Last month I penned an obituary which was published in The Zimbabwean. Because so many of my (former)Rhodesian and (current)Zimbabwean friends and acquaintances as well as old political adversaries are scattered over the face of the earth, I forwarded copies per email to a couple of dozen email addresses. Naturally, the people with whom I remain in contact are almost uniformly political think-alikes and/or fellow opposition activists who doubted the wisdom of UDI and all that followed. I know only too well the mindset of my white contemporaries, the majority of whom so keenly placed their trust in Smith's leadership. There was no happy ending for any of us.
The responses to the obit are flowing in and for history's sake I welcome them, the many bouquets as well as a few brickbats. However, I am fully aware of how irrelevant all this seems now that Zimbabwe has been so long in the grip of the tyrant Robert Mugabe. But here, for the record, is the testimony of one Zimbabwe-born, `consistent' and unrepentant opponent of the policies of a former frontiersman, the recently departed Ian Smith:
P 15 – The Zimbabwean 29 November -5 December
IAN DOUGLAS SMITH: OBITUARY
Smith’s intransigence was Mugabe’s opportunity
IF IT HAD NOT BEEN FOR THE REPRESSIVE POLICIES OF SMITH AND THE RF, WHICH LED TO THE VICIOUS BUSH WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE, THERE IS NO WAY PEOPLE WOULD HAVE WELCOMED SOMEBODY LIKE MUGABE WITH OPEN ARMS IN 1980.
Ian Douglas Smith, the last white Prime Minister of Rhodesia, aroused passionate debate in his heyday - and this is being replayed after his death on November 20, 2007. The “Western Christian civilization” which he purported to defend requires that we should not speak ill of the dead, but it seems dishonest to pretend that his legacy of a lost, un-winnable, war against his own indigenous population, has been wiped out by his final exit.
In the first days following the news of the peaceful ending of his long life, far from the country he undoubtedly loved, it is hard to forget the effect of his iron-willed, white supremacist policies on the lives of a largely un-enfranchised black majority.
Today, a great leap of selective memory has come crashing down on to the name of his successor, the black man’s liberator turned evil oppressor, Robert Gabriel Mugabe. It is as if Mugabe’s disastrous rule is the inevitable consequence of not allowing Smith’s Rhodesian Front party to rule for the “thousand years” that he promised. That is not right. Ian Smith’s intransigence was Mugabe’s opportunity.
In media flashbacks, Ian Smith is repeatedly shown uttering his vow: “No majority rule – ever”. He stuck to it until early in 1978 when a brutal and bloody war, forced him to change his tune. On March 3 he made a belated attempt to get an “internal settlement”, giving limited power to moderate blacks led by Bishop Abel Muzorewa.
Then within months, after his erstwhile supporters in apartheid South Africa “betrayed” (his word) and abandoned him he had no choice but to renege on his UDI promises and, at Lancaster House, get the best deal he and Muzorewa could with the militant nationalist leaders (Mugabe and Nkomo).
Ironically, the midwife of the rebel Smith’s “final settlement” of its constitutional dispute with Britain turned out to be his enemy, the British government itself. Further, the changeling “babe” Mugabe was to become the personification of the RF’s self-fulfilling prophecy that a black government would yield “One man, one vote – once”.
If Smith, unlike the tyrant Mugabe, really agreed to go to the negotiating table to save the country, he could have saved it well before the guerilla war got under way in 1972. His worshipping, white electorate might have mandated him to share power with the leaders of “the happiest Africans in the world” before the masses were made unhappy by being assured that they would never be allowed to own their African soil.
In the context of the Cold War era, Smith’s overplayed anti-Communist propaganda yielded another self-fulfilling prophecy: Rhodesia fell into the hands of an avowed Marxist Leninist autocrat.
The son of an immigrant Scottish butcher, Smith was born in 1919 in Shurugwe, a small, Southern Rhodesian mining town. He began his political career by joining (in 1948), the inappropriately named, Liberal Party which was opposed to Prime Minister Huggins policies of gradual racial integration.
His commerce degree studies at Rhodes University were interrupted by WW2 service in 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron of the RAF. His reputation as a war hero, shot down over Italy and joining the partisans before escaping to Britain, was widely acclaimed. He certainly had charismatic appeal for the large majority of Rhodesian whites. Tragically, many sacrificed their sons to the lost cause of the “bush” war.
Smith’s political career had moved from early conservatism to a more enlightened period during the Federal experiment (1953 – 63) when he was Chief Whip of the UFP (United Federal Party). A ranching farmer, he moved again to the Right and eventually helped to found the RF. In the 15 years that he ruled Rhodesia there was no deflecting his stubborn refusal to face the facts of de-colonization in Africa.
He was egged on by an 80% majority of a deluded, tiny white electorate and by his preferred clutch of ultra-conservative civil servants (Hostes Nicolle, the notorious secretary for Internal Affairs being the most influential), his domineering party Chairman, “Des” Frost and the iron-fisted, legal luminary (another Desmond) Lardner-Burke.
When, as Prime Minister in 1965, he declared his UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Independence) wiser heads were ignored or ignominiously sacked or chose to resign or to depart the country.
His policies were racially discriminatory towards the aspirations of blacks although, by his own admission, they were among the best educated on the African continent. More than three quarters of the rural, black population wanted, nay, needed, more and better land but he ignored wise counsel.
The will of his most powerful backers among white land-owners and businesses with vested interests in maintaining the status quo, always prevailed. The rural poor, however blessed with full bellies, a functioning health system and other the trickle-down benefits of a flourishing agro-based economy, were unwilling to be denied equal access to the good life of the average white citizen. Progress towards racial integration, made during Federation with Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi) was arrested or turned back Like his successor, Mugabe, he was determined to hold on to power.
A veteran black journalist puts the run up to the double catastrophe of Rhodesian Ian Smith and Zimbabwean Robert Mugabe further back in time: “If gradualism had happened back in the 50s there is NO WAY people would have welcomed somebody like Mugabe with open arms in 1980; all they wanted was an end to the war.”
Smith’s autobiography, “The Great Betrayal” said little of the perspectives of black Zimbabweans and, as Mugabe is currently doing, he blamed everybody but himself for the eventual collapse of a potentially great country. - Diana Mitchell
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
