Ian Smith obituary
Steve Hayes
PM Unilaterally Declared Former British Colony's Independence
By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 20, 2007; 4:20 PM
Ian Smith, 88, the steely prime minister of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)
who unilaterally declared the former British colony's independence in
1965 and spent 14 years defying international sanctions and calls for
black majority rule, died today after a stroke at a clinic near Cape
Town, South Africa, where he lived in recent years.
Smith was a cattle farmer before rising to power within a nationalist
political movement of white settlers called the Rhodesian Front. Their
goal was to resist Great Britain's post-World War II efforts, and a
broader geopolitical trend, to turn over European colonies in Africa
to black majority rule. "Never in a thousand years," Smith famously
announced.
The Rhodesian Front, later derided by England's satiric Punch magazine
as a "surrey with the lunatic-fringe on the top," won the country's
top offices in 1962 in reaction to a constitution urged by England
that would have allowed for greater black participation in Rhodesia's
parliament.
Smith became prime minister in 1964 and denounced the proposed
constitution. After fruitless talks with Britain on finding a
compromise solution, Smith proclaimed unilateral independence --
making Rhodesia the second British territory, after the United States
in 1776, to take such a step without approval by the crown. England
declared Smith's actions treasonous.
The segregationist political system Smith maintained, including race-
based restrictions on voting and land rights, was supported by
counterinsurgency efforts that cost tens of thousands of lives.
He also instituted martial law by calling a state of emergency and
aggressively deploying a brutal central intelligence service and
commando unit. That approach to governing continued under Robert
Mugabe, a onetime black rebel leader who became prime minister of the
newly named Zimbabwe in 1980.
Terence Ranger, an emeritus professor of race relations at Oxford
University and a leading authority on Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, said Smith's
refusal to hand over power sooner "was a disastrous and destructive
delay which ensured a transition to authoritarian rule."
The economic destruction and political repression that define
Zimbabwean life under Mugabe have served to enhance Smith's reputation
as a courageous patriot among some Rhodesian-era whites. Smith also
endeared himself to his supporters for his accessibility and
unpretentious living habits. "Good old Smithy," as he was called,
rarely traveled with an entourage of guards.
He once denied that he was an extremist, adding, "I have certain
values I believe in, quietly and firmly, without shouting or waving my
arms about."
The youngest of three children, Ian Douglas Smith was born April 8,
1919, in Selukwe, a Rhodesian mining town now called Shurugwi. His
Scottish ancestors settled there at the end of the 19th century. His
father was a farmer and businessman who bred champion racehorses.
Smith called his father "one of the fairest men I have ever met, and
that is the way he brought me up. He always told me that we're
entitled to our half of the country and the blacks are entitled to
theirs."
When England went to war with Germany in 1939, Smith left Rhodes
University in South Africa and joined a Rhodesian squadron of the
British Royal Air Force.
He became a Spitfire fighter pilot and endured a painful hospital stay
after he burned his face in a plane crash. He returned to combat and
was shot down over the Po Valley. He disguised himself as an Italian
peasant and made his way back to Allied lines over the Alps.
After the war, he finished his college degree, married, began ranching
and won election to parliament in Southern Rhodesia (later just
Rhodesia).
He became part of the effort among British settlers in the region to
form a federation of British colonies to preserve white-minority rule.
In 1953, this resulted in the establishment of the Federation of
Rhodesia and Nyasaland, comprising Southern Rhodesia, Northern
Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Nyasaland (now Malawi).
The federation lasted a decade, despite increasing demands among black
Rhodesians for greater political say. Prime Minister Garfield Todd,
who served from 1953 to 1958, became a supporter of black rights and
one of Smith's leading antagonists. Todd would later serve five years
under house arrest during the prime ministership of Smith, whose
"inhumanity" he likened to Nazism.
Smith grew disgruntled with the United Federal Party, which supported
a revised constitution to bring blacks into the political system, and
used the financial support of Rhodesian tobacco baron Douglas C.
"Boss" Lilford to help form the Rhodesian Front.
The Rhodesian Front's principal mission was thwarting British efforts
to bring black rule to Southern Rhodesia, and it gained support among
whites who had been horrified by the civil war and bloodshed caused by
the abrupt departure of the Belgians from Congo in 1960.
Winston Field, a tobacco farmer in the Rhodesian Front, became prime
minister in 1962, and Smith was his deputy. But Smith soon deposed
Field, who was unable to win independence from England.
As prime minister, Smith frustrated a series of British leaders such
as Alec Douglas-Home and Harold Wilson and set about engineering a
national referendum of all registered voters that showed Rhodesians
favored independence.
This vote was rigged in his favor; the registered voters consisted of
89,594 whites and 12,664 blacks. The rest of the black population
(then about 2 million) was consulted through the tribal system of
village and tribal chiefs. He easily won the support of the chiefs,
whose salaries the government controlled.
Smith's government declared unilateral independence from England on
Nov. 11, 1965. "We Rhodesians have rejected the doctrinaire philosophy
of appeasement and surrender," he said. "The decision which we have
taken today is a refusal by Rhodesians to sell their birthright."
The English government did not recognize Smith's rule from the start
and launched an oil embargo and a campaign to bring economic sanctions
against Rhodesia.
The embargo won support from the United Nations but had little
practical effect. Rhodesia's abundant mineral wealth led other
countries to violate the sanctions. The Rhodesian government used that
income to buy agricultural products from the white farmers, which kept
the economy strong with a stable currency and low inflation.
Smith continued to provoke the black population with racially
discriminatory laws, notably the Land Tenure Act of 1970, which gave
Rhodesia's 240,000 whites 44 million acres of land while nearly 5
million blacks received 45.2 million acres.
As internal dissent grew, Smith resorted to martial rule and did not
hesitate to use a commando unit called the Selous Scouts to kill
alleged terrorists in Rhodesia or anti-government forces using
Mozambique as a staging ground. Even as some whites started to flee
the violence, Smith contended that his country was a safe and
prosperous land. He saw himself as a conservative savior for
"Christian civilization" during the Cold War. He promoted Rhodesia as
a haven -- unpolluted by either communist values or Western
permissiveness. He instituted forms of press censorship and banned
such Western influences as Playboy magazine and the disco records of
Donna Summer for their suggestive lyrics.
