Former Rhodesian PM Ian Smith dies

Former Rhodesian PM Ian Smith dies

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By Staff Reporter

FORMER Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith has died aged 88.

He died on Tuesday, November 20 just after 7PM, his eldest son Robert said.

Smith, who recently suffered a stroke, died at a clinic near Cape Town, South Africa, according to longtime friend Sam Whaley, who was a senator in the former Rhodesia.

To many white Rhodesians, he was "good old Smithy." To most blacks, his rule symbolised the worst of racial oppression

Smith illegally made a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) from Britain in 1965 and his white minority government led the country for 14 years amid international scorn and sanctions.

Following a bitter bush war with black nationalists, his government yielded after the Lancaster House talks in 1979 after securing an agreement that no form of compulsory land redistribution would take place for at least 10 years after independence, securing the immediate position of the white farming community. The Agreement gave unconditional immunity from prosecution to all those who had participated in UDI and the Bush War.

Robert Mugabe became the leader of the renamed Zimbabwe in April 1980.

Speaking to the BBC in 1998 about his assumption of power, Smith was adamant it was justified.

"There was good reason for what we did. We set up a committee of top civil servants and ministers on three different occasions to look at this and every time they came back and said we had no option.

"Had we not resorted to this the country would have degenerated into chaos and confusion," he said.

Years of civil war followed the declaration of independence. Smith denied this was caused by the actions of his regime.

"The civil war was caused by people who left our country and were brainwashed in Russia, in China.

"They were power hungry people who wanted to take their country over immediately and were not prepared to wait for the evolutionary process."

During a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in September, Mugabe said he had assured Smith of his freedom despite his crimes against the black majority.

He said: “I lost eleven precious years of my life in the jail of a white man whose freedom and well-being I have assured from the first day of Zimbabwe's Independence. I lost a further fifteen years fighting white injustice in my country.

“Ian Smith is responsible for the death of well over 50 000 of my people. I bear scars of his tyranny which Britain and America condoned. I meet his victims everyday. Yet he walks free. He farms free. He talks freely, associates freely under a black Government. We taught him democracy. We gave him back his humanity.”

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