Ian Smith 1919-2007
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“I met Ian Smith when I was 11, at a braai in Shabani. He seemed interested in everything and everyone and took the time to speak to us children and ask after our families.”
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Is the only good communist a dead communist? “I know some communists who are better than a lot of so-called capitalists in this free world, so let’s treat people on merit,” said Ian Smith.
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It is easy to see why a civil service, controlled and manned in its upper reaches by whites could remain efficient and uncorrupt but could not long do so when manned by Africans who were suppose to follow the same rules and procedures.
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Ian Smith, 1919-2007
Prime Minister of Rhodesia, Farmer, Veteran of the Second World War
The Rt. Hon. Ian Douglas Smith, who died on November 20 (the same day as Franco), was born on April 8, 1919 in the farming and mining town of Selukwe, Rhodesia. The youngest of three children, his father was a Scottish butcher who moved to Rhodesia and became a cattle rancher and horse breeder. Smith attended the Chaplin School in Gwelo from 1930 to 1937, becoming Head Boy, as well as Captain of Rugby, Cricket, Athletics, Tennis, and Boxing.
In 1939, Great Britain declared war on Germany, and Ian Smith left the family farm to join the Royal Air Force. Commissioned a Lieutenant in 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron, a crash in North Africa in 1943 injured him so gravely that his face had to be reconstructed, giving him a very fixed look on one side of his face. In July 1944, he was shot down over Italy and evaded capture, linking up with Italian partisan guerrillas and eventually escaping to England to rejoin the RAF.
He returned to Rhodesia after the war, and in 1948 married Janet Watt, a widow with two children, Robert and Jean, with their own son Alex born a year later. In 1948, Smith also ran in the general election for the Legislative Assembly as a candidate for the Liberal Party (a party that was, as Lord Blake wrote in his History of Rhodesia, “in accordance with the Rhodesian tradition of adopting the most misleading political nomenclature possible”).
“I was the youngest person ever to go into the Rhodesian parliament. I was twenty-nine years old. It so happened that in my little home town of Selukwe, which is a big mining camp, there were people who said ‘Look, surely you don’t expect us to vote for this chap Ian Smith. We remember him when he was in junior school here! And now you’re asking me to accept him as my Member of Parliament?’ Well it so happened that a few of my colleagues in the pub at the same time when the nominations had gone forward said ‘You know, when he decided to go to fight the war for Britain, and that was a number of years ago, you didn’t complain then, did you? What’s your case now?’ Well obviously they did not have a case and that pretty quickly scotched that one!”
In 1964, Prime Minister Winston Field resigned after the members of his party, the Rhodesian Front, felt he was unwilling to take on Britain in the fight for Rhodesian independence. (The British government was unwilling to grant Rhodesia dominion status unless a system of one-man, one-vote was instituted, a prospect considered anathema to Rhodesia’s property-based electorate). Ian Smith, a member of the Rhodesian Front, was chosen to succeed Field as Prime Minister. A year later, in November 1965, Prime Minister Smith and the cabinet declared independence from Great Britain. “We have struck a blow,” Smith told Rhodesia that day, “for the preservation of justice, civilization, and Christianity.” The Declaration of Independence was signed and enacted at 11:00 London time, on November 11 — Remembrance Day — a time particularly chosen to remind Britain of the great sacrifices the people of Rhodesia had made to preserve Britain’s independence in two world wars.
Smith led Rhodesia as Prime Minister for the next fifteen years, continuing the battle against the Communist terrorists whose ferocity only grew with each passing year. The economic sanctions leveled against Rhodesia by the United Nations had the reverse effect of encouraging internal investment and sparking a boom in the Rhodesian economy. The sanctions-busting smuggling of oil was the most difficult aspect of sanctions economically. But the governments of South Africa (then under apartheid) and Portuguese Moçambique (ruled by the Catholic dictator Antonio Salazar), while refusing to officially recognize Rhodesia were helpful in ensuring that the sanctions and embargo could be ignored.
For over ten years Rhodesia prospered, but towards the end of the 1970s, things began to change. Portugal’s Salazar, who had been on such friendly terms with Smith, died in 1970, and Moçambique became independent in 1975 and immediately became a one-party state ruled by the Soviet-backed FRELIMO. While Rhodesia, South Africa, and the United States backed the RENAMO resistance movement in Moçambique, the Communist control of the important port of Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) made breaking the oil embargo much more difficult. Furthermore, South African Prime Minister John Vorster started a policy of engagement with that country’s independent black-ruled neighbors in contrast to the previous policy of isolation. Wooing these countries, however, meant giving the cold shoulder to Rhodesia, and South African economic help trailed off.