What contributed greatly to his downfall was the decision by leaders
in apartheid South Africa, particularly Prime Minister B.J. Vorster,
to abandon financial and political support under pressure from the
United States. Vorster feared that Rhodesia's civil war would spill
over into South Africa.
The title of Smith's memoir, "The Great Betrayal," referred more to
his attitude toward the South Africans than to the home-grown
resistance against him.
At that point, Smith worked to create a biracial government with a
moderate black leader, Methodist Bishop Abel Muzorewa, at its head in
1978. Muzorewa, whom Smith and his supporters viewed as malleable, was
not a favored choice among opposition groups. Mugabe, in particular,
denounced the arrangement because whites continued to dominate the
cabinet.
In 1979, all major Rhodesian parties as well as U.S. and British
diplomats met at the government-managed Lancaster House in London.
Smith won concessions that allowed whites to retain large swaths of
property and postponed discussions of land redistribution. In later
years, Mugabe encouraged the often-violent expulsion of whites from
their lands, including property Smith owned.
In the 100-seat parliament, 20 seats were reserved for whites for
seven years, and Smith controlled the white bloc. He used his position
to urge the country's 200,000 whites to stay despite Mugabe's
increasingly bloody purges of political opponents, notably with the
massacres in the mid-1980s at Matebeleland, the stronghold of his
rival Joshua Nkomo.
In the late 1980s, the black majority suspended Smith from parliament
for urging whites in South Africa to maintain apartheid rule. He soon
retired from political office but continued to give interviews
criticizing Mugabe as a "communist gangster."
In 1948, he married Janet Watt, a widowed South African schoolteacher.
She died in 1994. His son, Alec Smith, from whom he was estranged for
many years, died in 2006.
Survivors include two stepchildren, Robert and Jean; and six
grandchildren. His late son-in-law Clem Tholet, a folk singer,
composed an anthem of Smith's rule, "Rhodesians Never Die."
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
Steve Hayes
November 21, 2007
Ian Smith
Prime Minister who led the first colony since the US into
rebellion with his Unilateral Declaration of Independence
It was Ian Smith's war-damaged left eye that drew people's
attention first: wide open, heavy-lidded and impassive from
experimental plastic surgery, it hinted at a dull,
characterless nature. The other was narrow, slanting and
slightly hooded. Being watched by it was an uncomfortable
experience. Each eye could have belonged to a different
person.
A Foreign Office official, in a biographical note to the
Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home in 1964, caught the
same contradictory appearances: "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 underrated."
The advice was not heeded. Thereafter he held the attention
of a fascinated world for more than 15 years with his
rebellion against the British Crown over the issue of
preserving white minority rule in Rhodesia. He created an at
first booming economy in the face of United Nations
sanctions, and on a shoestring he fought a
counter-insurgency war that for a while he seemed capable of
winning.
His ordinariness and lack of artifice helped to make him an
extraordinary leader. Farmer, sportsman and quiet-spoken,
churchgoing Presbyterian, he saw the world in neat packets
of wonderful chaps, terrorists, communists and traitors. He
remained an obdurate opponent of black majority rule in
southern Africa.
His cold reserve served him both as a wartime Spitfire pilot
and in the face of a bawling British Prime Minister, Harold
Wilson. His obstinacy led his personal secretary, Gerald
Clarke, to pass on to him a British complaint that "once you
have stated your position, they are unable to get you to
move". Henry Kissinger perceived honour and courage in Smith
when he delivered what were effectively the terms of
Rhodesia's surrender, and he wept. He was modest to a fault.
Throughout most of his tenure at Independence, his official
residence, anyone could walk down the driveway and knock on
the front door.
Wilson was warned that there was a strong likelihood of a
mutiny in the British Armed Forces if he ordered a military
suppression of Smith's unilateral declaration of
independence (UDI). Pik Botha, the former South African
Foreign Minister, said that Smith could have won an election
in South Africa in 1976, while Pretoria was secretly forcing
him to accept black rule.
Smith is indelibly cast in the image of the arch white
racist. But black Zimbabweans after independence admired him
for his unbending, blunt criticism of President Robert
Mugabe - giving voice to opinions that they dared not utter.
As economic decay set in, Mugabe would be haunted by the
words of fellow blacks: "It was better under Smith."
In fact Smith never evinced the coarse racism of many of his
colleagues. His was an anachronistic vision of a sovereign
Rhodesia that embodied the traditions and values of an
unchanging Empire: he saw UDI as a short-term measure that
would quickly be resolved, with Rhodesia independent but
still tied to Britain through the Commonwealth.
The winds of change shattered his vision. By the time he
became Prime Minister, he was up against a Britain that
wanted not merely to introduce black rule, but to strip his
Government of the powers of self-rule granted by Whitehall
in 1923. With the brutality of post-independence Africa
vivid in the minds of white Rhodesians, he persisted with
what he saw as "evolutionary, not revolutionary, change".
But he remains condemned for ignoring the extreme disparity
between the economic and social circumstances of blacks and
whites, and his refusal to change the situation.
Ian Douglas Smith was born in the village of Selukwe in
central Rhodesia, of a Scottish father, Jock, and
Rhodesian-born mother, Agnes. He was educated at Chaplin
School nearby with moderate academic achievement, captaining
the first XV and running the 100 yards in 10 seconds. He
began a bachelor of commerce degree at Rhodes University in
South Africa in 1938, establishing an impressive academic
record and rowing for the university.
War broke out in 1939 and in 1941 he joined the RAF Empire
Air Training Scheme at Guinea Fowl in central Rhodesia. He
was posted to 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron in the Middle East,
flying Hawker Hurricanes.
Taking off from Alexandria on a dawn patrol in 1943, his
throttle malfunctioned, he lost height and clipped the
barrel of a Bofors gun. He crashed and rammed his face
against the Hurricane's gunsight. He suffered severe facial
injuries, broke his jaw, a leg and a shoulder, and buckled
his back.
