The Last Rhodesian
NOVAK, ROBERT D.
The Last Rhodesian Ian Smith Pens His Memoirs By Robert D. Novak ? ? f | ^he man is a schizoid, I there can be no doubt _A_ about it," an unidentified British civil servant was quoted as saying...
...The Last Rhodesian Ian Smith Pens His Memoirs By Robert D. Novak ? ? f | ^he man is a schizoid, I there can be no doubt _A_ about it," an unidentified British civil servant was quoted as saying about Ian Smith in Newsweek's December 19, 1966, cover story...
...After 16 years of Mugabe's Zimbabwe," Smith writes, "our fight to prevent the advent of Marxist-Leninist de facto, if not de jure, rule has been vindicated...
...Smith shot back: "That bunch of communist dictators...
...But surpassing the British and the Americans in deviousness were the South Africans...
...The magazine's cover was labeled "White Power in Africa," and the story described the last white prime minister of black Rhodesia as a stubborn, "intellectually unresourceful" reactionary denying political power to 4 million black Africans in a country ruled by 217,000 whites...
...Smith may not fully appreciate that Rhodesia was doomed, a victim of the Cold War...
...Self-described as "more British than the British," Smith was shot down, wounded, and decorated as a heroic RAF fighter pilot for the motherland in World War II...
...ably, the truly racist regime of South Africa...
...What we have to do is produce an agreement which I can sell to the rest of the world, and in particular to the OAU...
...Ian Douglas Smith is barely remembered today, but 30 years ago he was viewed with fear and loathing by statesmen and journalists throughout the Western world...
...They have promised that if I can help them solve the Rhodesian problem they will acknowledge South Africa as we are today...
...With South African support, he could head off global sanctions and the guerrillas...
...Since then, a one-party Zimbabwe, the devolution of its economy toward African standards, and the inevitable emigration of whites have attracted little attention among the governing circles in London and Washington who could not support a moderate black government...
...The Iron Lady, in her memoirs, coldly ignores Smith and, with characteristic candor, admits that Muzorewa had fulfilled all the conditions for international recognition but that Soviet-backed African states insisted on Mugabe, who was continuing the bloody guerrilla war...
...The response from Wilson: "You cannot divorce yourself from the world we live in...
...At age 78, he has not given up hope for a democratic, capitalist Zimbabwe...
...The cynicism of Perfidious Albion is reflected in a conversation with Harold Wilson, the Labor prime minister of the '60s, recorded by Smith...
...Smith, who still resides and farms in his African homeland, does not disguise his politically incorrect belief that the British Empire was "the greatest force for good the world had ever known" and that "colonialism was the spread of Western Christian civilization into areas which were truly 'darkest Africa.'" Rhodesia was "surrounded by countries riddled with corruption, incompetence, indolence, nepotism and all those other evil aspects of communist dictatorships...
...Smith did not realize it then, but that sealed his doom...
...Those "realities" were pressed upon her by her deplorable foreign minister, Lord Carrington, of whom Smith says, "During my years in the world of politics I have come into contact with my fair share of devious characters, but I regard Car-rington as the most two-faced of all...
...I thought for a few seconds and then said: "I hope your expectations are fulfilled, but I would say to you that I have always very much been a part of Africa, have lived among and have a very great understanding of the people, and I wonder if because of your policy of apartheid you haven't lost touch with black Africa...
...Robert Mugabe never could have seized power had it not been for Moscow's patronage, and the acquiescence of London and Washington—if not of Pretoria—was based on global strategy...
...The wrong blacks were in power, in the view of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the non-white members of the British Commonwealth...
...Smith did experience momentary elation when Margaret Thatcher became prime minister in 1979...
...In a continent whose nascent independent states even then were led by tyrants, criminals, and murderers, Smith was trumpeted in the West's media as evil incarnate, the arch-villain of Africa...
...But if he once was intransigent about a black takeover of the government, that certainly was not the case by the time I first met him in Salisbury in 1977...
...The United States did not get involved deeply in Rhodesia until the Carter administration, when, predictably, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance functioned as the instrument of the Congressional Black Caucus...
...Not until new elections, tainted by terrorist intimidation of voters, had installed Mugabe in power were the rulers of the Third World satisfied...
...But you don't believe them...
...This and other ironies are compiled in The Great Betrayal, Smith's memoir (published earlier this year in Britain to a chorus of catcalls...
...I queried...
...It was not a simple matter of Smith's being tardy in seeing the light...
