Ian Smith; Times UK obit
Hyfler/Rosner
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
--
Visit www.aodeadpool.com
Bob Feigel
magnanimously proffered:
>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.
I can't wait - literally - to see what's written when that vicious
little toad, Mugabe dies. Hopefully, I won't have to wait long.
--
"It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens." - Woody Allen
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wax-up and drop-in of Surfing's Golden Years: <http://www.surfwriter.net>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bob Feigel
<b...@surfwriter.net.not> magnanimously proffered:
>On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:45:15 -0500, "Hyfler/Rosner" <rel...@rcn.com>
>magnanimously proffered:
>
>>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.
>
>I can't wait - literally - to see what's written when that vicious
>little toad, Mugabe dies. Hopefully, I won't have to wait long.
Speaking of that despicable POS, you might want to have a look at
Robert Mugabe's "official" website before it's zapped by someone who
doesn't think it's funny.
Bob Feigel
<t_del...@hotmail.com> magnanimously proffered:
>On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 15:05:39 +1300, Bob Feigel
><b...@surfwriter.net.not> wrote:
>
>>Speaking of that despicable POS, you might want to have a look at
>>Robert Mugabe's "official" website before it's zapped by someone who
>>doesn't think it's funny.
>
Thanks ...