Surgeons at the 15th Scottish Hospital in Cairo
reconstructed his face and, after only five months, he
rejoined his squadron in Corsica. He realised his dream to
fly Spitfire Mark IXs, carrying out strafing raids and
escorting American bombers. In mid-1944 Smith was leading a
raid on a train of fuel tankers in the Po Valley when he
made the mistake of going back for a second run.
The Spitfire was hit by an anti-aircraft shell, caught fire
and he baled out. He was soon picked up by the partisans.
The five months he spent with them near Sasello, learning
Italian, reading Shakespeare and working as a peasant, he
regarded as one of the best times of his life.
Near the end of the war, he and three other Allied fugitives
made their way through occupied Italy to the Maritime Alps.
At one point the conspicuously tall, fair-haired Rhodesian
strode unhindered through a German checkpoint. He led his
tiny group over the mountains, walking barefoot on ice,
until they reached an American patrol on the other side.
In 1946 he completed his final year at Rhodes where he was
also elected chairman of the students' representative
council.
Two years later he bought his farm, Gwenoro, in the plains
of Selukwe, married Janet Watts and, in elections in July,
became the Liberal Party MP for Selukwe, the youngest MP
ever in the Southern Rhodesian Parliament.
Fundamental change shook southern African politics in 1960,
when he was chief whip of the ruling Federal Party in the
Parliament of the Rhodesia and Nyasaland Federation. Harold
Macmillan's tour of Africa ended with his "winds of change"
speech in the South African Parliament. Rhodesian whites saw
from close up the bloody aftermath of Congo independence.
The federation was breaking up and independence was
inevitable for Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, as Zambia
and Malawi respectively - but, to Smith's bitter resentment,
not for Southern Rhodesia.
At home, the voice of Joshua Nkomo was propelling a tide of
black resistance with the hitherto unheard of demand for
"black majority rule now". White opinion hardened. Smith was
behind the formation in 1962 of the Rhodesian Front, which
easily won elections in December the next year, with Smith
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance.
He first encountered the Foreign Office at a meeting with
Rab Butler, the Foreign Secretary, at Victoria Falls in
December 1963. Butler grandly declared that Britain was
"very happy to agree" to independence for Southern Rhodesia,
at least at the same time as Zambia and Malawi.
Smith asked Butler for the undertaking in writing. Butler
demurred with: "There is trust between members of the
British Commonwealth." Smith wagged his finger at Butler,
and said: "If you break that, you will live to regret it."
The expression "perfidious Albion" was fixed in his
vocabulary from that day onwards.
In April 1964, Smith became the Rhodesian Front's leader and
Prime Minister. Almost immediately, he imprisoned the entire
leadership of the black nationalist movement, paralysing it
for a decade.
Harold Wilson's Labour victory in October that year was a
drastic setback to Smith's hopes. He rebuffed Wilson's
opening approaches, and it took Winston Churchill's funeral
in January 1965 to bring them together.
Smith attended the funeral, but was not invited to the lunch
afterwards at Buckingham Palace. He was at his hotel when
the Queen's Equerry arrived, and expressed Her Majesty's
surprise at his absence. Smith left immediately and was
warmly received by the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh. Wilson
also buttonholed him there and asked him to come to 10
Downing Street that afternoon. Both men surprised each other
at the absence of personal animosity, but their discussions
were the first in 15 years of missed chances.
It was becoming increasingly clear that Rhodesia was heading
for a unilateral declaration of independence. Smith,
reinforced by a clean sweep by the Rhodesian Front in an
election in May, held that illegal independence and "the
maintenance of civilised standards" was better than the
chaos that white Rhodesia believed would follow an African
government.
The Government was fully organised for the likelihood of
sanctions.). Wilson also betrayed his sympathies with Smith's
remark, "I don't think Rhodesia is in a position to have
one-man, one-vote tomorrow."
On board the cruiser, Wilson tried to humiliate Smith. He
took the admiral's cabin and put the Rhodesians in
non-commissioned quarters with a shared toilet. In their
first meeting, he shouted at Smith, who rose, stared at the
Mediterranean for interminable minutes and then told Wilson
to behave himself. Back in Salisbury, his Cabinet rejected
the proposals.
Wilson and Smith next met in October 1968 on board the
assault ship Fearless. This time Wilson, on the advice of
his secretary, Marcia Williams (now Baroness Falkender),
treated Smith hospitably, but resolution remained elusive.
Edward Heath's Conservative Government in 1970 made far more
progress with Smith and an agreement was ready for
conclusion, pending only the approval of the black
population. Unrest and resistance greeted Lord Pearce's
mission to assess black opinion, and there was no further
progress.
The 1970s dispelled the complacent image of a booming,
peaceful UDI Rhodesia. Guerrilla forces opened their long
war against Smith in December 1972. In October 1974 John
Vorster, the South African Prime Minister, launched his
policy of "d?tente" with black Africa. He demanded that
Smith release the black nationalist leaders in detention.
Smith gave in and agreed, and the relationship with his most
important ally was suddenly undermined.
Without warning Smith, Vorster removed the contingent of
South African police guarding the northern border against
guerrilla incursions. Smith was shocked. One could expect
this from the British, he said, but now with the South
Africans, "there was obvious deceit". Vorster kept on
squeezing Smith. The supply from South Africa of fuel,
munitions and aircraft spares for what was now a substantial
war began to dry up. The Rhodesian war effort was severely
curtailed.
Smith's impotent anger was clear in his remark then: "I
longed for those carefree days when I was flying around the
skies in my Spitfire, saying to myself, 'Let anyone cross my
path and he will have to take what comes his way'." Vorster's
first attempt to bring Smith and the black nationalists
together was in August 1975.
Smith laid down his position, the nationalists barked
demands and the meeting broke up in chaos after about an
hour. His trip to Pretoria on September 18, 1976, to meet
Henry Kissinger, the US Secretary of State, signalled the
final stage of his rebellion. A few months before, he had
made his famously regrettable statement: "I don't believe in
black majority rule ever in Rhodesia, not in a thousand
years."
