Ian Douglas Smith

Early life and education

Family, childhood and adolescence

Ian Douglas Smith was born on 8 April 1919 in Selukwe (now Shurugwi), a small mining and farming town about 310 km (190 mi) southwest of the Southern Rhodesian capital Salisbury (now Harare). He had two elder sisters, Phyllis and Joan. His father, John Douglas "Jock" Smith, was born in Northumberland and was raised in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Scotland; he was the son of a cattle breeder and butcher. He had emigrated to Rhodesia as a nineteen-year-old in 1898, and became a prominent rancher, butcher, miner, and garage owner in Selukwe. Jock and his wife, Agnes (née Hodgson), had met in 1907, when she was sixteen, a year after her family's emigration to Selukwe from Frizington, Cumberland. After Hodgson sent his wife and children back to England in 1908, Jock Smith astonished them in 1911 by arriving unannounced in Cumberland to ask for Agnes's hand; they had not seen each other for three years. They married in Frizington and returned together to Rhodesia, where Jock, an accomplished horseman, won the 1911 Coronation Derby at Salisbury.

The Smith family was active in Selukwe civic life. Jock Smith chaired the village management board, commanded the Selukwe Company of the Southern Rhodesia Volunteers, helped found the Selukwe Freemasons' Lodge, and served as president of the town's football and rugby clubs. Agnes Smith established and ran the Selukwe Women's Institute. Both were later appointed MBE for community service. Smith later wrote in his memoirs that his parents had emphasized personal integrity and moral discipline, and he described his father as an important influence on his political outlook. Like many white Rhodesians of his generation, Smith was raised in a settler society that identified strongly with Britain and the British Empire.

After attending the Selukwe primary school, he boarded at Chaplin School in Gwelo, about 30 km (19 mi) away. In his final year at Chaplin, he was head prefect and captain of the school teams in cricket, rugby and tennis, as well as recipient of the Victor Ludorum in athletics and the school's outstanding rifle marksman. He then studied at Rhodes University College, in Grahamstown, South Africa, then often attended by Rhodesian students—partly because Rhodesia then had no university of its own, and partly because of the eponymous association with Cecil Rhodes. Smith enrolled at the start of 1938, reading for a Bachelor of Commerce degree. After injuring his knee playing rugby, he took up rowing and became stroke for the university crew.

Second World War; Royal Air Force pilot

When the Second World War broke out in 1939, Southern Rhodesia had been self-governing for 16 years, having gained responsible government from the UK in 1923. It was unique in the British Empire and Commonwealth in that it held extensive autonomous powers (including defence, but not foreign affairs) while lacking dominion status. As a British colony, Southern Rhodesia entered the conflict automatically when Britain declared war on 3 September 1939, but its government issued a symbolic declaration of war anyway. Smith, who was about halfway through his university course, later described feeling patriotically compelled to put his studies aside to "fight for Britain and all that it represented". Excited by the idea of flying a Spitfire, he wanted to join the air force, but was prevented from immediately doing so by a policy adopted in Rhodesia not to recruit university students until after they graduated. Smith engineered his recruitment into the Royal Air Force (RAF) in spite of this rule during 1940, suppressing mention of his studies, and formally joined in September 1941.

After a year's training at Gwelo under the Empire Air Training Scheme, Smith passed out with the rank of pilot officer in September 1942. He hoped to be stationed in Britain, but was posted to the Middle East instead; there he joined No. 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron RAF, flying Hurricanes. In October 1943, in Egypt, Smith crashed his Hurricane after his throttle malfunctioned during a dawn takeoff. In addition to sustaining serious facial disfigurements, he also broke his jaw, leg and shoulder. Doctors and surgeons in Cairo rebuilt Smith's face through skin grafts and plastic surgery, and he was passed fit to fly again in March 1944. Turning down an offer to return to Rhodesia as an instructor, he rejoined No. 237 Squadron, which had switched to flying Spitfire Mk IXs, in Corsica in May 1944.

During a strafing raid over northern Italy on 22 June 1944, enemy flak hit Smith's craft and he had to bail out behind German lines. A peasant family with the surname Zunino hid him for a brief time; he then joined a group of pro-Allied Italian partisans, with whom he took part in sabotage operations against the German garrison for about three months. When the Germans pulled out of the area in October 1944, Smith left to try to link up with the Allied forces who had just invaded southern France. Accompanied by three other servicemen, each from a different European country, and a local guide, Smith hiked across the Maritime Alps, finishing the journey walking barefoot on the ice and snow. American troops recovered him in November 1944. Smith again turned down the offer of a billet in Rhodesia and returned to active service in April 1945 with No. 130 (Punjab) Squadron, by then based in western Germany. He flew combat missions there, "[having] a little bit of fun shooting up odd things", he recalled, until the war in Europe ended on 8 May 1945 with Germany's surrender. Smith remained with No. 130 Squadron for the rest of his service, flying with the unit to Denmark and Norway, and was discharged at the end of 1945 with the rank of flight lieutenant.

Graduation, marriage and entrance to politics

With Jock in increasingly poor health after the war, the Smith family briefly considered sending Ian to live in the United States with the help of Jock's brother Elijah, who had become a prosperous New York businessman. Smith showed little interest in leaving Rhodesia, however, and decided that he would finish at university, then come home and buy his own farm. He returned to Rhodes University in early 1946. Smith became spokesman for the university's ex-servicemen, senior student of his hall and chairman of the students' representative council. He turned down the presidency of the rowing club, saying it would be one administrative commitment too many, but agreed to coach the crew. Training the rowers under strict military-style discipline, he led them to victory at the 1946 South African Inter-Varsity Boat Race at the Vaal Dam south of Johannesburg, and subsequently received national-standard varsity honours for rowing, the first Rhodes student ever to do so. At the end of the year, having passed the exams to gain his commerce degree, he returned to Southern Rhodesia to study farming at Gwebi Agricultural College, near Salisbury.