Smith soon saw that the only way to prevent Rhodesia falling into the hands of the Communists was to compromise with the country’s non-violent Black moderates, chief among them Methodist Bishop Abel Muzorewa. An agreement was worked out whereby power, once held by the overwhelmingly (but not completely) white property-qualified electorate, would now be shared by white and black Rhodesians alike. There would be an Assembly of 100 members: 72 elected by the non-racial common roll (i.e. universal adult suffrage), 20 elected from the non-racial property role (previously the only electorate, in which voters had to own a certain level of property), and the remaining 8 reserved for white members who would be selected by 92 elected members. A Senate would exist as an upper house: 10 members elected by the lower house, 5 members elected by the Mashonaland council of chiefs, 5 members elected by the Matabeleland council of chiefs, and the remaining members appointed by the President on the advice of the Prime Minister.
In 1979, under the new settlement, a general election was held which international observers had confirmed as free and fair. Bishop Muzorewa and his moderate nationalist UANC party gained a majority of seats in the Assembly and so formed the government. Muzorewa became Prime Minister, and changed the name of the country to Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. Out of respect for the old leader and to include whites in the new government, Ian Smith was included in the Cabinet, though only as a Minister-without-portfolio.
The war against the Communists continued, albeit now under black leadership, but remarkably the international community refused to accept the compromise settlement and declined to recognize the new Republic of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. Neither sanctions nor the oil embargo were lifted and thus the country still suffered an energy crisis. The British government under Thatcher forced Muzorewa to the bargaining table. Thatcher invited both Muzorewa and the Communist guerrillas (the Patriotic Front under Robert Mugabe) to participate in roundtable talks in London at Lancaster House.
It was agreed that Zimbabwe-Rhodesia would revert to its previous role as a British colony while elections could be held which were not restricted to non-violent parties. In exchange for being allowed to participate in these elections, the Patriotic Front agreed to abide by a cease-fire agreement, to renounce the use of force for political ends, to campaign peacefully and without intimidation, and to accept the outcome of the election. The black moderates and whites were assured that, should any party violate these strictures the Governor was bound to forbid them from standing in the elections. Predictably, Mugabe’s guerrillas did not abide by a cease-fire, but engaged upon an active campaign of violent intimidation of the electorate. The British turned a blind eye, hoping to hold the elections and then “get out of Dodge” as soon as possible, handing over power to the victor.
Mugabe was declared the victor by a landslide and the rest is history.
The death of Ian Smith
May God in His mercy grant eternal rest to the soul of Ian Douglas Smith, and may perpetual light shine upon him. Amen.
Remembering ‘Smithy’
“Gosh it was only yesterday that my friend visited us in Salisbury/Harare from England and wanting to impress her I drove up to the Smiths’ house and knocked at the door. Janet answered and asked us in and when Ian arrived home my friend almost choked on her apple pie! They made us so welcome and even let us take photographs which, alas, I do not have copies of any more. Our afternoon tea turned into dinner too and Ian promised to look up my friend in London if he was ever in the country. Unfortunately, it never happened, and my dear friend passed away three years ago, but she retold the story of her visit to all who would listen and was one of Mr. Smith’s strongest U.K. supporters. She wrote many a letter to the Times telling all and sundry what a lovely man he was and how he really cared for his countrymen and women — no matter their colour. Rest in peace, Mr. Smith, you fought the good fight and deserve to be remembered.” — Stephanie Murphy
“When I was little, my dad ran State House in Bulawayo and we lived in a lovely cottage in the grounds. Whenever Ian Smith was visiting my dad would let me go over to say hello and he would sit me on his lap in the lounge called the Blue Room and read me stories. I still remember my dad on a mad hunt for his precious ‘Parker Pen’. Turned out I had wrapped it in toilet paper and gave it to Mr. Smith as a present. I was only about five years old, so of course I was forgiven and Mr. Smith got to keep the pen. He was an amazing man and will be mourned by anyone who knew him or wished they had. May he rest in peace.” — Lynda Taylan
“R.I.P. - and thank you for always making the time to speak to my dad at various cattle sales. It meant so much to him.” — Elizabeth Thomas
“What a legend. During the talks on HMS Tiger & HMS Fearless in Gibraltar, Harold Wilson tried to humiliate and degrade Ian Smith, by billeting him with the ‘lowest form of life’ onboard ship: the seamen. As the Senior Petty Officer said to Ian Smith in their wardroom when making a toast to him before dinner one night, ‘There are 265 officers and crew onboard ship - including you, sir, 264 support you, sir.‘ That sums up the man. Africa is poorer without you. Rest In peace ‘Uncle Ian’.” — George Parkes