The meeting in the American Embassy in Pretoria was an event
of great emotion for both the Rhodesian farmer and the world's
most powerful diplomat. Kissinger proposed black majority
rule in two years, and any subsequent proposals would be
infinitely worse. As he spelt out the situation, Kissinger
was wiping tears away from his eyes. "This is the first time
in my life I have asked anyone to commit political suicide,"
he told Smith. "You have no alternative. I feel for you."
Smith was sunk in despair, but awed by Kissinger. "He spoke
with obvious sincerity and there was great emotion in his
voice. For a while words escaped him," Smith recalled.
Kissinger's ultimatum was "the coup de grāce," he said. "We
were rudderless after that."
The Geneva conference between the Rhodesian delegation and
the African parties followed in late October. Under Ivor
Richard's ineffectual chairmanship, it fizzled out after two
months. In September 1977, Smith did the unthinkable.
Without consulting his cabinet, he flew to Lusaka in the
private jet of Tiny Rowland, the Lonrho chairman, for a day's
talks with Kenneth Kaunda, a few kilometres from a major
guerrilla base. The Zambian President "couldn't have been
kinder", but the initiative failed.
Smith again tried to settle without the rest of the world
and pursued a settlement outside the military alliance of
Nkomo's and Mugabe's Patriotic Front. On March 1978, he
signed the "internal agreement" with Bishop Abel Muzorewa,
the Rev Ndabaningi Sithole and two tribal leaders. The
country's first one-man, one-vote election in April 1979
drew a 63 per cent turnout and was won by Muzorewa's United
African National Council (UANC). The country became Zimbabwe
Rhodesia. Almost no one recognised it, and the war
continued.
Margaret Thatcher's Conservative victory in May that year
resulted in the Lancaster House constitutional conference in
London under Lord Carrington, the Foreign Secretary.
Smith was irrelevant at Lancaster House, raging fruitlessly
against the "treachery" of almost everyone from Carrington
to members of his own delegation. When they voted in
November on the proposed constitution, Smith was the only
dissenter. He boycotted the post-agreement party, and went
to dinner instead with his former RAF colleagues and Douglas
Bader. He refused to attend the "nauseating" signing
ceremony on December 19.
On March 2, 1980, near the end of vote counting in the
just-ended election, it was clear that Mugabe's Zanu (PF)
was heading for an overwhelming victory. Smith was surprised
to receive a call to meet Mugabe at his house. Mugabe
assured Smith that he would adhere to a private enterprise
economy to retain whites' confidence. He referred to the
country as "this jewel of Africa".
Smith went home in astonishment and told his wife he hoped
that he had not been hallucinating. Mugabe "behaved like a
balanced Western gentleman, the antithesis of the communist
gangster I had expected," he said.
Zanu (PF) won 57 out of the 80 black seats created by the
new constitution, with Nkomo's Zapu securing 27 seats and
the UANC only three. Smith's Rhodesian Front won all 20 of
the seats that had been reserved for whites.
He met Mugabe several times, until, in 1981, Smith
criticised Mugabe's plans for a one-party-state. Mugabe
stopped the meetings. In December 1982 Smith was briefly
arrested and he was forced to surrender his passport.
To Mugabe's chagrin, Smith was returned to parliament in the
1985 elections, but a year later was suspended for
denouncing black majority rule, and again in 1987 for
dismissing Mugabe's threats of sanctions against South
Africa as "a waste of time". Before he could return, the
constitutional provision for the 20 reserved white seats was
abolished.
In early 2000, a small contingent of so-called guerrilla war
veterans occupied part of Smith's farm at Gwenoro, as part
of a mass invasion of white-owned land. In March that year,
he appeared with Muzorewa and Sithole to launch a new
political party. To the relief of his friends and family, it
was never heard of again. Thereafter he slipped out of the
public eye.
From Cape Town, where he settled, and on tours abroad, he
continued to speak out against Mugabe and his "terrorists",
as he called them. As Zimbabwe plunged ever deeper into
economic chaos, he took a gloomy delight in the fulfilment
of his predictions. His sense of grievance at what he saw as
his abandonment by Britain and South Africa was expressed in
the title of his memoirs, The Great Betrayal (1997).
Smith's wife, Janet, and his son, Alec, predeceased him. He
is survived by his stepchildren, Jean and Robert.
Ian Smith, former Prime Minister of Rhodesia, was born on
April 8, 1919. He died in Cape Town on November 20, 2007,
aged 88
[ forwarded from alt.obituaries ]
Steve Hayes
Dan van der Vat
Wednesday November 21, 2007
Guardian
Ian Smith, who led white Rhodesians throughout the notorious
UDI period that marked the country's unhappy transition from
being a British colony to achieving full independence as
Zimbabwe in 1980, has died, aged 88. He was a man who wore
his mind on his face, as others wear their heart on their
sleeve. His glass eye and half-frozen features proclaimed
his obduracy before he opened his mouth to make history - by
defying it for an unlikely decade and a half.
Those subjected to his nasal monotone, coloured only by the
unmistakable "Rhodie" twang, are unlikely to forget the
grinding, righteous whinge of a man who knew he was the only
one in step and never understood why the rest could not
grasp that elementary truth. This conviction never left him
in his long and bitter twilight, and helps to explain how he
clung to power for so long: to sustain UDI or its big
brother, apartheid, tunnel vision was essential.
The cliché attached to Smith soon after he personally read
out his "unilateral declaration of independence" at the 11th
hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1965 could not
have been more apt: "in the country of the blind the
one-eyed man is king". The bizarre sense of occasion that
led him to choose the precise anniversary moment of the 1918
armistice to seize power on behalf of the white 5% of the
Rhodesian population was nevertheless a useful reminder to
his British "kith and kin" of his wartime service as an RAF
fighter pilot - when "Smithy" was shot down, lost an eye and
had plastic surgery for facial burns.