Smith attended dedicated courses for ex-servicemen at Gwebi during 1947 and 1948, learning skills such as ploughing, herding and milking; he gained practical experience at Taylor's dairy farm near Selukwe and on a tobacco ranch at Marandellas. In 1947, he met Janet Duvenage (née Watt), a schoolteacher from the Cape in South Africa who had come to Selukwe to stay with family after the death of her husband Piet on the rugby field. What Janet had planned as a short holiday for herself and her two infant children, Jean and Robert, turned into a permanent move when she accepted a job offer from the Selukwe junior school. Smith later wrote that the qualities that had attracted him most to Janet were her intelligence, courage and "oppos[ition] on principle to side-stepping or evading an issue ... her tendency was to opt for a decision requiring courage, as opposed to taking the easy way out". They became engaged in 1948. Meanwhile, Smith negotiated the purchase of a piece of rough land near Selukwe, bounded by the Lundi and Impali Rivers and bisected by a clear stream. He and Janet gave the previously nameless 3,600-acre (15 km2) plot the name that the local Karanga people used to refer to the stream, "Gwenoro", and set up a ranch where they ran cattle and grew tobacco and maize.

A general election was called in Southern Rhodesia in July 1948 after the United Party government, headed by the Prime Minister Sir Godfrey Huggins, unexpectedly lost a vote in the Legislative Assembly. In August, about a month before election day, members of the opposition Liberal Party approached Smith and asked him to stand for them in Selukwe. With their wedding barely a fortnight away, Janet was astonished to learn of Smith's decision to run for parliament, having never before heard him discuss politics. "I can't say that I am really interested in party politics," Smith explained to her, "but I've always been most interested in sound government." Smith duly became a Liberal Party politician, finalised his purchase of Gwenoro, and married Janet, adopting her two children as his own, all in a few weeks in August 1948. They enjoyed a few days' honeymoon at Victoria Falls, then went straight into the election campaign.

Parliament

Backbencher

Because of Southern Rhodesia's small size and lack of major controversies, its unicameral parliament then sat only twice a year, for about three months in total, holding discussions in the afternoons either side of a half-hour break for tea on the lawn. Smith's early parliamentary commitments in Salisbury therefore did not detract greatly from his ranching. His maiden speech to the Legislative Assembly, in November 1948, concerned the Union of South Africa Trade Agreement Bill, then at its second reading. He was slow to make an impact in parliament—most of his early contributions related to farming and mining—but his exertions within the party won him Stockil's respect and confidence. Janet ran Gwenoro during Smith's absences, and gave birth to his only biological child, Alec, in Gwelo on 20 May 1949. Smith also served as a Presbyterian elder.

The pursuit of full dominion status was then regarded as something of a non-issue by most Southern Rhodesian politicians. They viewed themselves as virtually independent already; they lacked only the foreign affairs portfolio and taking this on would mean having to shoulder the expense for high commissions and embassies overseas. Huggins and the United Party instead pursued an initially semi-independent Federation with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, two protectorates directly administered from London, with the hope of ultimately creating a single, united dominion in south-central Africa.

Smith was one of the few to raise the independence issue at this time. During the Federation debate in the House of Assembly, he posited that since Southern Rhodesia was effectively choosing Federation over independence, a clause should be inserted into the bill guaranteeing Southern Rhodesia dominion status in the event of a Federal break-up. The United Party rejected this on the grounds that the Federation had to be declared indissoluble so it could raise loans. Smith was uncertain about the Federal project, but publicly supported it after the mostly white electorate approved it in a referendum in April 1953. He told the Rhodesia Herald that now it had been decided to pursue Federation, it was in Southern Rhodesia's best interests for everybody to try to make it succeed. He and other Rhodesia Party politicians joined the new Federal Party, headed by Huggins and Northern Rhodesia's Roy Welensky, on 29 April 1953.

Federation; Chief Whip

The Federation was overtly led by Southern Rhodesia, the most developed of the three territories—Salisbury was its capital and Huggins its first prime minister. Garfield Todd replaced Huggins as Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia. Resigning his Selukwe seat, Smith contested and won the Federal Assembly's Midlands constituency in the inaugural Federal election on 15 December 1953, and thereafter continued as a backbench member of little distinction. In the recollection of Welensky, who took over as Federal Prime Minister on Huggins's retirement in 1956, Smith "didn't spend much time in Salisbury" during the early Federal period, and had "three major interests ... one was daylight saving, one was European education and he always showed an interest in farming".

Smith received his first political office in November 1958, following that month's Federal election (in which he was returned as MP for Gwanda), after one of Welensky's Federal Cabinet ministers requested Smith's appointment as a Parliamentary Secretary in the new United Federal Party (UFP) government. Welensky turned this down, saying that while he appreciated Smith's relative seniority on the back benches after 10 years in parliament, he did not think he had "shown the particular drive that I would have expected" for such a role. He decided to instead give Smith "a run as Chief Whip, which is generally the step to a ministerial appointment, and ... see how he works out".

According to his biographer Phillippa Berlyn, Smith remained a somewhat pedestrian figure as Chief Whip, though he was acknowledged by his peers as someone who "did his homework well" whenever he contributed. Clifford Dupont, then Smith's counterpart as Chief Whip of the Dominion Party, later commented that the UFP's huge majority in the Federal Assembly gave Smith little opportunity to distinguish himself, as few votes were ever in serious doubt.

Leaving the UFP

Amid decolonisation and the Wind of Change, the idea of "no independence before majority rule" gained considerable ground in British political circles during the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Federation, which had faced black opposition from the start, particularly in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, grew ever more tenuous. Despite Todd's lowering of Southern Rhodesia's educational and financial voting qualifications in 1957 to enlarge the black electorate, very few of the newly enfranchised blacks registered to vote, much less utilised their vote, partly due to a boycott campaign by black nationalist movements seeking majority rule. This boycott saw the movement's first violent actions take place; black people suspected of registering to vote or participating in the vote were subject to arson attacks and petrol bombings.

Attempting to advance the case for Southern Rhodesian independence, particularly in the event of Federal dissolution, Sir Edgar Whitehead, who replaced Todd in 1958, agreed to a new constitution with Britain in 1961. The 1961 constitution contained no explicit independence guarantees, but Whitehead, Welensky and other proponents nevertheless presented it to the Southern Rhodesian electorate as the "independence constitution" under which Southern Rhodesia would become a Commonwealth realm, on a par with South Africa, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, if the Federation broke up.

