callous murderers shot and bludgeoned 10… one man, seven women and two young female children. Only 8 survived to tell of the horror they had witnessed.


LEST WE FORGET HUNYANI

He lay in hiding like a snake in the grass,
Black mamba, deadly, loathsome and crass,
Waiting in ambush, his expression quite bland;
Russian Sam seven clutched tight in his hand.

Kariba’s Air Rhodesia, flight eight-two-five,
Passed overhead, but would never arrive.
Now homeward bound, merely minutes in flight,
Caught in the eyepiece of his missile’s rear sight.

One Sam seven missile struck like lightening,
Mayhem on board was horrendously frightening.
Downed in the name of freedom’s dark cause,
Cadre, ‘freedom fighters’…Satan’s fine whores,

Twas a miracle that eighteen would even survive,
But sadly only eight would arrive home alive,
Ten surviving adults now fell dead to the floor,
Butchered by savages all a-thirsting for gore.

Followed by two children, aged eleven and four,
Bludgeoned by Blacks “Just to even the score”
“For stealing our land” one Black comrade said,
“We shall not stop killing, until all Whites are dead”

To the memory of passengers, pilot and crew,
To the survivors who battled to start life a new,
Like Rev. John da Costa, let us never forget,
Upon all brave Rhodesians may the sun never set.

Rhodesia… birthplace of my heart and my soul,
Its destruction was ZIPRA’s ultimate goal;
So September the third of Seventy Eight,
Remember ‘Hunyani’… and its heinous fate.