[BITList] Remembering Rhodesia

[John Feltham]

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Smith,  Ian Douglas  (1919-2007), prime minister of Rhodesia, was born on 8 April 1919 in Selukwe, Southern Rhodesia, the only son and third of the four children of John Douglas (Jock) Smith (1879-1956), butcher, mine manager, and horse breeder, and his wife, Agnes, nee Hodgson (1891-1978), daughter of Thomas Hodgson of Cumberland. His father was Scottish, and had emigrated to Rhodesia in 1898.

Education, war service, and early career in politics

Educated at Chaplin School in Gwelo, where he excelled at sport, Smith began studying for a bachelor of commerce degree at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. His studies were interrupted in 1941 by his decision to join the Royal Air Force. After training he was posted to 237 (Rhodesia) squadron, at first in the Middle East and later in the western desert. In 1943 he was seriously injured when his Hawker Hurricane crashed on take-off. Following reconstructive surgery which left one side of his face immobile, he returned to active service, flying Spitfires as the allies ground their way up the Italian peninsula. Shot down over the Po valley in 1944, he was picked up by partisans, and spent three months with them behind enemy lines. Remembering those days as some of the 'most interesting months' of his life  (Great Betrayal, 17), Smith learned Italian and read Shakespeare before crossing the maritime Alps into American-occupied France. His final posting was to 130 squadron, then based in Germany, and finally in Norway. Adopted by the maharaja of the Punjab, the squadron benefited from a generous discretionary fund to ensure that its pilots did not suffer 'unnecessary' hardships.

Once demobilized, Smith returned to Rhodes University in 1946. In the course of his final year he headed the student representative council, played cricket and rugby, and won an award for rowing. Back in Southern Rhodesia he set about acquiring farming experience, and in August 1948 leased land with an option to purchase, near his home town of Selukwe. That same month he married a local schoolteacher, Janet Duvenage, nee Watt (d. 1994), a University of Cape Town history graduate and widowed mother of two children (a son, Robert, and a daughter, Jean), with whom he had a further son, Alec.

Earlier in 1948 Smith had been persuaded by the right-wing Liberal Party to stand for the Southern Rhodesia legislative assembly and was duly elected with a clear majority. Initially sceptical of moves to establish the Central African Federation (incorporating Northern and Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland), he decided to work with rather than against the new dispensation, transferring his political allegiance to the United Federal Party led by Sir Godfrey Huggins and Roy Welensky. In 1953 he was elected to the federal assembly, serving as the party's chief whip from 1958 until his resignation in 1961. Objecting to new constitutional proposals for Southern Rhodesia, whose provision for African representation he claimed were 'racialist' because of the abandonment of the common roll, and realizing that the federation's days were numbered, Smith concentrated his energies on territorial politics. After discussions with Winston Field, leader of the opposition Dominion Party, and his close political friend and business partner, Douglas (Boss) Lilford, Smith emerged as one of the founding members of the Rhodesian Front (RF) in March 1962.

Appointed deputy prime minister and minister of the treasury after the RF came to power nine months later, and against a background of hardening attitudes on the part of white and black alike as Britain's retreat from empire gathered pace, Smith, together with Field, attended the Victoria Falls conference, called to wind up the affairs of the federation, in July 1963. With Southern Rhodesia awarded by far the greater part of the federal armed forces, and believing that they had understood R. A. Butler, Britain's minister for central African affairs, to have intimated that independence would soon follow, the Rhodesian delegation co-operated fully with the business to hand. But while Field was willing to take British assurances on trust, Smith, reserved and suspicious, on his own telling, warned Butler that if that trust was broken, he would 'live to regret it'  (Great Betrayal, 54). Butler denied that any such assurances were given, and there is no documentary evidence in support of Smith and Field's recollection of the occasion. Subsequent negotiations between the two sides, however, were conducted in an atmosphere of mistrust. Determined to halt the wind of change on the Zambezi, Smith and nearly all of his cabinet colleagues lost patience with Field's inability either to secure or seize independence from Britain, the problem being London's reluctance 'to grant independence to Southern Rhodesia, at a point of time when the franchise is incomparably more restricted than that of any territory which has acquired independence in the last 50 years'  (Sandys to Field, 22 Feb 1964, Parl. papers, Cmnd 2807). In April 1964 the RF parliamentary caucus ejected Field and chose Smith, the first prime minister to be born in Rhodesia. The latter's stated aim was negotiated independence, but he could 'visualise circumstances which could drive us to do something else'  (Young, 107).

