Winds of Havoc by PH Adelino Serras Pires

I love love.  Especially between a man and a woman, both of whom I love.  I love love even more when it results in a collaboration that realizes a dream.  And most of all, I love love when that dream is a book.

More than 15 years after Adelino Pires and Fiona Capstick first met in South Africa through Adelino’s sister, Lucinda, (both ladies were working at the Military Intelligence Division of the then South African Defence Forces), and years after Peter Capstick first conceived of writing this book himself (Adelino and Peter first met in 1968 at the famous Monte Carlo hunting convention), Peter died suddenly at the SCI convention in March 1996, leaving behind his extensive interviews with Adelino.

Adelino rose to the task and his life story, as told to Fiona, was published by St. Martins Press in 2001.  I first reviewed this book for the International Professional Hunters’ Association (IPHA) newsletter in 2003, but want to bring it to the attention of our readers in this ‘Mozambique’ issue of ASG.

Adelino is one of those men whose life has carried him across nearly the entire African continent, whose career as a PH introduced him into the highest social milieux of Europe and America; and whose personal losses, the losses of his family as colonists in Mozambique, and the losses of all white Africans stranded and abandoned by both their native and titular governments, makes page-turning reading.  The resilience, hard work and dedication of men and families, like Adelino’s – whose life chapters are the very history of 20th century Africa – make you glad this tale was told, written, and published.

This is a book that points fingers and names names.  It outs cowards and corruption and pays tribute to heroes, including Adelino’s mother and father, as well as the long-suffering rural blacks, whose fates are equally knocked around by ‘liberation movements’ at home and indifference from abroad.  And yet, who endure and survive.

It is sadly, mostly, the story of the decline of Africa – of its wildlife, of its infrastructure, of its moral and political fibre – and how one man and his family cope as the dominoes of Mozambique, Rhodesia, Kenya, Angola, Central Africa Republic, Zaire, Sudan and Tanzania fall one by one, each time in each country nearly or entirely obliterating the safari industry.

The story begins in 1936 in Portugal.  Adelino’s father and mother are selling their coffee-milling operation to follow his three brothers to the far, faraway colony of Mozambique – 298,000 square miles and 1,550 miles of coastline, beaches and lagoons. You can visualize it perfectly – his wife and small children.  Simple words and photos say it all:  Zambezi, Tete, Beira, Manica Sofala.

Adelino’s story is the story of the Gorongosa Game Reserve.  Of the pioneering safari companies, Safrique and Safarilandia.  The story of the birth of the Mozambique safari industry and its ultimate fate is an absolutely gripping tale.  Ditto for Angola.  Ditto for Rhodesia.  Ditto for the C.A.R.  Ditto for Zaire.

It is the story of Adelino’s involvement with both the Marxist Mozambique Liberation Front, FRELIMO, and Mozambican National Resistance Movement, RENAMO.  Of mines and ambushes, secret meetings and secret operations.  Adelino knows the sickening guts of African politics, and the sorry way that Portugal pulled out of the continent, doing irreparable damage to both black and white along the way. 

Adelino had the fabulous good fortune of being educated in virtually everything that can be learned from the good schools in Salisbury, Rhodesia at that time.  That education gave him all the mental skills required for rural agriculture, trading and transportation in pre-liberation Mozambique. 

Hard to imagine, but Adelino was also in the casino/resort business in Kenya, and in the booking agent business back in the Frank Green days.  But above all, Adelino was in the safari business, which means having a dozen careers at once:  mechanic, marketing expert, psychologist, human resource manager, gunsmith, and reader of the winds either when facing wounded and dangerous game or recognizing when you are the last man left and it’s time to cut your losses and get out. 

Not many men acquire such intimate knowledge of so many countries.  Not many men have risen from the ashes this many times and maintain their humanity, even as politics, corruption, injustice and inhumanity colour every endeavour undertaken in Africa.  It is the story of rebirth and optimism.  Of a family with brothers and neighbours, and children and staff.  Of the courage and death of a mother and a father.  Yes, people die suddenly in this book – including safari clients – and Adelino has accompanied their famous remains to their families at home.

I remember the first time I met Adelino.  It was my first GAMECOIN convention in 1985 and I was feeling my way into the beginnings of a writing career.  I was at the booth of the Tanzanian safari company, TAWICO, talking to a coin-shaped African face that made me deeply uncomfortable. Then, the very tall and unmistakable Adelino walked up to the booth and stood gripping the edge of the table, and leaned slowly towards the seated man who was completely silent.  Adelino’s breathing was hard and deep.  I could hear the seething, yet contained, anger in his chest.  There were huge pauses between each syllable as he said:  “Ndolanga.  Adelino Pires.  The first time we meet since July, 1984.”

Most of you have at least heard the story of Adelino’s arrest and kidnapping, along with his son, nephew and friend in Tanzania in August 1984 in mid-safari with American clients from Texas.  If I had heard that he had been tortured and imprisoned, I had no idea he had been blindfolded and held in solitary confinement with no toilet, water, medical attention or clothing for more than 50 days.  It is a harrowing and sorry tale of how jealousy, corruption and twisted international politics hung his life and the life of his family by a string as they were tied and blindfolded and flown back and forth between Mozambique and Tanzania in a ridiculous and sickening shame-show.  The solidarity of the safari industry and the power of its influential contacts helped rescue him, although his thorough disgust with the Leftist Portugal of that time is clearly stated.  “Countries have interests, not friends,” writes Adelino. 

Surely there is a moral to this tale.  And there is.  One can have lived this life in so many countries, facing so many obstacles and losses, and still look back at the ultimate accomplishment of having achieved a family, health, love, friendship, and membership in a special fraternity of men and women with tales to tell, and the fortitude to tell them. 

The Winds of Havoc ($25.95) should be read by all who have tempted their fate in Africa, or dream of doing so.  It should also be read by anyone who ever has been or might be kidnapped and tortured, for there is much to learn about mental and physical endurance while facing pain, confinement, and numbing silence and criminality.

OK, I confess:  I love love best of all when an extraordinary, talented and beautiful woman like Fiona has lost a once-in-a-lifetime husband like Peter, and is blessed to find another chapter of happiness with a truly grand, charming and deserving gentleman as Adelino. 

The book can be found on various websites by Googling The Winds of Havoc by Adelino Pires.