“It was because of Ian Smith that guys like me joined the army, we were proud to fight and die for him and given the chance would do it again without thinking. One of my proudest moments was meeting Ian Smith whilst serving in Rhodesian Light Infantry. We will never forget the man.” — ‘gombie’
“As a child I met Ian and Janet a few times, and they both made a great impression on me. My parents and I spent time with them during a visit to Portugal and I remember what a gentleman Ian Smith was. I won’t forget his kindness to my mother and I when my Dad died so many years ago. May he rest in peace.” — Tracy Chittenden (née Burt)
“I met him personally at New Sarum many years later and then in more recent years enjoyed chats with him at the RAFA in Harare. He always remembered me. He was the most honourable politician in modern history and I was proud to serve in his armed forces. … We will never forget him.” — Dave MacKay
“In the mid-1990s I came across Mr. Smith in the Newlands Bookstore and had a short chat with him. Upon leaving he was recognised and the whole square filled with people cheering him. There were a few whites, but over a hundred black folk were leading this genuine, impromptu display of affection and appreciation. Businessmen and shop workers left the buildings and banks, joining the garage attendants, waiters, policemen, and others. Business stopped as people came together to join the excitement. Mr. Smith waved, thanked everyone and humbly walked around to his car. Even at that time in Zimbabwe, he was able to inspire hope and respect from all there; as well as a sense of loss. These are the kinds of memories and feelings we will keep in his memory. He will always inspire the best in us.” — ‘DanaDonn’
“A Prime Minister who was so down to earth that he stopped, saluted, and then spoke to my little boy, who was waiting at the airfield in Gwelo with his father one day many years ago. … That little boy is now 38 and, though only about four years old at the time, recalls that day with great pride and remembers that the Hon. Ian Douglas Smith, Prime Minister of Rhodesia, had saluted him as he was wearing a little jacket with his father’s old rank stripes sewn on the sleeve.” — Margaret Roberts
“I had the honor to meet with Ian and Janet Smith at their home in Harare and here in the United States. Janet walked my legs off in Washington D.C.! She was such an exuberant woman and so vivacious. I loved her immediately and have great memories of her. I remember having to show her how to order Room Service while Mr. Smith sat chuckling in the next room.
“Their humor was quite unexpected and totally captivating. When I first arrived at their home in Harare, they both made a great big deal about me having my first African meal and how they had made it so special for me. I had visions of crocodile, or elephant on a splendid tray… After we were seated at the table, a large covered tray was brought in and I braced myself to exclaim with delight at whatever it may be. With a flourish, Mr. Smith whipped off the cover and low and behold there was… a pizza!
“Such humble, real, absolutely great people. Mr. Smith actually taught me how to brew tea ‘the proper way’ when he visited us. I am so blessed and honored to have spent time with them.” — ‘cathi575′
“My family and I had the privilege of having lunch with Ian Smith. What a man: every word he spoke, you could tell he was a man of serious consequence and a natural leader. … I will never forget the day. R.I.P. Sir.” — Daniel Russell
“Ndimi mukuruwemauto. Ndimi mutungamire wedu waiva ne moyo mukuru, pfungwa dzaishamisa chose, ne njere kutonga vanhu venyika nerudo rakakosha. // You are a supreme warrior. You are our leader who had a big heart, amazing insight, and wisdom to lead the people of the country with loving compassion” — Bud Jackson
“A man who was tough but fair. He will be missed by many people around the world, but mostly by a huge number of people in Zimbabwe. Remembered with love and respect. R.I.P.” — Penny Campbell-Myhill
“I never actually met Ian Smith but I feel like he was a father to all of us in some way, thats the way he made every one feel. He was a good man and he will be missed by all. I write this with a lump in my throat cause I miss home. May you rest in peace, father of our nation.” — Dean Evans
“I had the opportunity to meet Smith when I represented Australia as part of the Commonwealth Observer Group for the Zimbabwean elections in 2000. I found his address in Harare, caught a taxi and found the gate wide open. He came to the door himself, made some tea and we chatted for an hour about his life and his leadership of the Rhodesian Front (where clearly some elements were much more reactionary than he was), his dealings with British prime minister Harold Wilson, and his relationship with Mugabe which, early on, had been unexpectedly productive.
“When I shook his hand, I felt I had touched the hand of history _ a modest, intelligent man, a farmer, a reluctant politician, a shot-down World War II fighter pilot, and a person who had done his duty and left his little country in marvelous shape.