Prime minister of Rhodesia: the unilateral declaration of independence and the bush war

Among Smith's first acts as prime minister of Rhodesia (as the colony was known after the dissolution of the Central African Federation and renaming of Northern Rhodesia as Zambia) was the detention without trial of the African nationalist leaders, Joshua Nkomo of the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) and Ndabaningi Sithole and Robert Mugabe of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). He also bolstered his support among white Rhodesians, his deputy, Clifford Dupont, robustly seeing off in October 1964 a by-election challenge from Welensky. Visiting London in January 1965 to attend the funeral of Winston Churchill, Smith met the prime minister, Harold Wilson, whose Labour Party had narrowly won the British general election three months previously. The encounter was not a success. In May the RF swept the board in an election presented as a united demand for independence, even as preparations were made for more drastic action, something that the self-governing colony was uniquely placed to do. Further talks in London and in Salisbury during October 1965 ended in failure. Ignoring Wilson's televised appeal to 'think again' and a last-minute telephone call, Smith, with the full backing of his cabinet, unilaterally declared Rhodesia independent of Britain on 11 November 1965, safe in the knowledge that London had eschewed the use of force. 'We have struck a blow for the preservation of justice, civilisation, and Christianity-and in the spirit of this belief we have thus assumed our sovereign independence', he claimed  (Wood, 390, 475).

When neither Smith's belief that Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) would be a 'nine-day wonder' after which international acceptance would follow nor Wilson's claim that economic sanctions would end the rebellion in weeks rather than months showed any sign of happening, the search for a settlement was renewed. Smith rejected increasingly accommodating British proposals tabled at talks on HMS Tiger in December 1966 and on HMS Fearless in October 1968, before reaching agreement in November 1971 with Sir Alec Douglas-Home, foreign secretary in Edward Heath's Conservative government. Confident that Rhodesia had the 'happiest Africans in the world', Smith and his advisers, who had earlier endorsed a 'world-beater' republican dispensation confining African political ambitions to parity with the white minority, completely underestimated the degree of black hostility to continued settler rule. When the Pearce commission, appointed to test the acceptability of the proposed constitution, returned a 'no' verdict in May 1972, Smith was outraged, criticizing it for its 'naivety and ineptness'  (Godwin and Hancock, 82).

Aware that the security situation was deteriorating, Smith was none the less taken by surprise in December 1972 when Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army forces, the military wing of ZANU, sheltered by local peasants, gave effect to new guerrilla tactics by attacking a white-owned farmstead. The ensuing armed struggle eventually engulfed the entire country at a cost of some 30,000 lives, with the Rhodesian security forces winning every battle but eventually losing the war. Before the military coup in Portugal in 1974 and South Africa's turn to a policy of detente with her black neighbours Rhodesia was able to circumvent sanctions and contain guerrilla incursions. Now exposed to unprecedented dangers, however, the authorities in Salisbury were gradually obliged to make concessions. Minor aspects of racial discrimination were pared back. Smith told a press conference in March 1976:

I have said before, we are prepared to bring black people into our Government to work with us. I think that we have got to accept that in the future Rhodesia is a country for black and white, not white as opposed to black and vice versa ... I don't believe in majority rule ever in Rhodesia ... not in a 1,000 years. I repeat that I believe in black and whites working together. If one day it is white and the next day black I believe we have failed and it will be a disaster for Rhodesia. (Godwin and Hancock, 152)

