Table Of ContentDEDICATION
To Janet, my loyal and constant and compassionate supporter and companion
during the turbulent decades of my political life. She was tireless in her work of
researching history and facts, and editing and bringing some order to my
writings, which were often erratic and disjointed because of my numerous other
commitments.
My gratitude to her is eternal and unwavering.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Foreword
Introduction
1 The Growth of a Nation
I: In The Beginning
II: The Fatal Turning Point: 1948
2 From Innocence to Experience
I: My Younger Years: School, University and Rugby or Rowing?
II: The Outbreak of War
III: Pilot Training and 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron
IV: Corsica and the Partisani
V: The End of War
VI: Home to Rhodesia and University
3 Settling Back Home
I: Farming in Rhodesia
II: Early Days in Politics: the Federal Era
4 The End of Federation
5 The Formation of the Rhodesian Front
6 The First Rhodesian Front Government: Field and Independence
7 The Premiership in 1964
8 The Advent of the British Labour Government and the Issue of Independence
9 The Final Steps to UDI in 1965
10 The Immediate Consequences of UDI
11 First Moves to Settle in 1966: HMS Tiger
12 Renewed Settlement Efforts in 1968: HMS Fearless
13 The Home–Smith Agreement, 1972
14 The Loss of Mozambique, Vorster and Détente in 1974–75
15 The Kissinger Agreement of 1976
16 The Geneva Conference 211
17 The Internal Settlement of 4 March, 1978
18 The Interim Government of 1978–79
19 My Last Days in Office
20 The Government of National Unity and the Lancaster House Conference
21 The Election of Mugabe
22 The Aftermath of the Election
23 Life under Mugabe
24 Elections — 1995–96
Janet
Glossary
Postscript
Afterword
Index
Acknowledgement
Copyright
Foreword
I
an Douglas Smith died on 20 November 2007, a few months short of his 89th
birthday. For 15 years, between 1964 and 1979, he had been prime minister of
Rhodesia, the last but one country in southern Africa to be governed by whites,
once called Southern Rhodesia and today known as Zimbabwe.
In the great drama of the 20th century decolonisation of Africa, he will
perhaps be seen in future as little more than a footnote, a Canute who declared
unilateral independence in a futile attempt to resist the tide of black rule
sweeping across the continent. Had he never existed, the history of his
stunningly beautiful native land would probably have been much the same.
But for a decade and half, Smith held British and international diplomacy to
ransom. Vilified by many, lionised by a few, he became a household name
around the world. Then Rhodesia vanished. Had independent Zimbabwe
flourished, or merely avoided the shambles of today, there would be little more
to say. Instead it has experienced one of the most devastating collapses on a
continent that has tasted more than its share of them. A country that set out life
as a jewel of post-colonial Africa has become a basket case, a nightmarish
kleptocracy sustained by violence, corruption and reverse racism, its every
failing blamed by President Robert Mugabe on a plot orchestrated by the
country’s remaining whites and by the old colonial power in London to
overthrow his rule.
History rewrites reputations, and the plight of Zimbabwe after 28 years of
Mugabe’s rule is forcing a second look at the reputation of Ian Smith. The depth
of the crisis has surpassed even his own bleakest warnings – and questions most
of us would prefer not to ask must be asked. Was he right all along, with his
prophesy that black rule would be a disaster? Which leads to an even more
unmentionable thought: might it have been better for Zimbabwe and Africa to
have remained under white rule?
Ian Smith’s background was quintessentially colonial. His father Jock had
emigrated from Scotland to Rhodesia in 1898, eight years after the first pioneer
column despatched by Cecil Rhodes’ British South Africa Company crossed the
Limpopo river – modern Zimbabwe’s border with South Africa – to explore and
exploit the rich virgin lands that lay beyond.
The Smiths settled in Selukwe, 200 miles south of the capital Salisbury, now
Harare. There Jock ran a farm and a mine, chaired the local cricket and rugby
clubs and bred racehorses. Their son Ian, born in 1918, followed in his footsteps.
He was an undistinguished student, but like his father (and most white
Rhodesians for that matter) a passionate sportsman and lover of the outdoor life.
A self-described ‘African of British stock,’ Smith symbolised a society that
considered itself more British than the British, and behaved as such. He believed
in the old country, in the British Empire, and in the Empire’s civilizing mission.
When conflict loomed in Europe in 1939, the adventurous and patriotic young
man trained as a pilot, before serving in the Rhodesian air force, and then in
Spitfire Squadron 130 in the Royal Air Force. His war took him to Persia, the
Middle East and finally Europe where he was shot down over Italy in 1944 and
spent five months with the partisans behind German lines.
This gallant war record vastly complicated British attitudes to Smith during
the crisis over Rhodesian independence two decades later. Many of a certain
generation could not understand why ‘Good Old Smithy’ and ‘Plucky Little
Rhodesia’ were held in such official disapproval. Yes, he led a white minority
government that in 1965 had the temerity to declare independence. But he might
have come from the home counties – though he had done more to defeat Hitler
than the majority of British citizens. Beyond argument moreover he was
extremely brave.
It is thus hardly surprising he enjoyed unwavering support from elements of
the British Conservative party and of the conservative press. He also knew
exactly how to appeal to British nostalgia, an especially potent emotion during
the 1960s and 1970s, as the country’s global influence declined, amid a
succession of sterling crises and withdrawal from an empire that could no longer
be afforded. ‘If Churchill were alive today,’ Smith said soon after UDI, ‘I
believe he’d probably emigrate to Rhodesia – because I believe all those
admirable qualities and characteristics of the British we believed in, loved and
preached to our children no longer exist in Britain.’ In golf clubs and saloon bars
across the old country, countless Britons undoubtedly agreed with him.