Britain seized Northern and Southern Rhodesia (today's
Zambia and Zimbabwe) in 1890. Southern Rhodesia became a
self-governing colony in 1911. In 1953 it was united with
Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland (now Malawi) in the Central
African Federation, designed to defer black rule. It
collapsed in 1963, when Southern Rhodesia reverted to its
status quo ante. As the future Zambia and Malawi moved
towards African rule, (Southern) Rhodesia with its
significantly larger, but still tiny, white minority was
denied it. The whites would not concede majority rule;
successive British governments, first Conservative, then
Labour, would not impose it.
When Rhodesian premier Winston Field proved insufficiently
intransigent for the hardliners, he was ousted by a palace
coup, which brought Ian Smith to power on April 13 1964. The
weak Westminster government of Sir Alec Douglas-Home was
unable to persuade the Rhodesian Front regime with its
overwhelming white support to concede progress, however
slow, towards African emancipation. In Britain, the much
more gifted Harold Wilson fared no better after he led
Labour to a hairsbreadth victory in October 1964.
When talks broke down on the Nibmar issue - no independence
before majority African rule - Smith went on the radio to
deliver his UDI speech, which contained distorted echoes of
the US version of 1776. It was followed by a
sub-Churchillian address to the nation which was a challenge
to the world and a defiance of the wind of change that had
already swept across most of Africa. But
ex-Flight-Lieutenant Smith's appeal to his kith and kin was
cunningly calculated and gave London the creeps. Armed
intervention was publicly ruled out from the beginning
because Wilson privately feared disloyalty among the British
military.
Oratory was not Smith's forte. Nor was logic: "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," was the coda to
his long apologia on UDI day. But the flight from reality
thus begun lasted nearly 15 years. Britain lacked the will
to depose him and much of the world gave mere lip service to
sanctions. Many countries, including black-ruled African
states as well as South Africa and Portugal with its African
colonies, found it expedient to undermine them. The US
imported Rhodesian chrome, British oil firms delivered
petrol and two planeloads of splendid Rhodesian beef, passed
off as from Zaire, went on sale daily at London's Smithfield
meat market. The Royal Navy solemnly prevented deliveries of
crude oil to landlocked Rhodesia via the Mozambique port of
Beira as tankers landed refined petrol at other ports or
sent it over the South African border by road.
Smith and his cronies were kept in power by a combination of
white redoubt solidarity in southern Africa, deep divisions
among Rhodesian-African tribal groups and guerrilla
movements, irresolution in London, inertia and insincerity
elsewhere - and a small group of white Rhodesian, South
African and British army officers, police, security men and
sanctions-busters whose cunning knew no bounds.
As a nasty bush war (20,000 killed) simmered away round the
periphery of the country, the capital Salisbury (now
Harare), sank into an eerie state of suspended animation.
Smith declared that the only important item which sanctions
denied him was Marmite; but the shops were communist in
their bareness. Most western luxuries as well as Japanese
cars could be found, but always at a premium price, and
spares were like gold dust. While it was always possible to
wash down the superb Rhodesian beef with fine Portuguese and
South African wines at several hotels, Salisbury had
difficulty living up to its nickname of Surbiton in the
Bush.
But every now and again there was a flurry of excitement as
London put out another feeler, even after the breakdown of
the Smith-Wilson talks on HMS Tiger in 1965, on HMS Fearless
in 1968 and Smith's declaration of a republic with a new
constitution in March 1970. The late Lord Goodman, Wilson's
lawyer, managed to slip in and out of Salisbury unremarked
at least twice.
Sir Alec Douglas-Home, by then Edward Heath's foreign
secretary, reached an agreement with Smith in November 1971,
which breached the Nibmar principle but was subject to
approval of all Rhodesian people. The Africans told the
investigating Pearce commission in 1972 that they
emphatically rejected it. The stalemate continued as the
world began to close in on the subcontinent. Portugal
succumbed to a leftwing revolution in 1974 and conceded
independence to Angola and Mozambique the next year. Bloody
civil wars ensued. South Africa, under increasing pressure
over apartheid, became disenchanted under John Vorster just
as the Zimbabwean guerrilla movements, led by Robert Mugabe
and Joshua Nkomo, stepped up their attacks inside the
country.
Smith therefore bit his lip and signed an accord in March
1978 with three black nationalist leaders with whom he was
to share power equally from the end of the year. Mugabe and
Nkomo, uneasily united in the Patriotic Front, the UN
security council and OAU, the Organisation of African Unity,
all rejected the deal. Smith turned to Bishop Abel
Muzorewa's United African National Council, an internal
grouping, and Zimbabwe-Rhodesia was born on June 1 1979 -
recognised by nobody. Its parliament gave 72 seats to
Africans and 28 to whites via separate voting rolls, and
Muzorewa became prime minister. In August the new British
premier Margaret Thatcher came under intense pressure at the
Commonwealth conference at Lusaka in neighbouring Zambia.
She called a new Rhodesian constitutional conference at
Lancaster House in London.
Smith, Muzorewa, Mugabe and Nkomo hammered out an agreement
over 14 weeks incorporating a ceasefire, a return to
legality and majority rule qualified only by a transitional
guarantee of 20 white seats in parliament until 1987.
Sanctions had at last worked, and a bitter Smith bowed to
them, to the increasingly effective guerrillas and to his
own total isolation. When I flew to Salisbury shortly
afterwards, the man in the next seat was clutching a thick
polythene bag full of small metal objects. Asked what they
were, he said: "Machine-gun parts. They've been waiting for
these for 15 years."
Lord Soames went to Salisbury as governor-general of the
directly ruled, reconstituted British colony of Southern
Rhodesia in December 1979, and free elections took place in
a tense but euphoric atmosphere in March 1980, swiftly
followed by independence under prime minister (later
president) Mugabe. Smith was unimpressed.
Smith was born to Scottish immigrant parents at Selukwe (now
Shurugwi). He attended Chaplin school at Gwelo (now Gweru)
and distinguished himself in rugby, cricket, tennis and
athletics, becoming head prefect. He went on to Rhodes
University in Grahamstown, South Africa, and graduated with
a BCom before joining the RAF for five years in 1941.