Six months later Smith was forced to concede the principle of majority rule within two years. Unable to resist the combined weight of American and South African pressure, he accepted a settlement package assembled by the United States secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. When Smith refused to accede to additional African nationalist demands, the deal fell apart. The war escalated, and by 1978 Rhodesian raids into Mozambique and Zambia were commonplace. Most casualties occurred in this period. An 'internal settlement' reached that same year with Bishop Abel Muzorewa's moderate United African National Council and other minor groupings conceded the appearance of black rule while preserving the substance of white control over the egregiously renamed Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, Smith relinquishing the post of prime minister. Lacking international recognition and with no end to the war in sight, the Salisbury government attended the Lancaster House conference called by Britain in September 1979. Against Smith's advice, Muzorewa stepped down in favour of an interim British governor, Lord Soames, bringing the rebellion to an end, even as for the first time it placed the country under Westminster's direct control.

Final years and assessments

At independence in April 1980 Zimbabwe came under the rule of Robert Mugabe, an outcome particularly opposed by Smith. Yet their initial meetings were cordial. As recorded in his autobiography, Smith's first impressions were positive. 'He behaved like a balanced, civilised Westerner, the antithesis of the communist gangster I had expected'  (Great Betrayal, 342). But Smith soon clashed with the country's new rulers. In March 1981 his objection to the government's announced intention of creating a one-party state caused Mugabe never to see him again. Returned to parliament as leader of the opposition by the white electorate, Smith was expelled from the assembly in 1986, all such seats disappearing the following year with the expiry of the reserved clauses of the Lancaster House constitution. Holding on to his farm, Gwenoro, outside Shurugwi (as Selukwe was now called), Smith also maintained a modest, unguarded home in Harare, the former Salisbury. Although no longer active in politics, he entertained a regular flow of journalists and academics, losing few opportunities to justify his past actions or comment on present-day issues. His memoirs, published in 1997 as The Great Betrayal, and subsequently revised and reissued as Bitter Harvest (2001), enjoyed significant sales. The violent downwards trajectory followed by Zimbabwe as Mugabe tightened his grip on power was grist to Smith's mill. Calling Mugabe 'mentally deranged' for having embarked on the fast-track land reform programme, Smith was threatened in October 2000 with imprisonment and trial for genocide, but no action was taken. With police help, his own farm was initially spared occupation by the self-styled 'war veterans' operating at ZANU's behest. His health failing, Smith moved to South Africa for medical treatment in 2005.

As much condescended to by successive British governments as he himself patronized African nationalists, Smith's measure was not easy to take. A character assessment prepared in 1964 by the Commonwealth Relations Office described him as:

a simple minded, politically naive, and uncompromising character ... He possesses a strong vein of schoolboy obstinacy and there is a mixture of schoolboy stubbornness, cunning and imperceptions about his speeches. Likewise there is a 'Boys Own Paper' ring about his patriotic utterances. Nevertheless his pedestrian and humourless manner often conceals a shrewder assessment of a particular situation than at first appears on the surface and he should not be under-rated. (TNA: PRO, DO 183/293, 'Visit of Mr I. D. Smith, prime minister of Southern Rhodesia, to London, September 1964')
Equally unflattering were the opinions of the old settler establishment whom Smith and the RF dislodged from office. To Huggins, Smith remained 'a farm boy from Selukwe, devious, parochial and suspicious'  (Blake, 361); while Welensky, on hearing that Smith had replaced Field as prime minister, described Smith as 'the most rigid, inflexible and prejudiced man imaginable'  (Evans, 43). His followers saw him very differently. According to the chairman of the RF in 1970, Smith had a

certain mixture of characteristics of caution, obstinacy, dedication, vision, tenacity and toughness that have invoked rage in some, frustration in others, and admiration and loyalty in most ... no other man ... has the physical and mental toughness necessary to have led Rhodesia where it is today. (Godwin and Hancock, 67)
At the time UDI was declared, the Conservative peer Lord Salisbury believed Smith to be 'a man of outstanding rectitude and honesty'  (Joyce, 265); and a few years later, the former American presidential candidate Barry Goldwater insisted that what the world needed was 'more men like Ian Smith. We have too few leaders and I'd like to see him multiplied a little bit, and spread around'  (Lake, 118).