“I caution against being harsh on Ian Smith. I feel privileged to have met him, and my view was backed by the respect given him by many black Africans. That is why his safety was secure while all around him, Mugabe and his cronies trashed a country.” — Australian Senator Sandy Macdonald
“Hamba Kuhle Baba, I never knew you, I don’t agree with all that you did, but you have helped shape me, and who I am, and, like any Ndebele, I admire a person who stands for what they believe in, even if it is to the ire of others. Rest in Peace, I only wish I could have met you.” — P.J. Mitchell
“Rest In Peace, Mr. Smith. And please pray for your country from up there. It still needs you…” — Matt Du Sart
A Glimpse at Smithy
From Graham Davis, writing in the Australian, 22 November 2007.
A few streets away at the palatial State House, where Smith used to live, his old nemesis, ‘Comrade President’ Robert Mugabe, was obliged to surround himself with tanks for protection against a seething populace. Yet here was the ageing warhorse of the outvoted white minority not only undefended but totally open to anyone passing by. And come in they did. […]
‘Every day, people come to me because things are so bad and they’ve nowhere to turn,’ he said. ‘I do what I can, which is unfortunately not much.’ […]
Later, I called on a senior veteran of the independence struggle, James Chikerema, to ask him why so many blacks I’d met agreed with Smith that their lives were better under his regime than under Mugabe.
‘To a certain extent, he’s right,’ said Chikerema, who fell out with the regime when Mugabe sooled his North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade on his political opponents in Matabeleland in the early 1980s. Perhaps 35,000 people were massacred.
‘During Smith’s time, the police did their work professionally but now they’re totally corrupt. It’s a terrible indictment of Mugabe that ordinary people felt safer under Smith than they do now,’ Chikerama ventured. […]
His home happened to be next door to the Cuban embassy and I wondered how he got on with his revolutionary neighbours. Cuba, after all, had sent thousands of troops to Africa to help in the liberation struggle and time was when Fidel Castro’s lieutenants would have seen it as their patriotic duty to eliminate Smith.
“I get on very well with my Cuban friends,” said the old man. “From time to time, they actually pass me cigars through the fence.”
“So the old saying about the only good commie being a dead commie doesn’t apply when they live next door?” I joked.
“Well I know some communists who are better than a lot of so-called capitalists in this free world, so let’s treat people on merit,” Smith replied.”
From R.W. Johnson, writing in the Sunday Times of London, 25 November 2007.
As Mugabe’s regime became steeped in blood and violence, Africans of all persuasions flocked to Smith’s house to consult him. The (all black) student body of Zimbabwe University gave him a standing ovation for his ringing condemnation of “the gangsters”, as he always called Mugabe’s corrupt ruling mafia.
Visiting him at his house in Harare (next to the Cuban embassy, the hammer and sickle flying) I marvelled at the fact that, after the death of his wife Janet, he lived alone with just a cook and minimal security. When he walked the streets of Harare, Africans would almost queue up to grasp his hand and wish him well. How could this be? […]
Paul Themba Nyathi, a leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, who had fought Smith’s regime tooth and nail, told me that in retrospect Smith’s Rhodesia had been “a paradise”.
In material terms that was certainly true: everything then was better for Africans than it is now – education, healthcare, standard of living, life expectancy and employment. But as people saw Mugabe cloistered behind high walls and Kalashnik-ov-toting guards, venturing out only in armoured cars and vast militarised motorcades, they also remembered how Smith had lived a simple, unguarded life.
When he needed to travel abroad he drove himself unescorted to the airport, parked his car and carried his own bag. Just before the last presidential election in 2002, Smith said to me: “If Mugabe and I walk together into a black township, only one of us will come out alive. I’m ready to put that to the test right now. He’s not.”
I never understood the Smith phenomenon properly until I attended the launch of his book, The Great Betrayal, in Durban in 1997. I’d been unsure about going, not wanting to be taken for someone applauding an old white supremacist, but I needn’t have worried. It was a family occasion for old Rhodies and I wasn’t part of the family.
Transparently, they all loved him, hung on his words as he talked about what a fine country Rhodesia had been, how it had been fully worth the fight. As people queued for him to sign their copies you could see big men shaking with tears. “They’re stateless, you see,” an old Rhodie said. “They belong to a country which no longer exists. They’re lost. We all are.”
I was left wondering, why do no South Africans feel like that? For the strange fact is that even people who were hidebound Afrikaner nationalists evince no nostalgia for their old leaders or for the apartheid period, which is now seen as having led the country into a disastrous cul-de-sac.
