Ian Smith, Rhodesia’s last white leader, dies at 88

WASHINGTON – Ian Smith, the steely prime minister of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) who unilaterally declared the former British colony’s independence in 1965 and spent 14 years defying international sanctions and calls for black majority rule, died Nov. 20 at a clinic near Cape Town, South Africa, after a stroke. He was 88.

Smith had lived in self-imposed exile in Cape Town in recent years.

Smith was a cattle farmer before rising to power within a nationalist political movement of white settlers called the Rhodesian Front. Their goal was to resist Great Britain’s post-World War II efforts, and a broader geopolitical trend, to turn over European colonies in Africa to black majority rule. “Never in a thousand years,” Smith famously announced.

The Rhodesian Front won the country’s top offices in 1962 in reaction to a constitution urged by England that would have allowed for greater black participation in Rhodesia’s parliament.

Smith became prime minister in 1964 and denounced the proposed constitution. After fruitless talks with Britain on finding a compromise solution, Smith proclaimed unilateral independence – making Rhodesia the second British territory, after the United States in 1776, to take such a step without approval by the crown. England declared Smith’s actions “treasonous.”

The segregationist political system Smith maintained, including race-based restrictions on voting and land rights, was supported by counterinsurgency efforts that cost tens of thousands of lives before Smith was forced to step down in the late 1970s.

He also instituted martial law by calling a state of emergency and aggressively deploying a brutal central intelligence service and commando unit. That approach to governing continued under Robert Mugabe, a onetime black rebel leader who became prime minister of the newly named Zimbabwe in 1980.

The economic destruction and political repression that define Zimbabwean life under Mugabe have served to enhance Smith’s reputation as a courageous patriot among some Rhodesian-era whites. Smith also endeared himself to his supporters for his accessibility and unpretentious living habits. “Good old Smithy,” as he was called, rarely traveled with an entourage of guards.