Smith was one of the loudest voices of white dissent against the new constitution: alongside its lack of guarantees for eventual independence, he opposed its splitting of the qualified electorate (which was formally non-racial but which had resulted in a low percentage of blacks being eligible to vote) into graduated "A" and "B" rolls (the latter having lower income and property qualifications), saying that the proposed system had "racialist" connotations, and objected to the idea that the first black MPs would be elected on what he said would be a "debased franchise". Steadfastly holding onto a view that the electorate should be decided by qualifications rather than by universal suffrage, he stated that "our policy in the past has always been that we would have a government, in Rhodesia, based on merit and that people wouldn't worry whether you were black or whether you were white"; either way, most blacks did not qualify for either roll in the subsequent election.

At the UFP vote on the constitution on 22 February 1961, Smith was the only member out of 280 to vote against it. Deeply disillusioned by these developments, he resigned from the UFP soon thereafter to sit in the Federal Assembly as an independent. He lent his support to the "United Group", an awkward coalition wherein Winston Field's conservative Dominion Party closed ranks with Sir Robert Tredgold and other liberals against the constitutional proposals, despite opposing them for totally contradictory reasons. The black-nationalist leaders initially endorsed the constitution, signing the draft document, but repudiated it almost immediately thereafter and called for blacks to boycott elections held under it. A referendum of the mostly white electorate approved the new constitution by a majority of 65% on 26 July 1961.

Forming the Rhodesian Front

As the UK government introduced majority rule in Nyasaland and moved towards similar changes in Northern Rhodesia, Smith concluded that the Federation was unlikely to survive and supported the creation of a new party advocating Southern Rhodesian independence without accepting British conditions. With the support of the rancher, miner and industrialist Douglas "Boss" Lilford, he formed the Rhodesian Reform Party (RRP) in December 1961, drawing support from defectors from the UFP.

Meanwhile, Whitehead sought both to counter black nationalist organisations and to encourage newly eligible black voters to register. He banned the main nationalist group, the National Democratic Party, describing it as violent and intimidatory; it reformed shortly afterwards as the Zimbabwe African People's Union. Whitehead also announced that, if re-elected, the UFP would repeal the racially discriminatory Land Apportionment Act of 1930, a policy intended partly to appeal to newly enfranchised black voters. The measures attracted limited black electoral support while alienating many white voters, some of whom moved to the RRP or Field's Dominion Party.

Smith, Field and others met in Salisbury on 13 March 1962 and agreed to unite against Whitehead under the name Rhodesian Front (RF). The new party included former UFP members, among them Smith, who favoured a gradual political transition based on existing electoral qualifications, as well as more conservative members of the Dominion Party, some of whom supported segregationist policies comparable to those of South Africa's National Party. The RF coalition was therefore ideologically diverse and, in its early stages, fragile. Its members were united chiefly by opposition to Whitehead's proposed reforms, which they argued could produce political instability, white emigration and economic decline similar to that seen during the Congo Crisis.

In the wider Cold War context, the strongly anti-communist RF presented itself as part of a pro-Western alignment in southern Africa, alongside South Africa and Portugal, against what it regarded as Soviet and Chinese expansionism. Smith said the RF opposed "this mad idea of a hand-over, of a sell-out of the European and his civilisation, indeed of everything he had put into his country". He also declared: "The white man is the master of Rhodesia ... [he] has built it and intends to keep it".

Deputy Prime Minister under Field

Announcing his Cabinet on 17 December 1962, Field named Smith his deputy prime minister and Minister of the Treasury. Two days later, R.A. Butler, the UK's Deputy Prime Minister and First Secretary of State, announced that the UK government would allow Nyasaland to leave the Federation. With Northern Rhodesia now also under a secessionist black-nationalist government—Kenneth Kaunda and Harry Nkumbula had formed a coalition to keep the UFP out—and Southern Rhodesia under the RF, the Federation was effectively over.

The Field Cabinet made Southern Rhodesian independence on Federal dissolution its first priority, but the Conservative government in the UK was reluctant to grant this under the 1961 constitution as it knew doing so would lead to censure and loss of prestige in the United Nations (UN) and the Commonwealth. Indeed, Southern Rhodesia's minority government had already become something of an embarrassment to the UK and it hurt Britain's reputation to even maintain the status quo there. Granting independence without major constitutional reform would furthermore provoke outcry from the Conservatives' main parliamentary opposition, the Labour Party, which was strongly anti-colonial and supportive of black-nationalist ambitions.

Butler announced on 6 March 1963 that he was going to convene a conference to decide the Federation's future. It would be impossible (or at least very difficult) for the UK to dissolve the union without Southern Rhodesia's co-operation as the latter, being self-governing, had been co-signatory to the Federal agreement in 1953. According to Smith, Field, Dupont and other RF politicians, Butler made several oral independence guarantees to ensure Southern Rhodesia's attendance and support at the conference, but repeatedly refused to give anything on paper.

Field and Smith claimed that Butler justified this to them the day before the conference began by saying that binding Whitehall to a document rather than his word would be against the Commonwealth's "spirit of trust"—an argument that Field eventually accepted. "Let's remember the trust you emphasised," Smith warned, according to Field's account wagging his finger at Butler; "if you break that you will live to regret it." No minutes were made of this meeting. Butler denied afterwards that he had ever made such a promise. Southern Rhodesia attended the conference, held at the Victoria Falls Hotel over a week starting from 28 June 1963, and among other things it was agreed to formally liquidate the Federation at the end of 1963.

Prime minister

First days; banning of PCC/ZAPU and ZANU

Most of the Southern Rhodesian press predicted that Smith would not last long; one column called him "a momentary man", thrust into the spotlight by the RF's dearth of proven leaders. His only real rival to replace Field had been William Harper, an ardent segregationist who had headed the Dominion Party's Southern Rhodesian branch during the Federal years. Some reporters predicted Welensky's imminent introduction to Southern Rhodesian politics at the head of an RF–UFP coalition government, but Welensky showed little interest in this idea, saying he would be unable to manoeuvre in an RF-dominated House. The RF's replacement of Field with Smith drew criticism from the British Labour leader Harold Wilson, who called it "brutal", while John Johnston, the British High Commissioner in Salisbury, indicated his disapproval by refusing to meet Smith for two weeks after he took office.

The ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo branded the new Smith Cabinet "a suicide squad ... interested not in the welfare of all the people but only in their own", and predicted that the RF would "eventually destroy themselves". Asserting that a lasting "place for the white man" in Southern Rhodesia would benefit all of the country's people, the new prime minister said the government should be based "on merit, not on colour or nationalism", and insisted that there would be "no African nationalist government here in my lifetime".

Smith announced his Cabinet on his first day in office, 14 April 1964. He increased the number of ministers from 10 to 11, redistributed portfolios, and made three new appointments. Smith's fellow former UFP men made up most of the new RF Cabinet, with Harper and the Minister of Agriculture, James Graham, 7th Duke of Montrose (also called Lord Graham), heading a minority of hardline Dominion Party veterans. Ken Flower, whom Field had appointed Director of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) on its creation the previous year, was surprised to be retained by Smith. Smith announced his policies to the nation through full-page advertisements in the newspapers: "No forced integration. No lowering of standards. No abdication of responsible government. No repeal of the Land Apportionment Act. No appeasement to suit the Afro-Asian bloc." "An honest Rhodesian," a 1964 political poster declared—"Trust Mr Smith. He will never hand over Rhodesia." Smith retained the post of Minister of External Affairs to himself.

One of the Smith government's first actions was to crack down hard on the black-nationalist political violence that had erupted following the establishment of a second black-nationalist organisation, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), by disgruntled ZAPU members in Tanzania in August 1963. The rival movements were split tribally, ZAPU being mostly Ndebele and ZANU predominantly Shona, and politically—ZAPU, which had relabelled itself the People's Caretaker Council (PCC) within Southern Rhodesia to circumvent its ban, was Marxist–Leninist and backed by the Warsaw Pact and its allies, while ZANU had aligned itself with Maoism and the bloc headed by communist China. Their respective supporters in the black townships clashed constantly, also targeting non-aligned blacks whom they hoped to recruit, and sporadically attacked whites, businesses and police stations.

Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI)

Smith, who had been to the UK only four times before 1964 and never more than briefly, was soon labelled a "raw colonial" by Whitehall. He was almost immediately engaged in a dispute with the UK government, which he claimed had forsaken British ideals, and the Commonwealth, which he said had abandoned its own founding principles amid the Wind of Change. He accused both of isolating Southern Rhodesia because it still respected these values. When he learned in June that Salisbury would not be represented at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference for the first time since 1932, he was deeply insulted and alleged British betrayal, double standards and appeasement. Three months later, Smith accepted the British condition that the independence terms had to be acceptable to majority opinion, but impasse immediately developed regarding the mechanism by which black views would be gauged.

Labour's narrow victory in the October 1964 UK general election meant that Smith would be negotiating not with Douglas-Home but with Harold Wilson, who was far less accommodating towards the RF stand. Smith declared acceptability to majority opinion to have been demonstrated after a largely white referendum and an indaba of tribal chiefs and headmen both decisively backed independence under the 1961 constitution in October and November 1964, but black nationalists and the UK government dismissed the indaba as insufficiently representative of the black community.

Following Northern Rhodesia's independence as Zambia in October 1964—Nyasaland had been independent Malawi since July—Southern Rhodesia began referring to itself simply as Rhodesia, but Whitehall rejected this change. Perceiving Smith to be on the verge of a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI), Wilson issued a statement in October 1964 warning of dire economic and political consequences, and wrote to Smith demanding "a categorical assurance forthwith" that no UDI would be attempted. Smith ignored this, expressing confusion as to what he had done to provoke it.

The UK and Rhodesian governments exchanged often confrontational correspondence over the next year or so, each accusing the other of being unreasonable and intransigent. Little progress was made when two prime ministers met in person in January 1965, when Smith travelled to London for Sir Winston Churchill's funeral. The RF called a fresh election for May 1965 and, campaigning on an election promise of independence, won all 50 "A"-roll seats (elected mostly by whites). Wilson's ministers deliberately stonewalled Smith during mid-1965, hoping to eventually break him down, but this only caused the Rhodesian hierarchy to feel yet more alienated. From June, a peripheral dispute concerned Rhodesia's unilateral and ultimately successful attempt to open an independent mission in Lisbon; Portugal's acceptance of this in September 1965 prompted British outrage and Rhodesian delight.

Fallout from UDI

UDI, while received calmly by most Rhodesians, prompted political outrage in the UK and overseas. It astonished Wilson, who called on the people of Rhodesia to ignore the post-UDI government, which he described as "hell-bent on illegal self-destroying". Following orders from Whitehall and the passage of the Southern Rhodesia Act 1965, the colonial Governor Sir Humphrey Gibbs formally sacked Smith and his Cabinet, accusing them of treason. Smith and his ministers ignored this, considering Gibbs's office obsolete under the 1965 constitution enacted as part of UDI. After Gibbs made clear that he would not resign, Smith's government effectively replaced him with Dupont, who was appointed to the post of "Officer Administering the Government" (created by the 1965 constitution). No attempt was made to remove Gibbs from his official residence at Government House opposite Smith's residence at Independence House, however; Gibbs remained there, ignored by the Smith administration, until the declaration of a republic in 1970.

Smith and his government initially continued to profess loyalty to Queen Elizabeth II. The 1965 Constitution reconstituted Rhodesia as a Commonwealth realm, with Elizabeth II as "Queen of Rhodesia". Indeed, the UDI document ended with the words "God Save The Queen". In December 1965, Smith, attempting to assert the prerogatives he claimed as Her Majesty's Rhodesian prime minister, wrote a letter to Elizabeth asking her to appoint Dupont as governor-general of Rhodesia. The Queen rejected Smith's request out of hand; Buckingham Palace's response characterized Smith's request as "purported advice". The UK, with the near-unanimous support of the international community, maintained that Gibbs was still Elizabeth II's only legitimate representative in what it still reckoned as the colony of Southern Rhodesia, and hence the sole lawful authority there.