He crashed a Hurricane in north Africa, receiving burns to
his face and losing his eye, but returned to action in a
Spitfire with 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron. Shot down over Italy,
he baled out and joined the partisans behind the German
lines for five months. Escaping via France, he rejoined the
RAF and fought over Germany. Returning to his family farm,
he went into politics in 1948, sitting in the Southern
Rhodesian assembly and then that of the Central African
Federation until 1961.
He was a founder member of the hardline Rhodesian Front in
1962, acting as its president from 1964 until its
dissolution in 1987. He was deputy premier and treasury
minister from 1962 until taking over as prime minister in
1964. He awarded himself the Independence Decoration in 1970
and the Grand Cross of the Legion of Merit in 1979. He sat
on as a backbench MP from 1980 to 1988 after a spell as
minister without portfolio during the transition to black
rule.
To mild general amazement, he did not follow the example of
100,000 of his fellow whites, who fled to South Africa as
UDI crumbled. He left parliament when the reserved white
seats were abolished and returned to his farm. He lived
there quietly, unprotected, his door always open to a
rapidly dwindling band of interviewers. His loyal wife,
Janet died in 1995, and his son also predeceased him; he
leaves a stepson and stepdaughter. To visitors he expressed
not a word of remorse or regret for his actions. When it
came to Africans, he was paternalist at best and at worst an
unreconstructed white racist inherently incapable of
conceding equality.
As the new Zimbabwe effectively became a one-party state
under the gifted but autocratic Mugabe, as terrible droughts
undermined the economy and confidence of what was so
recently one of the richest and most fertile African
countries and as Aids cut a swathe through the population,
the old pariah, defiant and bigoted to the last, could not
resist saying, with the familiar Smithy whine: "I told you
so."
· Ian Douglas Smith, politician, born April 8 1919; died
November 20 2007
Peter H.M. Brooks
Steve Hayes wrote:
>
>
> To mild general amazement, he did not follow the example of
> 100,000 of his fellow whites, who fled to South Africa as
> UDI crumbled. He left parliament when the reserved white
> seats were abolished and returned to his farm. He lived
> there quietly, unprotected, his door always open to a
> rapidly dwindling band of interviewers. His loyal wife,
> Janet died in 1995, and his son also predeceased him; he
> leaves a stepson and stepdaughter. To visitors he expressed
> not a word of remorse or regret for his actions. When it
> came to Africans, he was paternalist at best and at worst an
> unreconstructed white racist inherently incapable of
> conceding equality.
>
He seems to have been, a bit like the Emperor Claudius, an unwilling
ruler - and all the better for it. He was naive in many ways, but that
is certainly preferable to being a psychopath.
I hear that ordinary black Zimbabweans hark back to the happy times
under Smithy, at least when chatting between themselves.
I suppose that the good thing about Uncle Bob (and there are good
things about everybody) is that, like Uncle Joe before him, he has
revealed the wonderful world of a Communist Paradise for all to see.
You'd have thought that people would have cottoned on to just what a
happy time people have in a Worker's Paradises by now, but, just for
those who are really, really slow off the mark, Uncle Bob is there to
help.
It's not often that I hope that Uncle Bob is right, but his recent
talk of a Pom plot to kill him had me hoping that he wasn't completely
wrong about everything. Not that I'm in favour of the assassination of
tyrants completely - Pink Floyd's suggestion of shipping them off to
an island where they could appear to each other on plebvision was
kinder (at least it looks that way until the final line!):
THE FLETCHER MEMORIAL HOME
take all your overgrown infants away somewhere
and build them a home a little place of their own
the fletcher memorial
home for incurable tyrants and kings
and they can appear to themselves every day
on closed circuit t.v.
to make sure they're still real
it's the only connection they feel
"ladies and gentlemen, please welcome reagan and haig
mr. begin and friend mrs. thatcher and paisley
mr. brezhnev and party
the ghost of mccarthy
the memories of nixon
and now adding colour a group of anonymous latin
american meat packing glitterati"
did they expect us to treat them with any respect
they can polish their medals and sharpen their
smiles, and amuse themselves playing games for a while
boom boom, bang bang, lie down you're dead
safe in the permanent gaze of a cold glass eye
with their favourite toys
they'll be good girls and boys
in the fletcher memorial home for colonial
wasters of life and limb
is everyone in?
are you having a nice time?
now the final solution can be applied
dank
> As prime minister, Smith frustrated a series of British leaders such
> as Alec Douglas-Home and Harold Wilson and set about engineering a
> national referendum of all registered voters that showed Rhodesians
> favored independence.
>
> This vote was rigged in his favor; the registered voters consisted of
> 89,594 whites and 12,664 blacks. The rest of the black population
> (then about 2 million) was consulted through the tribal system of
> village and tribal chiefs. He easily won the support of the chiefs,
> whose salaries the government controlled.
How are tribal chiefs chosen? If African tribal culture is democratic,
then the chiefs would have represented the opinion of their villages.
If African tribal culture is undemocratic, the chiefs would have been
dictators and it seems that the complaints about the white Rhodesian
government being exclusive don't mean much.
Peter H.M. Brooks
Democracy is more than just majority opinion - governance,
disinterested administration and the rule of law are important
components.
The masses are notable for their ability to get things wrong. Voting
on truth is a good way of establishing falsehood.
A tribal chief, or any other ruler, is good insofar as he is just,
disinterested and able. The way in which he gets his position is
almost irrelevant if these are there.
Moira de Swardt
"Peter H.M. Brooks" <Peter.H....@gmail.com> wrote in message
> Nonsense!
Tribal chiefs, as far as I can establish, are in hereditary positions. And
they are as revered as any other royalty.
Steve Hayes
>> This vote was rigged in his favor; the registered voters consisted of
>> 89,594 whites and 12,664 blacks. The rest of the black population
>> (then about 2 million) was consulted through the tribal system of
>> village and tribal chiefs. He easily won the support of the chiefs,
>> whose salaries the government controlled.
>
>How are tribal chiefs chosen? If African tribal culture is democratic,
>then the chiefs would have represented the opinion of their villages.
