Ian Smith
Ian Douglas Smith was a Rhodesian and later Zimbabwean politician, farmer, and fighter pilot who served as Prime Minister of Rhodesia from 1964 to 1979. He was the country's first leader to be born and raised in Rhodesia, and led the predominantly white government that unilaterally declared independence from the United Kingdom in November 1965 in opposition to their demands for the implementation of majority rule as a condition for independence. His 15 years in power were defined by the country's international isolation and involvement in the Rhodesian Bush War, which pitted the Rhodesian Security Forces against the Soviet and Chinese-funded military wings of the Zimbabwe African National Union and Zimbabwe African People's Union.
Smith was born to British settlers in the small town of Selukwe located in the Southern Rhodesian Midlands, four years before the colony became self-governing in 1923. During the Second World War, he served as a Royal Air Force fighter pilot, where a crash in Egypt resulted in facial and bodily wounds that remained conspicuous for the rest of his life. Following recovery, he served in Europe, where he was shot down and subsequently fought alongside Italian partisans. After the war, he established a farm in his hometown in 1948 and became a Member of Parliament for Selukwe that year. Originally a member of the Liberal Party, he defected to the United Federal Party in 1953, and served as Chief Whip from 1958 onwards. He left that party in 1961 in protest over the territory's new constitution, and went on to co-found the Rhodesian Front the following year.
Smith became deputy prime minister following the Front's December 1962 election victory, and he stepped up to the premiership after Field resigned in April 1964, two months before the first events that led to the Bush War took place. After repeated talks with Britain broke down, Smith and his Cabinet unilaterally declared independence on 11 November 1965 to delay majority rule; shortly afterwards, the first phase of the war began in earnest. After further negotiations with the UK failed, Rhodesia cut all remaining British ties and reconstituted itself as a republic in 1970. Smith led the Front to four election victories over the course of his premiership; despite sporadic negotiations with moderate leader Abel Muzorewa over the course of the war, his support came exclusively from the white minority, with the black majority being widely disenfranchised under the country's electoral system.
Following 15 years of protracted fighting, with economic sanctions, international pressure and a decline in South African support taking their toll, Smith conceded to the implementation of majority rule and signed the Internal Settlement in 1978 with moderate leaders, excluding ZANU and ZAPU. The new order failed to gain international recognition, and the war continued. After being succeeded as prime minister by Muzorewa, Smith took part in the trilateral peace negotiations at Lancaster House, which led to the free 1980 Southern Rhodesian general election and the recognition of an independent Zimbabwe.
Following the election, Smith served as Leader of the Opposition for seven years and marked himself as a strident critic of Robert Mugabe's government. His criticisms persisted after his 1987 retirement: he dedicated much of his 1997 memoir, The Great Betrayal, to condemning Mugabe, UK politicians, and defending his premiership. In 2005, Smith moved to South Africa for medical treatment, where he died two years later at the age of 88. His ashes were subsequently repatriated and scattered at his farm.
As Rhodesia's dominant political figure and public face in its final decades, Smith's reputation and legacy remains divisive. By his supporters, he has been hailed as "a political visionary... who understood the uncomfortable truths of Africa", defending his rule as one of stability and a stalwart against communism. His critics, in turn, have condemned him as "an unrepentant racist... who brought untold suffering to millions of Zimbabweans", as the leader of a white supremacist government responsible for maintaining racial inequality and discriminating against the black majority.
Early life and education
Family, childhood and adolescence
Ian Douglas Smith was born on 8 April 1919 in Selukwe, a small mining and farming town about southwest of the Southern Rhodesian capital Salisbury. 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, 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 involved themselves heavily in local affairs. Jock chaired the village management board and commanded the Selukwe Company of the Southern Rhodesia Volunteers; he also became a founding member of the Selukwe Freemasons' Lodge and president of the town's football and rugby clubs. Agnes, who became informally known as "Mrs Jock", established and ran the Selukwe Women's Institute. Both were appointed MBE for their services to the community. "My parents strove to instil principles and moral virtues, the sense of right and wrong, of integrity, in their children," Smith wrote in his memoirs. "They set wonderful examples to live up to." He considered his father "a man of extremely strong principles"—"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." Raised on the frontier of the British Empire in the UK's youngest settler colony, Smith and his generation of white Rhodesians grew up with a reputation for being "more British than the British", something in which they took great pride.
After attending the Selukwe primary school, he boarded at Chaplin School in Gwelo, about 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 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 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 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 named 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 Squadron, by then based in western Germany. He flew combat missions there, " 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.