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Ian Smith, the last prime minister of white-ruled Rhodesia, whose attempts to resist black rule dragged the country now known as Zimbabwe into isolation and civil war, has died, a family friend said Tuesday. He was 88.
Smith died at a clinic near the South African city of Cape Town, where he spent his final years, according to longtime friend Sam Whaley. He had been ailing for some time and recently suffered a stroke.
To many white Rhodesians, he was a kind of idol - "good old Smithy." To most blacks, his rule symbolised the worst of racial oppression. A former Royal Air Force pilot, he fought for Britain in World War II, then rebelled against it 20 years later.
Smith imprisoned current President Robert Mugabe in 1964 for 10 years, calling him a "terrorist" intent on turning the country into a one-party dictatorship.
"We have never had such chaos and corruption in our country," Smith said during a brief return to the political fray in 2000. "What Zimbabweans are looking for is a bit of ordinary honesty and straightforwardness."
Despite their bitter differences, Smith and Mugabe shared one common bond - their deep dislike of Britain, which they saw as a meddling colonial power.
Just as Mugabe accused former British Prime Minister Tony Blair of interfering in Zimbabwe to protect the interests of whites, Smith poured vitriol on the government of the late Harold Wilson for pressing him to hand political power to the black majority.
Smith was born to Scottish immigrants in western Zimbabwe on April 8, 1919, but renounced his claims to British citizenship in 1984.
He was, in his own words, "an absolute lunatic about sport" most of his life. He graduated with a degree in commerce from Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa.
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.
Smith was demobilised in 1946 and returned to Rhodesia to raise cattle and grow corn. 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. They had two sons and a daughter.
Smith was elected to Parliament five years later as a member of the ruling United Federal Party, rose through party ranks as an opponent of black rule and joined the newly formed 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, Smith 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 Nov. 11, 1965, he issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence, pronouncing Rhodesia a sovereign state.
"Prior to our declaration of independence, the British government had always told us that we were the model of the Commonwealth in Africa," a defiant Smith maintained after he published his memoirs "The Great Betrayal" in 1997. "The day after we declared our independence we were suddenly the greatest evil on earth."
Smith swiftly and ruthlessly imprisoned thousands of black leaders, drove many others into exile and introduced draconian laws curbing civl rights and controlling the already tame press.
In 1970, he declared Rhodesia a republic with a racially based constitution. Two years later, he declared the country at war with black nationalist guerrillas infiltrating from neighbouring countries.
After 14 years of punitive United Nations sanctions and a seven-year bush war that killed an estimated 40,000 people, Smith's resolve to battle on was sapped and he embraced more moderate black nationalists.
He persuaded Bishop Abel Muzorewa to stand in elections in 1979 and form a government of national reconciliation, which included Smith.
The rest of the world was unimpressed. Then US President Jimmy Carter announced that sanctions would continue, a move followed by Britain.
The settlement left out the two main nationalist movements and fighting only increased after the vote.
At a conference in London organised by then British Foreign Secretary Peter Carrington, Muzorewa agreed to new elections involving the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, headed by Mugabe, and the Zimbabwe African People's Party, headed by Joshua Nkomo.
Mugabe won the poll and was declared president. Smith claimed the elections were marred by ZANU-PF intimidation - a refrain echoed by most independent observers about recent polls in Zimbabwe.
Smith 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.
Smith became leader of the opposition at the head of the renamed Republican Front, but his support among whites gradually eroded.
Mugabe expelled Smith from parliament in 1986 and he retired to his farm in southwestern Zimbabwe and then subsequently moved to Cape Town, where there is a sizable community of white Zimbabweans.
He complained in 2002 that Zimbabwe authorities had stripped him of his Zimbabwe citizenship. However, Mugabe made no attempts to expel Smith from the country. He did, though, apologise to supporters on several occasions for not punishing Smith and his white cronies.
Smith's wife and son both have died. He is survived by his stepchildren, Jean Tholet and Robert.
Funeral details were not immediately known.
- AP