As the war escalated in the 1970s, Smith was increasingly reviled. In 1976 the British foreign secretary, James Callaghan, described Smith as 'leading his country on the path of death and destruction'  (Evans, 251); and by the time of the Lancaster House constitutional negotiations in 1979 Lord Carrington was persuaded that Smith was 'a man who saw every tree in the wood but couldn't see the wood ... he was a ... bigoted, stupid man'  (Holland, 64). Inside Rhodesia whites to the right of the RF regarded Smith's attempts to reach an internal settlement as treachery. Notable exceptions aside, assessments of Smith's political career at the time and subsequently were negative where they were not positively hostile. Where Kissinger detected courage and dignity in Smith's surrender to the inevitable, others were struck by his racism and intransigence. Smith's claims to uphold 'civilized standards of behaviour' were contrasted with his humiliation and oppression of Africans 'because he could afford to regard them as a beaten people'  (Verrier, 157); his invocation of a communist threat to Rhodesia was dismissed as a self-serving ideological fantasy; and he was invariably criticized for the narrowness of his views. Smith understood his fellow whites, 'their fears, emotions and prejudices, largely because he shared those very feelings', concluded the historian Lord Blake in 1977:

But the same quality is a defect in dealing with the outside world. He has frequently failed to foresee foreign reactions and had made bad miscalculations about the consequences of some of his own decisions ... On a more fundamental issue too his parochialism betrayed him. No-one who understood the world of 1965 would have expected UDI to be, as Smith prophesied, a 'nine day wonder'. (Blake, 362)

Recognizing that Smith's 'deepest attachments were to his family, to his farm, and to the whole land of Southern Africa of which Rhodesia was a part', an earlier account noted that the Britain of the 1960s was:

a foreign, and somewhat effete, land to Smith and most of the born Rhodesians. By the same token, he seems 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. (Young, 128)
If those same beliefs explained Smith's baffled regret at imperial decline, they occasionally served as bulwarks against the more extreme ambitions of his followers. The autonomy of the multiracial University of Rhodesia under renewed threat in the early 1970s found a champion of sorts in Smith. They were not convictions that permitted compromise with African nationalist leaders except those of his choosing, his later admiration for Nelson Mandela notwithstanding. Nor did they lend themselves to self-doubt. Asked in an interview in 1970 what his biggest mistake had been, Smith could not think of one. 'I'm not by nature a pessimist, and I don't brood over mistakes. I rather tend to look to the future and to what I'm going to do for the good of my country, than worry about past mistakes'  (Illustrated Life Rhodesia, 24 March 1970). UDI had delivered 'fourteen great years', he asserted elsewhere  (Godwin and Hancock, 279). His memoirs betrayed no hint of remorse. Insisting that the 'tragedy of Rhodesia hinged to a large extent on timing', he denied that independence was taken

in order to ensure permanent white minority rule. History proves conclusively that this is a blatant lie. It was, of course, a continuation of the campaign of the communists, who all along had been trying desperately to frustrate our legitimate objective. (Great Betrayal, 408, 102)
Where things had gone wrong, it had been the fault of others, South Africa and Britain in particular:

And in all honesty, what had Rhodesia done to deserve all this treachery? Our opponents had great success in twisting the truth against us. They accused us of being racist, when in fact we were being realists, constantly planning ways and means to improve the lot of all our people, black and white. (ibid., 410)

If this was not a version of events that was widely recognized, elements of it were wryly acknowledged. In Harare news of his death elicited some predictable government responses:

Smith will not be mourned or missed here by any decent person because he was an unrepentant racist whose racist stance and opposition to our independence caused a war, and he was responsible for a lot of deaths and suffering. (Mail and Guardian, 21 Nov 2007)
Less obviously, a measured obituary in a state-owned newspaper, while concluding that Smith's 'tragedy of being unable to break out of his own past and prejudices became a tragedy for his Rhodesian whites', noted mildly that:

besides his exemplary family life, he had a group of intensely loyal friends whom he supported through thick and thin, and was also regarded as a good and progressive farmer, leading many to wish that he should have left politics alone and concentrated on this first-class private life. (The Herald, 21 Nov 2007)
More telling was the comment that while Smith 'was an oppressor ... he was an efficient oppressor because there was no inflation during his time ... and [no] destruction of the economy'  (The Independent, 21 Nov 2007).