...Whatever concessions white Rhodesians would make and whenever they would make them, they were always too little, too late...
...I was well aware that what the people of Rhodesia needed above all was peace and stability," she writes, in justifying her abandonment of democracy...
...Said Wilson: "For you and me to come to an agreement is no problem...
...Smith reports that Henry Kissinger, whose contact with the Rhodesian question as secretary of state was tangential, met with him during the Carter administration: "He conceded the justice of my case, and assured me of his continuing wish to help . He once again paid tribute to the manner in which I had conducted myself and said this would be recorded in his memoirs...
...The blacks of Rhodesia "were better off than the blacks anywhere else in Africa, with more freedom, better justice and a higher standard of living...
...But the South Africans "were using the Rhodesian issue as a decoy to distract attention from their problem...
...This tale of accumulated perfidy reaches its nadir in 1974 when South African prime minister John Vorster (surely the most disagreeable public figure I ever have interviewed) met Smith and told him of his meeting with black leaders to the north: "I've got them eating out of my hands," he [Vorster] said, holding his hands out cup-like in front of me...
...Only the West's providential victory in the Cold War prevented Rhodesia, and much of the rest of Africa, from coming under Moscow's rule...
...Smith's warnings about the fate of his country have proven all too prescient...
...He's in turn inept, devious, erratic and honest...
...He proposes a sub-Saha-ran common market led by Nelson Mandela, described by Smith as "the first black statesman...
...Smith understands: "If a small country like Rhodesia had to be sacrificed as a morsel to feed the crocodile, that was an insignificant price to pay in order to buy time and secure some respite...
...Lady Thatcher concludes that "it was sad that Rhodesia/Zimbabwe finished up with a Marxist government in a continent where there are too many Marxists maladministering their countries' resources," but begs off by pleading "political and military realities...
...Smith argues that the imposition of South African apartheid began a chain reaction that led to bloodshed and tyranny in Angola, Mozambique, and certainly Rhodesia...
...Indeed, Smith sees his country's problems as beginning in 1948 when Field Marshal Jan Christian Smuts's South African government was defeated by the racist National party—"one of the most profound events affecting the history of Africa...
...Even when the black Methodist bishop Abel Muzorewa replaced Smith as prime minister after free elections, it was not enough for Mugabe's Patriotic Front and his Kremlin-supplied guerrilla army...
...Certainly," he replied...
...And he never has forgiven the erstwhile friends who betrayed him and his nation...
...In the fight for the survival of the West, fair treatment of the white tribe of old Rhodesia was hardly given a moment's thought...
...By then, all Smith's Rhodesian Front wanted was to keep power from Mugabe and other Soviet-backed Marxists...
...If we were not faced with Harold Wilson and the Labour Party using Rhodesia as a pawn in order to appease the OAU," Smith writes, "it was Ted Heath and the Conservatives using us as a bargaining chip in order to win votes in the House of Commons...
...I checked and found, not entirely to my surprise, that Ian Smith is not mentioned in Kissinger's memoirs...
...Rhodesia became one-party Zimbabwe, whose overwhelmingly black parliament (from which Smith was expelled) is a rubber stamp for Marxist prime minister Robert Mugabe, whose socialist policies have led to a declining economy and continued white flight...
...I saw Smith on his most recent visit to the United States, and he still exudes the "schoolboy obstinacy" that British prime minister Alec Douglas-Home complained about 30 years ago...
...Promises were broken, lies were told, and allies were betrayed...
...Smith recounts— still in wonderment after all these years—how he and his compatriots were later betrayed by forces that he thought were his allies in what he still calls the "Free World": Britain, the United States, and, most remarkRobert D. Novak is a veteran Washington reporter and columnist...
...I asked...
...Smith found that the Tories who alternated in power at Whitehall during the quarter-century when Rhodesia's fate was decided were not all that different from the socialists...
...You've been out of touch with the world so long that you are unaware of the changes that have taken place...
...The "unrelenting" pressure from Pretoria reached the point in 1979 where the white supremacist South African regime objected to any white ministers at all in the Rhodesian regime...
...But she soon "reneged on her promise of recognition [of the Muzorewa government] under pressure from Nigeria and Australia...
...Smith argues that a black population that "is still illiterate and does not understand a Western democratic system that is foreign to it" was hardly ready for the franchise...
...My dear friend," he said...
...With your apartheid intact...
...He was ready then to hand his premiership to a black man, and I found no Rhodesian who still harbored hopes of maintaining white minority rule...
Vol. 2 • July 1997 • No. 45