The UN General Assembly and Security Council quickly joined the UK in condemning UDI as illegal and racist. Security Council Resolutions 216 and 217, adopted in the days following Smith's declaration, denounced UDI as an illegitimate "usurpation of power by a racist settler minority", and called on nations not to entertain diplomatic or economic relations. No country recognised UDI as legitimate. Black nationalists in Rhodesia and their overseas backers, prominently the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), clamoured for the UK to remove Smith's government with a military invasion, but Britain dismissed this option, citing logistical issues, the risk of provoking a pre-emptive Rhodesian strike on Zambia, and the psychological issues likely to accompany any confrontation between British and Rhodesian troops. Wilson instead resolved to end UDI through economic sanctions, banning the supply of oil to Rhodesia and the import of most Rhodesian goods to Britain. When Smith continued to receive oil through South Africa and Portuguese Mozambique, Wilson posted a Royal Navy squadron to the Mozambique Channel in March 1966. This blockade, the Beira Patrol, was endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 221 the following month.

Tiger and Fearless talks with Wilson

Wilson told the UK's House of Commons in January 1966 that he would not enter any kind of dialogue with Smith's post-UDI government (which he called "the illegal regime") until it gave up its claim of independence, but by mid-1966 British and Rhodesian civil servants were holding "talks about talks" in London and Salisbury. By November that year, Wilson had agreed to negotiate personally with Smith. Smith and Wilson subsequently held two rounds of direct negotiations, both of which were held aboard Royal Navy ships off Gibraltar. The first took place aboard HMS Tiger between 2 and 4 December 1966, while the second, aboard HMS Fearless, was held between 8 and 13 October 1968.

The UK's prime minister went to HMS Tiger in a belligerent mindset. Wilson's political secretary Marcia Falkender later wrote of "apartheid ... on that ship", with the British and Rhodesian delegations separated in all activities outside the conference room at Wilson's orders. Despite the uneasy atmosphere—accounts from both sides describe Wilson dealing with the Rhodesians extremely tersely—talks progressed relatively smoothly until the subject turned to the manner of the transition. Wilson insisted on the abandonment of the 1965 constitution, the dissolution of the post-UDI government in favour of a "broad-based" multiracial interim administration and a period under a British governor, conditions that Smith saw as tantamount to surrender, particularly as the UK proposed to draft and introduce the new constitution only after a fresh test of opinion under UK control. When Smith asserted on 3 December that he could not settle without first consulting his Cabinet in Salisbury, Wilson was enraged, declaring that a central condition of the summit had been that he and Smith would have plenipotentiary powers to make a deal. According to J.R.T. Wood, Wilson and his Attorney General Sir Elwyn Jones then "bullied Smith for two long days" to try to get him to settle, without success.

A working document was ultimately produced and signed by Smith, Wilson and Gibbs, to be accepted or rejected in its entirety by each Cabinet after the Prime Ministers returned home. Whitehall accepted the proposals, but Salisbury turned them down; Smith announced on 5 December 1966 that while he and his ministers were largely satisfied with the terms, the Cabinet did not feel it could responsibly abandon the 1965 constitution while so much uncertainty surrounded the transition and the new "mythical constitution yet to be evolved". Rhodesia's Leader of the Opposition Josiah Gondo promptly demanded Smith's resignation, reasoning that the Cabinet's rejection of the working document he had helped to draft amounted to a vote of no confidence. The RF ignored him. Warning that "grave actions must follow", Wilson took the Rhodesia problem to the United Nations, which proceeded to institute the first mandatory trade sanctions in its history with Security Council Resolutions 232 (December 1966) and 253 (April 1968). These measures required UN member states to prevent all trade and economic links with Rhodesia.

A republic; failed accord with Douglas-Home

With their hopes of Commonwealth realm status through a settlement with Britain dimming, Smith and the RF began to seriously consider the alternative of a republic as early as December 1966, after the Tiger talks. Republicanism was presented as a means to clarify Rhodesia's claimed constitutional status, end ambiguity regarding ties with Britain and elicit official foreign recognition and acceptance. Smith's government began exploring a republican constitution in March 1967. The Union Jack and Rhodesia's Commonwealth-style national flag—a defaced Sky Blue Ensign with the Union Jack in the canton—were formally superseded on 11 November 1968, the third anniversary of UDI, by a new national flag: a green-white-green vertical triband, charged centrally with the Rhodesian coat of arms. After the electorate voted "yes" in a June 1969 referendum both to a new constitution and to the abandoning of symbolic ties to the Crown, Smith declared Rhodesia a republic on 2 March 1970. The 1969 constitution introduced a president as head of state, a multiracial senate, separate black and white electoral rolls (each with qualifications) and a mechanism whereby the number of black MPs would increase in line with the proportion of income tax revenues paid by black citizens. This process would stop once blacks had the same number of seats as whites; the declared goal was not majority rule, but rather "parity between the races".

No country recognised the Rhodesian republic. The RF was decisively returned to power in the first election held as a republic, on 10 April 1970, winning all 50 white seats. Hopes for an Anglo-Rhodesian rapprochement were boosted two months later when the Conservatives won a surprise election victory in the UK. Edward Heath took over as prime minister while Douglas-Home became Foreign Secretary. Talks between Douglas-Home and Smith began with a lengthy meeting in Salisbury in April 1971 and continued until a tentative understanding was reached in early November. A UK delegation headed by Douglas-Home and the Attorney General Sir Peter Rawlinson flew to Salisbury on 15 November for negotiations over a new constitution, and after six days of discussion an accord was signed on 21 November 1971.

The constitution agreed upon was based largely on the one Rhodesia had just adopted, but would eventually bring about a black majority in parliament. Black representation in the House would be immediately increased, and a majority of both black and white MPs would have to approve retrogressive legislation; blacks would thus wield an effective veto "as long as they voted solidly together", Robert Blake comments. "The principle of majority rule was enshrined with safeguards ensuring that there could be no legislation which could impede this," Smith wrote in his memoirs. "On the other hand, there would be no mad rush into one man, one vote with all the resultant corruption, nepotism, chaos and economic disaster which we had witnessed in all the countries around us."

