KEY POINTS:
Ian Smith was the Prime Minister of Rhodesia and an ardent advocate of white rule.
In 1965, he unilaterally declared independence from Britain and, over the next 15 turbulent years, fought an increasingly bitter war against African nationalist guerrillas, a war that cost between 30,000 and 40,000, mainly black, lives.
But it was a struggle he eventually lost, paving the way for the country's independence as Zimbabwe.
To his supporters - white Rhodesians and many in Britain - "Smithy" was a political visionary, the simple farmer who had stepped forward reluctantly to defend his country against communism.
To the left, he was as abhorrent as the leaders of apartheid South Africa. The context of Smith's declaration of UDI was the deep distrust among Rhodesia's 200,000-strong white minority of Britain's motives in Africa after Harold Macmillan's 1960 "Winds of Change" speech which presaged Britain's withdrawal from Africa.
At first, despite United Nations-imposed economic sanctions, Rhodesia's economy actually strengthened under UDI, and Smith appeared to relish his position as a pariah. Many international companies broke the sanctions and Rhodesian businesses and farmers diversified to fill the gaps.
Smith managed to convince white Rhodesians that they could continue to defy world opinion indefinitely.
"I don't believe in black majority rule over Rhodesia," he proclaimed, "not in a thousand years."
The tide of white emigration from Rhodesia was reversed as thousands of whites, mainly from Britain and South Africa, came to enjoy the advantages of white supremacy.
Smith, the first native-born Rhodesian to lead his country, seemed a simple man, blunt, unemotional and lacking a sense of humour. But his craggy, rough-hewn image concealed an astute tactical mind and a talent for political infighting which his opponents tended to underestimate.
He denied being a racist, yet almost in the same breath would insist that separate development and racial discrimination were essential ingredients of Rhodesian society.
But in the end it was not diplomacy which wore Smith down, but armed black opposition and, decisively, South Africa's decision to withdraw support.
UDI galvanised black nationalist feeling and, by 1972, guerrilla armies led by Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo were leading regular attacks on white border farms. From then on, they conducted their activities from bases in Mozambique, and Smith countered with vigorous retaliatory measures by the Rhodesian armed forces.
By 1977, the war was costing Rhodesia around £500,000 a day and all able-bodied men between 18 and 60 were spending up to a third of the year on active service.
Smith took part in the talks at Lancaster House in London which were to set a new path for what would become Zimbabwe.
The final result of UDI was that the white Rhodesians were landed with a deal that removed all traces of their political influence and, after the country's first democratic elections in 1980, brought about the one thing Smith had promised them they would never have - a black Marxist government run by the man they most abhorred, Mugabe.
Ian Douglas Smith was born to Scottish immigrants in western Zimbabwe in 1919. Two years after the outbreak of World War II, he joined the RAF as a fighter pilot.
He lost two planes in combat. Plastic surgery to fix hideous scars from the first crash paralysed the right side of his face, giving him a sinister, expressionless appearance.
He was demobilised in 1946. He entered politics in 1948 as a supporter of the opposition Liberal Party. The same year, he married a South African-born school teacher, Janet Watt, whose views on race were more hard line than her husband's.
Smith was elected to Parliament in 1953 as a member of the ruling United Federal Party, rose through the ranks as an opponent of black rule and joined the right-wing Rhodesian Front Party in 1962 - a time when colonial powers were granting independence to black leaders in other African countries.
The Front won a surprise victory in elections that year and Smith became minister of the Treasury. In 1964, in a right-wing revolt, he ousted the party leader for being too soft in dealings with Britain on the fate of the colony.
Smith became premier of the British Crown Colony of Southern Rhodesia in April 1964. On November 11, 1965, he issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence, pronouncing Rhodesia a sovereign state.
After 14 years of punitive UN sanctions and a seven-year bush war, Smith's resolve to battle on was sapped and he embraced more moderate black nationalists.
He did not attend the 1980 celebrations marking Zimbabwe's independence from Britain.
"The thought of being confronted by a scene where they [the British politicians] would be wringing their hands in apparent pleasure, and fawning around a bunch of communist terrorists who had come into their position through intimidation, corruption and a blatantly dishonest election, was a situation against which my whole system would revolt," he wrote in his memoirs.
Mugabe expelled Smith from Parliament in 1986 and he retired to his farm then moved to Cape Town. He is survived by his stepchildren, Jean Tholet and Robert.
- Agencies