>If African tribal culture is undemocratic, the chiefs would have been
>dictators and it seems that the complaints about the white Rhodesian
>government being exclusive don't mean much.
Under white rule in Southern Africa most tribal chiefs were salaried employees
of the white governments, and could be, and often were, deposed if they failed
to heed their masters' voice.
FreeSpirit_uk
"Herbert Viola" <wga...@microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:wgates-BEEE10....@news.verizon.net...
> In article <vj97k3ldm50g27s8u...@4ax.com>,
> Steve Hayes <haye...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Former Rhodesian Leader Ian Smith Dies
>> PM Unilaterally Declared Former British Colony's Independence
>> By Adam Bernstein
>> Washington Post Staff Writer
>> Tuesday, November 20, 2007; 4:20 PM
>>
>
> grossly overplayed his hand, but UDI was very viable with the support of
> Portugal and SA. Once both those countries stopped helping, it did not
> take Smith long to adapt and allow elections without the standard voter
> qualifications, meaning the Zim-Rho idea.
>
> Maybe Smith should have foreseen Portugal's exit from Africa, but how
> could he foresee apartheid SA acting against its own interests and
> abandoning Rhodesia? Rho was a lightening rod which drew away attention.
>
As was South West Africa until apartheid South Africa negotiated that away.
From then on the focus was on South Africa alone. From a tactical point of
view white South Africa screwed up big time. The only thing which South
Africa couldn't have managed without and which they depended from the
outside world for was oil and they nearly got that when they invaded Angola.
If they had gone ahead and taken over Angola there is not much
diplomatically which the outside world could have done to force majority
rule on Rhodesia, South West Africa or South Africa. I wonder if the last
couple of white governments in the region were so confident that black rule
wouldn't come "in a thousand years" that they omitted to make sufficient
plans to ensure that it couldn't happen. A missed opportunity by white
South Africa was to not see to it that countries (such as South West Africa
and even Angola) possessing relatively small populations were not boosted by
white numbers substantial enough to have created a white majority.
I've often heard that the abandonment of Rhodesia by South Africa had a lot
to do with historical animosities stretching back to the Jameson raids -
eighty odd years earlier.
Bob Dubery
<FreeSpirit_uk_removet...@myway.com> wrote:
> "Herbert Viola" <wga...@microsoft.com> wrote in message
>
> news:wgates-BEEE10....@news.verizon.net...
>
>
>
> > Steve Hayes <hayesm...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> Former Rhodesian Leader Ian Smith Dies
> >> PM Unilaterally Declared Former British Colony's Independence
> >> By Adam Bernstein
> >> Washington Post Staff Writer
> >> Tuesday, November 20, 2007; 4:20 PM
>
> > Its very easy to think of Smith as a Milosovic type character who
> > grossly overplayed his hand, but UDI was very viable with the support of
> > Portugal and SA. Once both those countries stopped helping, it did not
> > take Smith long to adapt and allow elections without the standard voter
> > qualifications, meaning the Zim-Rho idea.
>
> > Maybe Smith should have foreseen Portugal's exit from Africa, but how
> > could he foresee apartheid SA acting against its own interests and
> > abandoning Rhodesia? Rho was a lightening rod which drew away attention.
>
> As was South West Africa until apartheid South Africa negotiated that away.
> From then on the focus was on South Africa alone. From a tactical point of
> view white South Africa screwed up big time. The only thing which South
> Africa couldn't have managed without and which they depended from the
> outside world for was oil and they nearly got that when they invaded Angola.
> If they had gone ahead and taken over Angola there is not much
> diplomatically which the outside world could have done to force majority
> rule on Rhodesia, South West Africa or South Africa.
South Africa never actually admitted to being in Angola. For them to
capture Cabinda would have been a clear invasion of a foreign
sovereign state and would have created a very different situation. It
would have been much harder for the USA to maintain even covert
backing, Thatcher would have had a more difficult time selling the
idea of constructive engagement with a country who had marched across
borders and taken over.
And with the Cuban and East German forces deployed in Angola it was
never going to be a doddle.
Given that they would have had to have used SWA for a springboard for
such an invasion there would have been further problems with the UN
which, rightly, maintained that SWA was merely a protectorate and not
an extension of South Africa.
It would have taken a really bloody minded government to proceed along
those lines, would have blown out of the water Vorster's policy of
detente with the front line states, and would have required an even
greater war effort sustained along very long supply lines.
It might have worked, but there would have been a heck of a price to
pay for that oil.
Steve Hayes
>In article <vj97k3ldm50g27s8u...@4ax.com>,
> Steve Hayes <haye...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Former Rhodesian Leader Ian Smith Dies
>> PM Unilaterally Declared Former British Colony's Independence
>> By Adam Bernstein
>> Washington Post Staff Writer
>> Tuesday, November 20, 2007; 4:20 PM
>>
>
>Its very easy to think of Smith as a Milosovic type character who
>grossly overplayed his hand, but UDI was very viable with the support of
>Portugal and SA. Once both those countries stopped helping, it did not
>take Smith long to adapt and allow elections without the standard voter
>qualifications, meaning the Zim-Rho idea.
>
>Maybe Smith should have foreseen Portugal's exit from Africa, but how
>could he foresee apartheid SA acting against its own interests and
>abandoning Rhodesia? Rho was a lightening rod which drew away attention.
Actually Smith's UDI was probably something of an embarrassment to the then
South African government, as it rocked the boat.
http://methodius.blogspot.com/2007/11/ian-smith-and-bram-fischer-memories-of.html
Bob Dubery
> "Peter H.M. Brooks" <Peter.H.M.Bro...@gmail.com> wrote in message
But the succession can be broken and interfered with. After the Zulu
War the British sent Cetshwayo into exile and divvied Zululand up
between 11 "chiefs" and two other men, one of them John Dunn. This
effectively deposed the Shaka dynasty and fragmented Zululand. Dunn's
portion was effectively a buffer zone between Port Natal and the
other, less trusted, rulers.
Not surprisingly feuds broke out between several of these newly
appointed rulers, and before long the Brits decided to re-install
Cetshwayo as a puppet king.