Bush War

The Rhodesian Bush War (or Second Chimurenga), which had been underway at a low level since before UDI, began in earnest in December 1972 when ZANLA attacked farms in north-eastern Rhodesia. The Rhodesian Security Forces mounted a strong counter-campaign over the next two years. Muzorewa re-engaged with Smith in August 1973, accepting the 1971–72 Douglas-Home terms, and the two signed a statement to that effect on 17 August. The UANC executive repudiated this in May 1974, but talks between Smith and Muzorewa continued sporadically. The RF again won a clean sweep of the 50 white seats in the July 1974 general election.

Rhodesia's early counter-insurgency successes were undone by political shifts in the guerrillas' favour overseas. The April 1974 Carnation Revolution in Lisbon led to Mozambique's transformation over the next year from a Portuguese territory friendly to Smith's government into a communist state openly allied with ZANU. Wilson and Labour returned to power in the UK in March 1974. Portugal's withdrawal made Rhodesia hugely dependent on South Africa, but Smith still insisted that he held a strong position. "If it takes one year, five years, ten years, we're prepared to ride it out," he told the RF congress on 20 September 1974. "Our stand is clear and unambiguous. Settlement is desirable, but only on our terms."

The geopolitical situation tilted further against Smith in December 1974 when the South African Prime Minister B. J. Vorster pressured him into accepting a détente initiative involving the Frontline States of Zambia, Tanzania and Botswana (Mozambique and Angola would join the following year). Vorster had concluded that Rhodesia's position was untenable; in his view, it made no sense to maintain white rule in a country where blacks outnumbered whites by 22:1. He also believed that South African interests would be better served by collaborating with black African governments over a Rhodesian settlement; he hoped that success in this might win South Africa some international legitimacy and allow it to retain apartheid. Détente forced a ceasefire, giving the guerrillas time to regroup, and required the Rhodesians to release the ZANU and ZAPU leaders so they could attend a conference in Rhodesia, united under the UANC banner and led by Muzorewa. When Rhodesia stopped releasing black-nationalist prisoners on the grounds that ZANLA and ZIPRA were not observing the ceasefire, Vorster harried Smith further by withdrawing the South African Police, which had been helping the Rhodesians patrol the countryside. Smith remained stubborn, saying in the run-up to the conference that "We have no policy in Rhodesia to hand over to a black majority government" and that his government instead favoured "a qualified franchise for all Rhodesians ... [to] ensure that government will be retained in responsible hands for all times".

Internal Settlement and Lancaster House; becoming Zimbabwe

Smith's moves towards a settlement with black-nationalist groups prompted outrage in sections of Rhodesian Front's right wing, but he remained unassailable within the party as a whole, which had in late 1975 granted him a mandate to negotiate for the best possible settlement however he saw fit. The split in the party ultimately led to the defection in July 1977 of 12 RF MPs after Smith introduced legislation to remove racial criteria from the Land Tenure Act.

The loss of these seats to the breakaway Rhodesian Action Party, which opposed any conciliation with black nationalists, meant that Smith now only barely had the two-thirds majority in parliament he would need to change the constitution, as he would have to in the event of a settlement. He therefore called an early election, and on 31 August 1977 roundly defeated the defectors—"the dirty dozen", the RF called them—as well as all other opposition; for the third time in seven years, the RF had won all 50 white seats. The party revolt turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Smith, Berlyn comments, as it allowed him to "shed the dead wood of the right wing", giving him more freedom in negotiations with the nationalists. The need for a settlement was becoming urgent—the war was escalating sharply, white emigration was climbing and the economy was starting to struggle as the UN sanctions finally began to have a serious effect.

In March 1978, Smith and non-militant nationalist groups headed by Muzorewa, Sithole and Chief Jeremiah Chirau agreed what became the "Internal Settlement", under which the country would be reconstituted as Zimbabwe Rhodesia in June 1979 after multiracial elections. ZANU and ZAPU were invited to participate, but refused; Nkomo sardonically dubbed Smith's black colleagues "the blacksmiths". The deal was badly received abroad, partly because it kept the police, the military, the judiciary and the civil service in white hands. There would be a senate of 20 blacks and 10 whites, and whites would be reserved 28 out of 100 seats in the new House of Assembly. Smith and Nkomo re-entered negotiations in August 1978, but these ended after ZIPRA shot down an Air Rhodesia passenger flight on 3 September and massacred survivors at the crash site. Smith cut off talks, introduced martial law across most of the country and ordered reprisal attacks on guerrilla positions. Smith, Muzorewa and Sithole toured the United States in October 1978 to promote their settlement, and met Kissinger, Ford and others including the future president Ronald Reagan. On 11 December, ZANLA attacked Salisbury's oil storage depot, causing a fire that lasted six days and destroyed a quarter of Rhodesia's fuel. Two months later ZIPRA downed another civilian flight, this time killing all on board.

Opposition

First years under Mugabe

The new Zimbabwean parliament opened on 15 May 1980, a month after formal independence from Britain, with Smith as the reconstituted country's first Leader of the Opposition. Continuing a long-standing tradition from the Rhodesian era, the government and opposition entered the House in pairs—Mugabe and Smith walked in side by side with their respective MPs following, "aptly symbolis[ing] the mood of reconciliation", Martin Meredith comments. With around 1,000 whites leaving Zimbabwe each month, Smith took to the radio to urge them to stay and give Mugabe's new order a chance, but over half of the country's whites left within three years. As Meredith records, the 100,000 or so who remained "retreated into their own world of clubs, sporting activities, and comfortable living". Mugabe made great efforts when he first took power to endear himself to the white farming community, which accounted for at least 75% of Zimbabwe's agricultural output. Amid booming Zimbabwean commodity prices in the years immediately following 1980, many white commercial farmers came to support Mugabe. The new prime minister continued cordially meeting Smith until the RF leader took him to task in 1981 for openly calling for a one-party state; Smith said this was putting off foreign investors. Mugabe was not impressed and, according to Smith, refused to ever meet him again.

