Skrywer: Dan Roodt

Who was Ian Douglas Smith?  He was indeed a most remarkable man.  He was born in Rhodesia in 1919.  Rhodesia at that time was a young country, just a couple of decades old, and still wild in many ways.  It was a British colony.  During the Second World War he joined the Royal Air Force and served in 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron.  He was seriously injured in a crash landing, breaking his jaw, leg, and shoulder and suffering severe facial wounds.  But once he had recovered he returned to active duty.  In 1944 his Spitfire was shot down over northern Italy, but he parachuted to safety and for five months he evaded capture, then later crossed the Alps, much of the time with bare feet, and joined up with the Allied Forces in France.

Smith married Janet Watt in 1948, became a farmer, and also entered parliament in Rhodesia.  Later he founded the Rhodesian Front party, and became prime minister of Rhodesia in April 1964, at the age of 45.  On the 11^th November 1965, Rhodesia declared UDI – Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain.  Smith declared that in taking this step he was seeking to preserve western civilization, and to combat Communism.

I was born in Rhodesia two years before UDI.  Although our family moved to South Africa, we returned to Rhodesia for some years in the 1970s.  It was a wonderful life for any boy.  Despite the ongoing terrorist revolution, what a country it was!  It had the reputation of being probably the safest country in the world.  As a young boy of eight or nine I used to cycle alone to school, part of my route lying through open veldt.  I was perfectly safe.  My friends and I used to play in the veldt, without parental supervision, for hours on end, only coming home in the evenings.  Everything was efficient, well run, well maintained, neat, clean, and tidy.  The wildlife reserves were pristine.  The cities shone in the African sun.  There were world-class hospitals, schools, roads, railways, etc.  None of these things existed before the whites arrived, for prior to their arrival the territory which came to be known as Rhodesia was under the despotic rule of black tyrants.

There was very little animosity between black and white.  Ian Smith himself, although he was prime minister, frequently travelled around without so much as a bodyguard or a policeman to protect him.  By contrast, Robert Mugabe, the supposed “liberator”, travels with a massive entourage of motorbikes, police cars, armoured vehicles, soldiers, etc.  Why is it that Smith could travel alone even during the dark days when Rhodesia was under attack from terrorists, yet Mugabe does not feel secure unless surrounded by protectors?  If Mugabe really brought peace and freedom and joy to his people, what is he afraid of?

But the Marxist revolution began to take its toll.  I remember spending a weekend with a friend on his parents’ farm, and we were carefully instructed as to what to do if a hand grenade was lobbed through our bedroom window at night.  Such instructions were passed on to children matter-of-factly.  Everyone had to be prepared.  Robert Mugabe’s terrorists were committing shocking atrocities.  In addition to young men going to the army, older married men, family men, were spending a few months every year in the armed forces as well.  The revolution was escalating.  But Rhodesians stood firm, isolated from the rest of the western world, betrayed by their supposed friends.  They were doing their utmost best, small as the country was.  “With incredible gallantry young national servicemen, as well as the regular army, took up the challenge in the 1960s and not once in all the years of the bush war that followed [right through to 1980! – S.W.], did they face defeat.  They defended the people especially in the rural areas with outstanding tenacity, irrespective of colour or tribe of people who needed protection.  It was the tribal people who suffered worst at the hands of terrorists.” [i]  Rhodesians had a sense of destiny; of a special, almost unique purpose in the world.  As the League of Rhodesia put it in 1976: “We in Rhodesia have a very strong sense of national purpose.  We feel we’ve been singled out by Providence to be the stumbling block in the path of communist aggression.  There is yet time for the Western powers to put Rhodesia’s stand in its historical perspective; but they are leaving it dangerously late”. [ii]

This was correct.  This tiny country stood, almost alone except for the support of South Africa until near the end, and against overwhelming foes, against Communist aggression in southern Africa for 15 years.  The Soviet Union picked off the immensely strategic southern African countries one by one.  Mozambique, Angola, Zambia – these were all in the Soviet camp already.  The ultimate prize, of course, was the Republic of South Africa, the richest and most powerful of them all.  But to defeat South Africa, the Communists first had to pick off each one of its neighbouring countries.  White-governed, conservative Rhodesia resisted.  And because it resisted, Communist victory in all of southern Africa was delayed for many years.  And this was an immense blessing not just for Rhodesia and South Africa, but for the entire west as well, even though the western liberal leaders could not see it, or rather – did not want to do so.