That didn't work either and Cetshwayo was soon badly defeated by one
of his sons who was one of the 13 rulers installed by the British.
Succession is always a tricky issue. When Henry VIII married Catherine
of Aragorn she had arguably a better claim to the throne of England
than he did, and certainly had more plantagenet blood flowing in her
veins. Some historians believe that the Tudor's claim to the throne
was not that convincing. And there various shenanigans around the man
who eventually became King Richard III, but only after he'd jailed the
young man who was actually next in succession and convinced parliament
that Edward IV's marriage was not valid.
Zvakanaka
"Steve Hayes" <haye...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:scphk35uq9r3hf879...@4ax.com...
> On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 17:41:50 GMT, dank <da...@nugget.org> wrote:
>
>>> This vote was rigged in his favor; the registered voters consisted of
>>> 89,594 whites and 12,664 blacks. The rest of the black population
>>> (then about 2 million) was consulted through the tribal system of
>>> village and tribal chiefs. He easily won the support of the chiefs,
>>> whose salaries the government controlled.
>>
>>How are tribal chiefs chosen? If African tribal culture is democratic,
>>then the chiefs would have represented the opinion of their villages.
>>If African tribal culture is undemocratic, the chiefs would have been
>>dictators and it seems that the complaints about the white Rhodesian
>>government being exclusive don't mean much.
>
> Under white rule in Southern Africa most tribal chiefs were salaried
> employees
> of the white governments, and could be, and often were, deposed if they
> failed
> to heed their masters' voice.
Was this the case in Zimbabwe? If so, can you provide links or sourced
examples. Thanks in anticipation
Steve Hayes
>
>"Steve Hayes" <haye...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:scphk35uq9r3hf879...@4ax.com...
>> On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 17:41:50 GMT, dank <da...@nugget.org> wrote:
>>
>>>> This vote was rigged in his favor; the registered voters consisted of
>>>> 89,594 whites and 12,664 blacks. The rest of the black population
>>>> (then about 2 million) was consulted through the tribal system of
>>>> village and tribal chiefs. He easily won the support of the chiefs,
>>>> whose salaries the government controlled.
>>>
>>>How are tribal chiefs chosen? If African tribal culture is democratic,
>>>then the chiefs would have represented the opinion of their villages.
>>>If African tribal culture is undemocratic, the chiefs would have been
>>>dictators and it seems that the complaints about the white Rhodesian
>>>government being exclusive don't mean much.
>>
>> Under white rule in Southern Africa most tribal chiefs were salaried
>> employees
>> of the white governments, and could be, and often were, deposed if they
>> failed
>> to heed their masters' voice.
>
>Was this the case in Zimbabwe? If so, can you provide links or sourced
>examples. Thanks in anticipation
My rate is R100.00 per hour, plus travelling expenses. For you, a special
discount -- R80.00. With a non-refundable deposit of R200.00.
Dave
>>> Under white rule in Southern Africa most tribal chiefs were salaried
>>> employees
>>> of the white governments, and could be, and often were, deposed if they
>>> failed
>>> to heed their masters' voice.
>>
>>Was this the case in Zimbabwe? If so, can you provide links or sourced
>>examples. Thanks in anticipation
>
>My rate is R100.00 per hour, plus travelling expenses. For you, a special
>discount -- R80.00. With a non-refundable deposit of R200.00.
Hayes, do you sometimes, even if by exception, talk sense as well?
Dave
Peter H.M.Brooks
of such a service, to go and gather evidence.
Dave
Even if he lied in motivation of the service?
Peter H.M.Brooks
dependent on each other. It can be sensible to lie - famously when the
mad axeman asks where the children are hiding.
Dave
<pe...@news.co.za> wrote:
I tend to think he is the axeman in this case,
with the former white government's head in the guilotine:-)
Keep well, luggage is loaded - see you next year.
Enjoy Christmas ...:-)
Steve Hayes
Why would I do that?
I stated quite clearly -- money would motivate me, but mere thanks wouldn't.
Bob Dubery
> On Sun, 09 Dec 2007 10:33:10 +0200, "Peter H.M.Brooks"
>
>
> >He was being sensible. He's offering, indeed giving a quote for the cost
> >of such a service, to go and gather evidence.
>
> Even if he lied in motivation of the service?
He did? Where?
FreeSpirit_uk
> On Sun, 09 Dec 2007 14:57:18 +0200, Dave <d...@d.durbs> wrote:
>
>>On Sun, 09 Dec 2007 10:33:10 +0200, "Peter H.M.Brooks"
>><pe...@news.co.za> wrote:
>>
>>>Dave wrote:
>>>> On Sun, 09 Dec 2007 07:10:35 +0200, Steve Hayes
>>>>>>> Under white rule in Southern Africa most tribal chiefs were salaried
>>>>>>> employees
>>>>>>> of the white governments, and could be, and often were, deposed if
>>>>>>> they
>>>>>>> failed
>>>>>>> to heed their masters' voice.
>>>>>> Was this the case in Zimbabwe? If so, can you provide links or
>>>>>> sourced
>>>>>> examples. Thanks in anticipation
>>>>> My rate is R100.00 per hour, plus travelling expenses. For you, a
>>>>> special
>>>>> discount -- R80.00. With a non-refundable deposit of R200.00.
>>>>
>>>> Hayes, do you sometimes, even if by exception, talk sense as well?
>>>>
>>>He was being sensible. He's offering, indeed giving a quote for the cost
>>>of such a service, to go and gather evidence.
>>
>>Even if he lied in motivation of the service?
>
> Why would I do that?
>
> I stated quite clearly -- money would motivate me, but mere thanks
> wouldn't.
>
And there I was thinking that for you - as a Christian, the pursuance and
discovery of truth would be motivation enough....
Zvakanaka
"FreeSpirit_uk" <FreeSpirit_u...@myway.com> wrote in message
news:fjkde5$ld5$1$8300...@news.demon.co.uk...
Free_spirit you think wrong. You are dealing with a locked mindset.
>
>
>