Ian Smith
Ian Douglas Smith GCLM ID (8 April 1919 – 20 November 2007) was a Rhodesian politician, farmer, and fighter pilot who served as Prime Minister of Rhodesia (known as Southern Rhodesia until October 1964 and now known as Zimbabwe) from 1964 to 1979.[n 2] He was the country's first leader to be born and raised in Rhodesia, and led the predominantly white government that unilaterally declared independence from the United Kingdom in November 1965 in opposition to the UK's demands for the implementation of majority rule as a condition for independence. His 15 years in power were defined by the country's international isolation and involvement in the Rhodesian Bush War, which pitted Rhodesia's armed forces against the Soviet- and Chinese-funded military wings of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU).
This article is about the Rhodesian prime minister. For other people named Ian Smith, see Ian Smith (disambiguation).
Ian Smith
- Elizabeth II
- (until 1970)[n 3]
- Clifford Dupont (1970–1975)
- John Wrathall (1976–1978)[n 4]
Abel Muzorewa (as PM of Zimbabwe Rhodesia)
New title
Geoffrey Ellman Brown
New title
Himself
Clifford Dupont (External Affairs)
Himself
Himself
Himself
Phillip van Heerden
Zimbabwe Rhodesia dissolved
George Baden-Powell Tunmer
George Baden-Powell Tunmer
George Baden-Powell Tunmer
New constituency
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Parliament dissolved
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Parliament dissolved
New constituency
Parliament dissolved
New constituency
David Clive Mitchell
Patrick Francis Shields
White roll abolished
20 November 2007 (aged 88)
Cape Town, South Africa
- Liberal (1948–1953)
- United Federal (1953–1961)
- Rhodesian Front and successors (1962–1987)
3, including Alec
- Southern Rhodesia
- United Kingdom
Smith was born to British immigrants in the small town of Selukwe in the Southern Rhodesian Midlands, four years before the colony became self-governing in 1923. During the Second World War, he served as a Royal Air Force fighter pilot. A crash in Egypt caused debilitating facial and bodily wounds that remained conspicuous for the rest of his life. Following recovery, he served in Europe, where he was shot down and subsequently fought alongside Italian partisans. After the war, he established a farm in his hometown in 1948 and became a Member of Parliament for Selukwe that same year. Originally a member of the Liberal Party, he defected to the United Federal Party in 1953, and served as Chief Whip from 1958 onwards. He left that party in 1961 in protest over the territory's new constitution, and went on to co-found the Rhodesian Front the following year.
Smith became Deputy Prime Minister following the Front's December 1962 election victory, and he stepped up to the premiership after Field resigned in April 1964, two months before the first events that led to the Bush War took place. After repeated talks with British Prime Minister Harold Wilson broke down, Smith and his Cabinet unilaterally declared independence on 11 November 1965 in an effort to delay majority rule; shortly afterwards, the first phase of the war began in earnest. After further negotiations with the UK failed, Rhodesia cut all remaining British ties and reconstituted itself as a republic in 1970. Smith led the Front to four election victories over the course of his premiership; despite sporadic negotiations with moderate leader Abel Muzorawa over the course of the war, his support came exclusively from the white minority, with the black majority being widely disenfranchised under the country's electoral system.
The country initially endured United Nations sanctions and international isolation with the assistance of South Africa and, until 1974, the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique. Following 15 years of protracted fighting, with economic sanctions, international pressure and the decline in South African support taking their toll, Smith conceded to the implementation of majority rule and signed the Internal Settlement in 1978 with moderate leaders, excluding ZANU and ZAPU; the country was renamed Zimbabwe Rhodesia the following year. The new order, however, failed to gain international recognition, and the war continued. After being succeeded as Prime Minister by Muzorawa, Smith took part in the trilateral peace negotiations at Lancaster House, which led to fully free elections and the recognition of an independent Zimbabwe.
Following the election, Smith served as Leader of the Opposition for seven years and marked himself as a strident critic of Robert Mugabe's government. His criticisms persisted after his 1987 retirement: He dedicated much of his 1997 memoir, The Great Betrayal, to condemning Mugabe, UK politicians, and defending his premiership. In 2005, Smith moved to South Africa for medical treatment, where he died two years later at the age of 88.