After Rhodesia became Zimbabwe and the tyrant Mugabe took over, the vast majority of Rhodesia’s whites left the country.  Rhodesia once had a white population of a quarter of a million.  Today there are less than 50 000 whites in Zimbabwe.  They left because they knew what Mugabe would do.  They were right – he destroyed their country.  Ian Smith, however, continued to live in Zimbabwe.  He refused to leave.  This was his home, and he intended to stay.  And stay he did, despite frequent threats from government ministers, despite being declared Zimbabwe’s public enemy no.1.  He lived quietly on his farm, although he boldly denounced Mugabe’s insane policies and racist thuggery.  “He [Mugabe] should have gone long ago,” he told Reuters in 2000.  “He has ruined a wonderful country.” [iii]

He was constantly threatened by Mugabe, and in 2002 he was stripped of his Zimbabwean citizenship.  At the time Smith said: “They told me that my citizenship had been cancelled.  I oppose this government and you’re not allowed to do that in a one-party dictatorship.  They would like to silence me, but they haven’t got much hope of that.” [iv]

In the late 1990s his autobiography was published, entitled The Great Betrayal: the Memoirs of Africa’s Most Controversial Leader.  This is a book well worth reading by every lover of freedom the world over.

Ian Smith declared truthfully: “We were never beaten by our enemies, we were betrayed by our friends.”  The Rhodesian army was never defeated in battle.  Rhodesians faithfully and with distinction served Britain during two world wars, but Britain turned its back on them in their hour of greatest need.  In proportion to its population, more Rhodesians lost their lives fighting for Britain in the Second World War than from any other Commonwealth country.[v]  The British government betrayed Rhodesia to its Communist enemies.

Sadly, South Africa’s National Party, too, betrayed Rhodesia in the 1970s.  By that time certain elements within the National Party were already starting to pursue a policy of appeasement towards their neighbouring black Marxist states, in the hope that in this way they could save SA.  And so SA’s prime minister, John Vorster, declared a change of policy towards Rhodesia, cutting off military assistance and leaving Smith with little option but to concede defeat.  Not only was this a disaster for Rhodesia, but ultimately Vorster’s gamble backfired on SA as well.  The fall of Rhodesia to the Marxist forces hastened SA’s own demise.

When Ian Smith died, the liberal press, as was to be expected, could hardly find a good word to say about him.  He was described as the man “whose attempts to resist black rule dragged the country into isolation and civil war”,[vi] who “defied the world for 15 years and plunged the country into war”.[vii]  They couldn’t have got it more wrong.  Ian Smith, and Rhodesians in general, were resisting Soviet-backed  Communist terrorism.  The liberals speak as if it was the whites’ fault that Rhodesia suffered such a  terrible war.  What nonsense.  It wasn’t the white Rhodesians who dragged the country into war, it was black terrorists supported by the Soviet Union, Red China, the United Nations, and the World Council of Churches.  They started the war, and white Rhodesians were absolutely entitled to defend themselves against it. 

And even though blacks were in the majority, does this mean it had to automatically follow that the country should be delivered into their hands?  Absolutely not!  One has to ask: were they ready to govern a modern, First World state?  The answer, although extremely politically incorrect, is patently obvious as we look at Zimbabwe today: they were not ready. 

Mugabe and his Marxist cronies have ruined Zimbabwe.  The country’s white farmers have been violently driven off their farms, as have their thousands of black farm labourers, resulting in starvation and chaos.  There is over 85% unemployment.  Over 80% of the country’s wildlife has been wiped out.  Inflation is something like 5000%.  Power failures last for days.  Shops have no goods on their shelves.  The independent media in Zimbabwe has been silenced, often violently.  The judiciary now serves Mugabe.  Church buildings have been destroyed, pastors have been arrested.  Some five million people – almost half the population of Zimbabwe – have fled as refugees to South Africa and other neighbouring states.  Elderly pensioners have lost their life savings because of the devaluation of the Zimbabwe dollar.  They are starving.