As Mugabe's main opponent in Parliament at the head of the Republican Front (as the RF renamed itself in 1981), Smith presented himself as the guardian of what he called Zimbabwe's "white tribe". He spoke gloomily about Zimbabwe's future prospects, repeatedly accused the Mugabe administration of corruption, malevolence and general incompetence, and criticised Mugabe's support for a one-party system. The RF took an increasingly confrontational line in the House after Mugabe and other government ministers began regularly pouring scorn on the white community in national broadcasts and other media. Amid rising tensions with South Africa, various white Zimbabweans were arrested, accused of being South African agents, and tortured. When Smith complained about whites being imprisoned without trial under emergency powers, a number of ZANU–PF MPs pointed out that they themselves had been detained under that same legislation, and for far longer, by Smith's government. Mugabe openly admitted torturing suspected spies, had some who were found not guilty by the High Court immediately rearrested on the street outside, and accused Western critics of caring only because the people in question were white.

Smith visited Britain and the United States in November 1982, and spoke scathingly about Zimbabwe to reporters, claiming that Mugabe was turning the country into a totalitarian Marxist–Leninist dictatorship. Government retribution was immediate. On Smith's return home, police raided an art exhibition hosting him as guest of honour in Harare (as Salisbury had been renamed in April 1982) and took all the attendees in for questioning, ostensibly because of suspicions it might be an illegal political meeting. A week later, police seized his passport, according to a government statement because his criticism of Zimbabwe while abroad constituted "political bad manners and hooliganism". Police meticulously searched his Harare house and Gwenoro over the next week, confiscating firearms, personal papers and a diary. Smith told reporters all this was "part of the game to intimidate me and so demoralise the whites". Some RF MPs left the party to sit with ZANU–PF or as independents, feeling that constantly confronting Mugabe was ill-advised and unnecessary. Smith remained convinced that nobody would stand up for white Zimbabweans if they did not stick together and defend their interests in parliament.

Gukurahundi; last years in politics

After the already tense relations between ZANU–PF and ZAPU disintegrated amid Mugabe's wish to adopt a one-party system in Zimbabwe, Mugabe expelled Nkomo from the government in February 1982, accusing him and ZAPU of plotting a coup. About a year later, Mugabe deployed the North Korean-trained 5th Brigade to Matabeleland, ZAPU's heartland, where it massacred thousands of civilians accused of supporting "dissidents" in what came to be called Gukurahundi. Meredith asserts that this far exceeded anything that had occurred during the Bush War, an opinion shared by Geoff Hill. Some white farmers were also killed. Estimates for the number of deaths during the five-year Gukurahundi campaign range from 10,000 to 30,000. Mugabe concurrently took steps to marginalise the other main black-nationalist leaders from the Chimurenga. Nkomo fled to the UK in March 1983, fearing for his life; Sithole similarly exiled himself in the United States. Muzorewa stayed in Zimbabwe, and he was detained in late 1983 for alleged "subversive links" with South Africa. On arriving in England, Nkomo accused Mugabe of genocide and asserted that "Things are worse now than they ever were under Ian Smith". Mugabe denied that anything improper was happening and put reports to the contrary down to "reactionary foreign journalists".

The Zimbabwean government publicly threatened Smith on a regular basis, but in practice left him and his property largely untouched—Mugabe frequently pointed to Smith's freedom as evidence of Zimbabwe's reconciliation policy. Smith renamed the RF the Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe (CAZ) on 21 July 1984, concurrently removing racial criteria for membership and inviting black Zimbabweans to join. The CAZ was very successful in the 1985 parliamentary election, winning 15 of the 20 white seats; Smith won decisively in Bulawayo Central. Mugabe interpreted this as "the racists of this country" defying his government and rejecting reconciliation, and immediately pledged to abolish the white seats, which he said compromised "the sovereignty of our people". After Smith described Mugabe's government as "illiterate" on BBC television in November 1985, Mugabe told the House of Assembly Smith was "an incorrigible racist" who "should long ago have been hanged and hanged publicly". Later that month, Smith's close friend and long-standing political associate "Boss" Lilford, who had provided much of the finance to form the RF, was found beaten and shot to death on his ranch. Smith described Lilford afterwards as a man "who was prepared to die for [his] principles", but refused to openly discuss any possible political motive, saying simply that "it would be premature to come to conclusions".

Retirement and final years

The elderly Ian Smith lived in an unassuming house in Harare where, according to David Blair, "the front gate always stood open and virtually anyone who walked up the drive would be invited in for tea". He still owned Gwenoro, but employed a manager to run it after Janet's death in 1994. He insisted that he would never leave Zimbabwe. "Don't get fazed by the riots, hold your head high, do not be afraid," a friend reported him saying. "Show you are not budging and the government will leave you alone." He dedicated much of his 1997 autobiography, The Great Betrayal, to criticising the Mugabe administration and a long succession of British figures he considered to have let him and Rhodesia down; he also defended and justified his actions as prime minister, and praised Nelson Mandela, calling him Africa's "first black statesman". Smith's enduring popularity among white Zimbabweans was evidenced by the long queues they formed to have him sign copies of the book on its release in Harare in December 1997. "They were captured, hiding their faces and turning to the wall, as television cameras recorded their 'betrayal' for the evening news," Josephine Fisher records. Not all of the country's whites admired Smith; some felt that his obstinate refusal to acknowledge what they saw as past errors caused the whole white community to be resented and viewed with suspicion.

2000–2002: back in the public eye

According to Meredith, governmental mismanagement and widespread corruption within the ZANU–PF order led to Mugabe and others enriching themselves considerably at the expense of the country as a whole. In Meredith's view, the average Zimbabwean was worse off in 2000 than he had been in 1980: "average wages were lower, unemployment had trebled, public services were crumbling, and life expectancy was falling". Opposition to ZANU–PF grew, particularly in the towns and cities. In 2000, hoping to win support from rural blacks, Mugabe introduced a fast-track land reform programme under which groups of ZANU–PF activists, officially referred to as "war veterans", were sent to take over white-owned farms so the land could be split up, without compensation, and redistributed to black peasant farmers. White farmers and their black employees were violently forced out, food production plummeted, and the economy collapsed to half of the size that it had been in 1980.