As the dominant political figure and public face of Rhodesia in its final decades, Smith remains a divisive and controversial political figure to this day. By his supporters, he has been hailed as "a political visionary ... who understood the uncomfortable truths of Africa",[5] defending his rule as one of stability and a stalwart against communism.[6] His critics, in turn, have condemned him as "an unrepentant racist ... who brought untold suffering to millions of Zimbabweans"[5] as the leader of a white supremacist government responsible for disempowering and discriminating against the black majority.[5]
Character, reputation and legacy[edit]
"Smith was a simple man," Graham Boynton wrote soon after his death, "and it was his rather humourless, one-dimensional Rhodesian-ness that at once made him a hero among his own people and a figure of derision among his enemies".[301] As leader of the Rhodesian Front and its successors, he was the foremost figure of his country's white community—a "symbol and father figure",[302] in Mordechai Tamarkin's phrase, who as Prime Minister "personified white Rhodesia".[213] Supporters hailed him as "a political visionary ... who understood the uncomfortable truths of Africa";[5] detractors denounced him as "an unrepentant racist ... who brought untold suffering to millions of Zimbabweans".[5]
His determination to preserve the white minority's position in Rhodesia caused many black Africans and others to perceive him as a symbol of iniquitous white rule and racism.[303] Smith always denied being driven by racial prejudice—in a 1987 interview he asserted that he had been defending Western principles and that "it was Marxism I fought, not blacks".[304] Above all, he never expressed regret regarding his actions as Prime Minister; he insisted to his final days that the effects of Mugabe's presidency had borne out his predictions and proven him right.[305]
"The key to understanding Smith," Johnson wrote, "was that, like other white Rhodesians, he clung to an almost Victorian view of the world both in moral values and in the easy assumptions of British primacy that characterised the empire."[291] Bill Schwarz took a similar line, writing that Smith and his supporters reacted to the British Empire's demise by imagining white Rhodesians to be "the final survivors of a lost civilisation",[306] charged with "tak[ing] on the mantle of historic Britain" in the imperial power's absence.[307] "He spoke endlessly about how Rhodesians had been more British than the British," Boynton reflected, "and how this small community of decent, fair-minded whites had been betrayed by, well, just about everybody he could think of ... It was easy to mock Ian Smith, but he was right—both about the betrayals and about the quality of most African politicians".[301] Smith's "not in 1,000 years" quote dominated his obituaries, a development that Peter Godwin, despite his critical stance regarding Smith and his policies, considered "unfair and inaccurate": "Over the years it has become shorn of all context and compressed into a free-floating clip that has now become his epitaph ... But there is more than enough for which to quite legitimately criticise Smith, without resorting to fabrication."[205]
Memories of his travails on the UK's behalf during the Second World War—"undoubtedly the central experience of his life", according to Johnson[291]—were fundamental to the sense of profound betrayal Smith felt when the UK government proved one of his main adversaries as Prime Minister.[308] The wartime plastic surgery that corrected the wounds to his face left its right side paralysed, giving him a crooked smile and a somewhat blank expression, while his bodily injuries gave him a stoop and a slight limp;[309] he also could not sit for long periods without pain.[310] The post-colonial UK Smith encountered as Prime Minister seemed to him "foreign and somewhat effete", to quote Kenneth Young, while Smith was "a foreigner in all but language to most British politicians—a man of convictions so outdated, of tastes so naive, as to make mutual understanding almost impossible."[311] Smith held most of the British politicians he dealt with in extremely low esteem, considering them to have pushed him and his country into an impossible position where, he asserted in 1970, the decision to take unilateral action was "forced upon us".[312]
By contemporaries and opponents alike, Smith was widely recognised as a formidable and strong-willed negotiator.[313] Hempstone considered him "a man too principled (or short-sighted) to compromise with what he regards as wrong",[253] while Welensky compared dealing with him to "trying to nail jelly to a wall".[308] According to his RF colleague P. K. van der Byl, Smith had an "iron nerve";[314] he additionally gained a reputation for his "icy calm", as he almost never got angry or raised his voice.[309] His public profile divided people: He spoke with "a nasal monologue" as Peter Younghusband described it—"uninspiring even by Rhodesian oratorical standards".[309] In contrast, his open, informal association with the general public fostered the impression among white Rhodesians that their Prime Minister was still an "ordinary, decent fellow", which Berlyn cites as a major factor in his enduring popularity.[207] Welensky described him in 1978 as wielding an "almost hypnotic influence" over the Rhodesian electorate, which helped him to win "election after election ... hands down".[315] His character was recognised by his opponents as well; one militant, quoted anonymously by People magazine in 1976, asserted that "If we had a leader like Mr. Smith, we would have won long ago."[316] ZANU founder Ndabaningi Sithole described him in similar terms: "Smith is a fighter. He put up a great fight for his people. We were like two bulls in there, the way we fought. He is a man. I respect him."[309]
Reflecting his divisive legacy, Smith's death ignited mixed reactions in Zimbabwe: Then-Deputy Minister of Information Bright Matonga was reported as saying "Good riddance" during a radio appearance, later telling Reuters that he would "not be mourned or missed here by any decent person".[317] Reactions from the Zimbabwean public differed: Reflecting the country's economic downturn under Mugabe, members interviewed by media outlet The Week expressed nostalgia for his premiership as one of stability and prosperity, while simultaneously remembering his strident opposition to majority rule.[317][318] After Smith's death, MDC politician and senator Patrick Kombayi said that Zimbabweans had much for which to thank Smith. "The roads that we are using today were all built by Smith," he said. "All the infrastructure is Smith's. We never suffered the way we are suffering now because Smith took care of the economy that supported all people and they had enough to eat. When he left power the [British] pound was on a par with the Zimbabwean dollar, but President Mugabe has killed all that."[295] David Coltart, another MDC politician, issued a statement after Smith's death praising him as a man of modesty and integrity, but criticising what Coltart felt to be "disastrous political decisions as Prime Minister"; Coltart considered Smith's policies to have radicalised black nationalists, fomented Mugabe's rise to power and thereby "directly contributed to the trauma that Zimbabwe is suffering from today".[319] Godwin took a similar line, describing the emergency powers Smith used to combat black nationalists as "draconian";[205] he also pointed out that these "levers of repression" had formed the base for much of what Mugabe later did.[205] Lord Carrington spoke scathingly about Smith in a 2005 interview with Heidi Holland, saying he disliked both Smith and Mugabe but would choose the latter if he "absolutely had to choose"; Smith was, in his opinion, "a bigoted, stupid man" responsible for all of Zimbabwe's problems.[320][n 36] At the time of his death, some commentators argued that perception of his legacy had seen an improvement among black Zimbabweans as well.[6] "Smith's image improved inversely as Mugabe's plummeted," Johnson wrote. "When he walked the streets of Harare, Africans would almost queue up to grasp his hand and wish him well."[291] "If you were to go to Harare [in 2007] and ask ordinary black Zimbabweans who they would rather have as their leader—Smith or Mugabe—the answer would be almost unanimous", Boynton asserted; "And it would not be Mugabe."[301]