A month ago I had to meet a high-ranking Afrikaner policeman, a man of the old regime if ever there was one. He insisted we meet in his new home, an ex-serviceman’s “shell-hole”. There on the walls were pictures of the motorcycle escort for the 1947 royal visit, of a youthful Ian Smith, of Hurricanes, Spitfires, Lan-casters and of Jan Smuts.
Amazed, I asked what of Malan, Strijdom, Verwoerd? His opinions were unprintable. But why Smuts? Afrikaner nationalists always saw him as a sellout to the English. “He was a fighter, he was a general. In the backroom we’ve got the other Boer generals, De La Rey, Louis Botha and Kruger. All fighters, like Ian Smith. Not sellouts like De Klerk.”
Thus is collective memory reformulated. For black and white alike, Smith is now seen as someone who fought in the last ditch for “white civilisation” and, given how things have turned out, it’s difficult not to respect his fight. […]
His time with the partisans meant he spoke fluent Italian, loved opera and could quote great reams of Shakespeare. […]
When Mugabe gained power in 1980, Smith abandoned all his previous feelings about the man and rolled up every day at Government House to offer his help. He had, after all, run the country and economy surprisingly well in the face of tough international sanctions. He was incorruptible, the country he handed over was in good shape. The only thing that mattered now, he said, was to make a success of the new Zimbabwe.
Mugabe was delighted to accept his help and the two men worked happily together for some time until one day Mugabe announced plans for sweeping nationalisation. Smith told him bluntly he thought this a mistake. Their cooperation ended on the spot. Mugabe, furious at being contradicted, never spoke to him again. From time to time Mugabe made threatening noises, suggesting Smith ought to be locked up and “punished” for his opposition, but Smith’s attitude was contemptuous: “I’d like to see him try.” He never did.
When Smith’s delegation met Harold Wilson’s in their long and fruitless talks, observers were struck by the fact that the white Rhodesians were all older men who had fought for Britain in the war, tough guys who thought their opposite numbers naive. Wilson was taken aback and railed at him as a “tinpot dictator”.
Smith turned his back on him in a long silence before replying: “Look here, Harold, if you and I are to get on you can’t talk to me like that.” It was Wilson who had to retreat. […]
Interviewing Smith in the sitting room of his Harare home a few years ago, I was reminded of how the French left-wing intellectual Régis Debray described being sent by François Mitterrand on a mission to Hanoi. The communist leaders welcomed him with open arms and poured out their devotion to France – but, to his embarrassment, it was the France of Jean Jaurès and Victor Hugo, bearing almost no relationship to the urbane Paris of the 1980s that he had just left.
It was the same with Smith. He had, he told me, been bitterly disappointed by the Britain he had encountered in the permissive 1960s, but he’d just been to London for an RAF reunion and he’d been to the last night of the Proms. “And, my goodness, to see some of those young people sing Land of Hope and Glory – why, I think they have the spirit I thought was gone. Such fine young people, it will all come again, they’ll carry it on,” his bony old hands making emphatic gestures of enthusiasm as he spoke.
Theodore Dalrymple on Rhodesia
The young black doctors who earned the same salary as we whites could not achieve the same standard of living for a very simple reason: they had an immense number of social obligations to fulfill. They were expected to provide for an ever expanding circle of family members (some of whom may have invested in their education) and people from their village, tribe and province. An income that allowed a white to live like a lord because of a lack of such obligations scarcely raised a black above the level of his family. […]
It is easy to see why a civil service, controlled and manned in its upper reaches by whites could remain efficient and uncorrupt but could not long do so when manned by Africans who were suppose to follow the same rules and procedures. The same is true, of course, of every other administrative activity, public or private. The thick network of social obligations explains why, while it would have been out of the question to bribe most Rhodesian bureaucrats, yet in only a few years it would have been out of the question not to try to bribe most Zimbabwean ones, whose relatives would have condemned them for failing to obtain on their behalf all the advantages their official opportunities might provide. Thus do they very same tasks in the very same offices carried out by people of different cultural and social backgrounds result in very different outcomes.
Viewed in this light, African nationalism was a struggle for power and privilege as it was for freedom, though it co-opted the language of freedom for obvious political advantage.
Ian Smith 1919-2007The Rt. Hon. Ian Douglas Smith, who died on November 20, was born on April 8, 1919 in the farming and mining town of Selukwe, Rhodesia. The youngest of three children, his father was a Scottish butcher who moved to Africa and became a cattle rancher and horse breeder.
An editor’s note.
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