In an April 2000 interview, Smith asserted that he viewed himself as African, stating "I was born here. My children were born here, and my grandchildren were born here. I'm African, not British." When a group of about 50 ZANU–PF activists briefly invaded Gwenoro in May, Smith played down the incident, saying the intruders were just bored and out of work. "There's no politics on the farm," he said. Five months later, in England to address the Oxford Union, Smith described Mugabe as "mentally deranged". The President announced in response that Smith would be arrested and tried for genocide if he ever came back to Zimbabwe, a threat that Smith mocked. "I would love that. Let him try it," he said—"It would give me the chance to tell the world the truth about this gangster ... I will give him the date and time of arrival of my plane so he can meet me at the airport." A mass of reporters descended on Harare International Airport on 7 November 2000 to witness Smith's arrest, but far from being detained, the former prime minister was greeted cheerily by immigration officers and allowed through without any obstruction. Telling the waiting pressmen that he was disappointed not to have met any confrontation, he commented: "We have a president here who is mentally unstable and makes statements that have no bearing on reality", and went home unmolested.

In early September 2001, ZANU–PF militants again attempted to force Smith off his farm. The former prime minister telephoned the provincial governor, who promptly sent police to remove the invaders. According to Smith, the trespassers were shocked to hear that the authorities were taking his side, and they left before the police even arrived. Half a year later, Smith lost his Zimbabwean passport as a result of further tightening of the law regarding multiple citizenship. New legislation passed in 2001 required Zimbabwean citizens to disavow any claim to other nationalities, even if they did not hold foreign passports. Insisting that Mugabe's government had no right to strip him of Zimbabwean citizenship, Smith refused to renounce his right to British nationality, though he had not held a UK passport for years. Zimbabwean authorities duly refused to renew Smith's passport in March 2002. State press reported that he had "automatically ceased to be a citizen of Zimbabwe" on the passport's expiry, having failed to renounce British citizenship before a deadline on 8 January that year. Smith claimed that his Zimbabwean citizenship had been illegally revoked and that he was now stateless, an assertion disputed by the Minister of Home Affairs, John Nkomo, who said that Smith could stay in the country, but would not receive a new Zimbabwean passport until he renounced his right to British nationality.

Final years and death

Smith travelled to South Africa for medical treatment in 2005, and moved into a retirement home overlooking the sea in St James, a southern suburb of Cape Town. He was reportedly devastated by the death of his son Alec from a heart attack at London Heathrow Airport in January 2006. Despite some marked differences—Alec had used illegal drugs in his youth, and openly opposed his father's policies while he was Prime Minister—they had been very close. The elder Smith had referred to his son as "my rock". Smith's stepdaughter Jean, who had married the prominent Rhodesian singer-songwriter Clem Tholet in 1967, was by this time also widowed. She and Robert Smith cared for their stepfather in his final years.

After some weeks of illness, Ian Smith died in Cape Town on 20 November 2007 at the age of 88, having had a stroke. Jean was with him. His ashes were returned to Zimbabwe and scattered by his family at Gwenoro. The farm continued to operate under the ownership of Smith's stepchildren until December 2012, when it was seized by the Zimbabwe government as part of the land reform programme and given to a technical college.

Investigations into alleged electoral fraud during the 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe, when ZANU–PF was accused of using dead "ghost voters" to counter Morgan Tsvangirai and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), revealed that Smith and hundreds of thousands of other dead people were still on the electoral roll. According to the Zimbabwe Election Support Network's audit report, published in 2011, deceased "voters" made up 27% of the registered electorate. Mugabe had insisted during his ultimately victorious campaign in 2008 that he would not allow the MDC to take power even if it won, asserting that "only God" could remove him from office. Smith was finally struck off the voters' roll in April 2013, along with 345,000 other dead people. Mugabe resigned the presidency four years later, after ZANU–PF moved to impeach him amid a military coup.

Character, reputation and legacy

As leader of the Rhodesian Front and its successor parties, Smith became closely identified with Rhodesia's white minority. Historian Mordechai Tamarkin described him as a "symbol and father figure" for that community and wrote that, as prime minister, he "personified white Rhodesia". Assessments of Smith's legacy have remained sharply divided. Supporters portrayed him as a defender of stability and anti-communism, while critics identified him with white-minority rule, racial inequality and the prolonged conflict that accompanied Rhodesia's resistance to majority rule.

Smith denied that his policies were motivated by racial prejudice. In a 1987 interview, he said that he had defended Western principles and that "it was Marxism I fought, not blacks". He did not express regret for his actions as prime minister, and later argued that Zimbabwe's political and economic decline under Robert Mugabe vindicated his warnings about majority rule. Critics rejected that interpretation, arguing that Smith's defence of white-minority government had contributed to Rhodesia's isolation, war and difficult transition to independence.

Several writers have linked Smith's political outlook to the culture of white Rhodesian settler society and its identification with the British Empire. R. W. Johnson argued that Smith shared with many white Rhodesians "an almost Victorian view of the world", including assumptions about British imperial authority and moral values. Historian Bill Schwarz similarly wrote that Smith and his supporters responded to imperial decline by imagining white Rhodesians as "the final survivors of a lost civilisation" and as heirs to Britain's imperial mission.

Smith's public image was also shaped by his 1976 statement that he did not believe in majority rule in Rhodesia "not in 1,000 years". The remark was widely cited in obituaries and later assessments of his career. Peter Godwin, while critical of Smith and his policies, argued that the quotation was often used without sufficient context, but added that there remained substantial grounds on which to criticise Smith's record.

Several commentators have argued that Smith's wartime service influenced his later attitude towards Britain. R. W. Johnson described the Second World War as "undoubtedly the central experience of his life", while other writers have noted that Smith regarded Britain's later opposition to UDI as a betrayal of Rhodesia's wartime loyalty. Smith's war injuries also affected his appearance and health: plastic surgery after his 1943 crash left the right side of his face partly paralysed, and other injuries gave him a stoop, a slight limp and difficulty sitting for long periods.

Notes and references

Footnotes

References

Newspaper and journal articles

Online sources

Bibliography