To his supporters Smith remained 'good old Smithy' to the very end. He died in St James, outside Cape Town, on 20 November 2007, his wife having predeceased him by thirteen years. His son, Alec, a supporter of black majority rule who was nevertheless later his father's business partner, also predeceased him, in January 2006.

Ian Phimister 

Sources  K. Young, Rhodesia and independence, new edn (1969) + 'Ian Smith: riding the crest', Illustrated Life Rhodesia (24 March 1970) + J. Todd, The right to say no (1972) + L. W. Bowman, Politics in Rhodesia: white power in an African state (1973) + P. Joyce, Anatomy of a rebel: Smith of Rhodesia, a biography (1974) + H. Wilson, The Labour government, 1964-1970: a personal record (1971) + A. Lake, The 'tar baby' option: American policy toward Southern Rhodesia (1976) + R. Blake, A history of Rhodesia (1977) + P. Berlyn, The quiet man (1978) + A. Verrier, The road to Zimbabwe, 1890-1980 (1986) + K. Flower, Serving secretly: an intelligence chief on record, Rhodesia into Zimbabwe, 1964-1981 (1987) + P. Godwin and I. Hancock, Rhodesians never die: the impact of war and political change on white Rhodesia, c.1970-1980 (1993) + M. Evans, 'The role of ideology in Rhodesian Front rule, 1962-1980', PhD diss., University of Western Australia, 1993 + I. Smith, The great betrayal (1997) + J. T. R. Wood, So far and no further: Rhodesia's bid for independence during the retreat from empire, 1959-1965 (2005) + P. Murphy, ed., British documents on the end of empire: central Africa, 2: Crisis and dissolution, 1959-1965 (2005) + J. R. T. Wood, A matter of weeks rather than months: the impasse between Harold Wilson and Ian Smith: sanctions, aborted settlements and war, 1965-1969 (2008) + H. Holland, Dinner with Mugabe (2008) + The Times (21 Nov 2007) + Daily Telegraph (21 Nov 2007) + The Guardian (21 Nov 2007) + The Independent (21 Nov 2007); (22 Nov 2007) + The Herald [Zimbabwe] (21 Nov 2007) + New York Times (21 Nov 2007) + Cape Times (22 Nov 2007) + WW (2007) + personal knowledge (2011) + private information (2011)
Archives Rhodes University, South Africa, Cory Research Library | Bodl. RH, Welensky papers + South African foreign affairs archive, Pretoria + TNA: PRO, DO 183/293 FILM BFINA, documentary footage + BFINA, 'Interview with Ian Smith', The Frost programme, ITV, 13 Feb 1972 SOUND BL NSA, documentary recordings + BL NSA, current affairs recordings
Likenesses  photographs, 1963-71, Getty Images, London · photograph, 1965, Getty Images, London, Hult. Arch. [see illus.] · photographs, 1965-98, Photoshot, London · photographs, 1965-2002, PA Photos, London · G. Scarfe, caricatures, 1968-76, repro. in G. Scarfe, Drawing blood (2005) · W. Fawkes, cartoon, 1970, repro. in Punch (17 Nov 1970) · G. Scarfe, caricatures, 1970-78, repro. in G. Scarfe, Line of attack (1988) · photographs, 1997-2000, Rex Features, London · G. Scarfe, caricature, repro. in Private Eye (26 Nov 1965), cover · obituary photographs · photograph, repro. in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Smith · photographs, repro. in news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/7104935.stm · photographs, repro. in Smith, Great betrayal · 



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