All this is Mugabe’s evil legacy.  Yet so many blacks are so blinded by false propaganda concerning whites in Africa, that even when they can see that Mugabe has ruined Zimbabwe, they have to find a way to blame it on whites like Smith.  Take the following comment from a leading black critic of Mugabe, political commentator John Makumbe: “There are very unfortunate similarities between Robert Mugabe and Ian Smith in terms of practising racism, violence, bad governance and bad policies.  But that must not be taken to mean Ian Smith is vindicated, just that Robert Mugabe inherited certain traits from Smith.” [viii]  This is such hogwash!  There are no similarities between the two men.  Mugabe is responsible for massacring tens of thousands of people, destroying thousands of homes, driving farmers off their land illegally and stealing their farms, torturing opponents, inflation that is the highest on earth, a one-party state that has completely destroyed the country.  Ian Smith’s Rhodesia was peaceful, well run, prosperous.  And as for saying that Mugabe “inherited” these vile traits from Smith, this is laughable!  How could he possibly have “inherited” them, even if Smith was guilty of them (which he was not)?  Mugabe did not copy Smith in any way.  He hated Smith, despised everything he stood for, and was and is an altogether different man from Smith in every possible way.  This is an example of the typical distortion of historical reality so beloved of Marxists and liberals.

Thankfully there are blacks who are not blinded by this false propaganda.  Patrick Kombayi, former mayor of Gweru, Zimbabwe, a hotelier and opposition politician, said Zimbabweans had much for which to thank Smith.  “The roads that we are using today were all built by Smith.  All the infrastructure is Smith’s.  We never suffered the way we are suffering now because Smith took care of the economy that supported all people and they had enough to eat.  When he left power the pound was on a par with the Zimbabwean dollar, but President Mugabe has killed all that.” [ix]

 Let Ian Smith speak for himself, in these words from his autobiography, concerning white-governed Rhodesia:

“[Sir Godfrey Huggins] informed us that the British government had informed him that Rhodesia was the success story of the Commonwealth.  We had succeeded in Africa where they had failed.  History proved the veracity of this belief.  Africa to our north was in chaos, and with the passage of time degenerated into disaster.  Africa is the continent of coups, assassination of political leaders, governments mesmerised by their communist mentors and thus riddled with corruption, incompetence, nepotism and top jobs for comrades irrespective of ability, experience, training or professionalism.

“By contrast, Rhodesia was an oasis of peace and contentment…. Proportional to population we had provided double the amount of facilities in the fields of education, health, housing, recreation and culture than Britain had to our north [in the British territories].

“The commissioner of police in his annual report consistently referred to the fact that Rhodesia was the only country in the world, from which statistics were available, where the crime rate was decreasing.  Moreover, proportional to population we had a smaller police force than any other known country.  However, I am simply emphasising and reiterating the dreadful injustice to which Rhodesia had been subjected…

“Our Western civilization evolved over thousands of years, with many trials and tribulations, triumphs and disasters… With the passing of Rhodesia we were denied the opportunity of putting our philosophy to the test.  We must accept that there is no going back now.  What we cannot accept is that we should allow people, indeed nations, to succeed in twisting the truth against Rhodesia in order to support and preserve malignant dictatorships.  The vast mass of Rhodesians have always been moderate, middle-of-the-road conservatives.  Extremists, whether to the left or right, never succeeded in gaining support in our politics…. All of these actions [previously described], which clearly indicate Rhodesian moderation, reason, and fair play to all our people, black and white, are assiduously ignored while the rabble-rousers succeed in branding us as white racists, oblivious of the interest of our black community. In fact, they are the racists, fabricating their case against us for the reason that we are white people living in Africa.  Sadly, the broad mass of reasonable people in the world, who, once the position is made clear to them, sympathise with the injustice of the case against us, seem to be reluctant, or are otherwise too occupied, to resort to positive action.  The problem is obvious – the extremist, because of his nature, is obsessed with his cause and never tired of working for it.  On the other hand, the reasonable man, because of his nature, is moderate in his outlook and approach to life.  We must constantly remind ourselves and our friends, and continue to repeat those significant words: ‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is that good men do nothing.’” [x]

Zimbabwe’s black Marxists, and the western world’s liberal journalists, have been falling over themselves to brand Ian Smith as a racist and a tyrant.  This should be expected from such men.  The reality, however, is very different:

The black workers on Smith’s cattle farm in Zimbabwe painted a very different image of the man when they heard the news of his death in South Africa.  They said that he was a generous employer who built a school where the children of farm workers received free education, and provided houses for the teachers and free medical treatment for all his staff.  The foreman, Pedzisai Chizhika, who was born on Smith’s farm and still lives there, said: “The old man [Smith] was good to us.  He built a school where I went and my children are still learning there for free.  Apart from what happened before independence he was a good man, who had the interests of all people at heart irrespective of race.”  Chizhika added that Smith had saved the life of his 15-year-old son, Blessing.  “A detonator exploded in my son’s face in August, seriously injuring him.  He was taken to hospital and the bill was huge, and the farm paid for that because Smith always paid for our hospital bills.  If it was not for his kindness my son would have died of bleeding, because I did not have the money to pay the hospital bill of Zim $60 million.”  He said of Smith, “he was a jovial man who treated all of us as his children and cared for our welfare.” [xi]

Tadeous Maroyi Muchata, 60, who has been working on the farm ever since Smith bought it in 1948, said Smith always treated his workers with respect.  “Whenever an employee passed away he bought a coffin and provided food and transport for the families.  Do you call those the actions of a racist or an evil man?”  He added that Smith even bought his own ambulance to ferry sick workers to hospital.[xii]

When he finally left his farm and moved to Harare, the capital, Ian Smith’s gate was always unlocked and blacks would give him a warm reception in the street.  “They say to me, ‘Please keep going Mr Smith.  We lived better when you were around,’” he said.  “Policemen salute me, people shake my hand.  I’ve got more black friends than Mugabe.” [xiii]

In an article entitled The Truly Greatest Africans of All Time, written in 2005, I said the following about Ian Smith: “Rhodesia’s prime minister, Ian Smith, stands among the greatest Africans ever.  A true gentleman, a man of deep convictions, a man of great courage, who led his tiny country through its most turbulent years as Marxist terrorists waged a horrifying guerilla war against it, and as the whole world turned its back on Rhodesia and isolated it completely.  Today, despite constant vilification in the Zimbabwean media, and threats against him, Ian Smith, although a frail octogenarian, continues to live in Zimbabwe – the nightmare country that was once his beloved Rhodesia – doing whatever he can to help his suffering people.” [xiv]

He made mistakes; all men do, and even the best of governments in this fallen world are very far from perfect.  But all over the world, wherever Rhodesians now live, they will mourn the passing of Ian Smith.  From their far-flung homes in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand, not to mention South Africa, his death will remind them of the wonderful country they once knew and loved, the country which they, standing behind “good old Smithy”, did so much to defend and hold.  Rhodesia, the country, is no more.  But in the words of Ian Smith himself, writing “to all the wonderful Rhodesians, wherever you are in the world,” in November 2005: “I would ask you to join me in ensuring that we do our utmost to preserve, perpetuate and enhance the Rhodesian spirit.  May it continue forever.” [xv] 

When a Rhodesian soldier, who had been paralysed while fighting for his country, was asked over 25 years later whether his injuries had been pointless, he replied, “We were fighting Communism and it was the right thing to be doing, and I am very proud to have been part of that.” [xvi]  That, in a nutshell, encapsulates the Rhodesian spirit.

Every single day, as the world watches Mugabe destroy Zimbabwe, Ian Smith’s position is vindicated.  Every single day, Mugabe provides Rhodesians, scattered across the earth, with the proof that they were right all along.  Every Rhodesian, who fought so hard to keep his beloved country from falling into the hands of Mugabe and his murderous Communist terrorists, can hold his head up high, despite the liberal lies spouted by the media, and say, “We were right.”  He can say, “We were right to resist.  Mugabe proves us right every time he opens his mouth, every time he puts another insane policy into practice.”

Ian Smith was right.  Rhodesians were right. 

I urge Christians to remember the suffering people of Zimbabwe in their prayers, and especially to pray for Christians there.  Rhodesia, tragically, is gone; Zimbabwe is the reality and the nightmare.  For those in Zimbabwe, life has become a daily struggle for survival.  With all my heart I urge my brothers and sisters in Christ: do not forget them.  In the comfort of your homes, with sufficient food on your tables and warm beds to sleep in every night, please do not forget them.

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