DID IAN SMITH'S SON AVERT A COUP IN 1980?

Alec Douglas Smith died tragically young, recently. In an obituary (Independent Feb 2, 2006) Rebecca Saintonge states: `He was not the sort of person you'd think had been instrumental in averting a military coup.But this is what he did, and, in so doing, helped change the course of his country's history'.
I know little about Alec Smith, other than of his remarkable conversion from rebel son of the man who led my country into a disastrous rebellion against the Crown - or rather, against the British government in November 1965 - to friend of `moderate' African nationalists. But I know a fair amount about Ian Douglas Smith and a great deal about the character of African nationalism and -ists during that turbulent period of Rhodesia's history. I knew, personally, most of Bishop Abel Muzorewa's men (and a few women) including the Bishop himself and especially the Rev. Arthur Kanodereka who is the central figure in Saintonge's story. I shall do more research because thus far I have revised Alec Smith's `Now I call Him Brother' and re-read the relevant sections in Ken Flower's `Serving Secretly' - and, of course, Ian Smith's `The Great Betrayal' but it is not in these books that historians will necessarily arrive at the whole truth of the matter. Not that I doubt the claim that it was Alec who got the peacemaker, Arthur to meet his (Alec's) powerful father and thus created a bond of mutual understanding between the two men. But I seriously doubt whether it was Arthur and Alec alone who influenced the course of events leading to the averting of a potentially catastrophic coup. In any case, Arthur was assassinated long before the question of a coup was remotely considered, shot by night on a lonely roadsideby unknown assailants. This was possibly by agents bent on destroying the short, successful progress that his boss, Bishop Muzorewa, was making in his alliance with Smith. That alliance I know for sure, was forged yearsl before the events flowing from the Lancaster House peace agreement were under way. I know exactly how the RF regime `came around' to dealing with the ANC. I was there, I repeat - moving among the Bishop's ANC leaders including the Bishop himself. (Ask him: he may remember a meeting for the Bishop with Sir Henry McDowell, arranged by the Centre Party leaders, including myself). We were all agreed that dialogue was the only way to stop the war. Muzorewa poked his forefinger directly at my sternum "I see that we (the ANC) are preaching to the converted (McDowell and the 'liberals' of the CP)" he said. "go and get the people in power (your RF friends) to talk to us". I was nowhere near Ian Smith at any time, having personally and politically waged a twelve year campaign in opposition to his politics but I beat a path to the office of Senator Sam Whaley, a powerful member of Smith's party. He knew that I moved among nationalist leaders (see my 1997 Who's Who of African Nationalist leaders) and gave me a polite but defiant hearing. Then I tried Hilary Squires, my former friend and fellow student at the University of Cape Town who had joined the RF (he is currently in the SA News for presiding over the Shaik case) He was defensive of Smith but would have been sure to carry the message of the Bishop's willingness to negotiate with the RF.

So you see, I have a good memory of this and other events leading up to the Rhodesian Front's capitulation to the demands for African majority rule. As for the conditions prevailing when Governor Lord Soames was briefly in charge in Salisbury during the infinitely delicate moment of the final preparations for the handover of power to the African majority, I doubt they were conducive for the intervention of Ian Smith (and his General, Peter Walls) at that moment when there was a real danger of a coup (see Ken Flower's final chapter). But I was there (see my Foxtrot blog above) in Enkeldoorn, on the way to an Assembly point, hearing in that famous village pub, talk about the mutterings of the Rhodesian army who would have liked to stage a coup..... but more later.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell