Former Rhodesian PM Ian Smith in an interview with the Guardian, 04 April, 
2000.
*********************************************
I told you so 

As prime minister of Rhodesia, he led his country into war and international 
isolation. But he prefers not to dwell on the past. As political violence 
returns to Zimbabwe, Ian Smith tells Matthew Engel where Robert Mugabe went 
wrong 
Zimbabwe: special report 

Tuesday April 4, 2000 

In Zimbabwe the past is another country. But the embodiment of that country 
is still with us. And he has had a pretty good weekend. After all, he told us 
it would happen, incessantly. Ian Smith, prime minister of Rhodesia from 1964 
to 1979, took his country through treason and sanctions and war rather than 
submit to black rule. 
In rough outline, he predicted Saturday's attack on the anti-government 
marchers 40 years ago. He was doing his best not to gloat. "We're pretty well 
in a state of anarchy, so I don't think it should surprise anyone who 
understands politics. It was a dreadful incident. People beaten with sticks 
and whips, including ladies . Par for the course, though. This is where we 
live. Dreadful." 

It doesn't feel all that dreadful, though. He sits in a comfy armchair in his 
front room amid the over-fussy decoration beloved by colonialists of his 
generation. He is 80 now and a widower, a bit lonely I think (why else would 
he welcome the Guardian so readily?), but he is still fit, and has not lost a 
solitary marble. 

He looks out on to a glorious lawn, fronting an avenue shaded by old 
jacaranda trees. He has less security than the average middle-ranked 
executive in Johannesburg. Only one thing jars: poking up behind his 
bougainvillea is a huge radio mast. Ian Smith's next-door neighbour is the 
Cuban embassy. He is not a humorous man, but this is probably the best joke 
in Harare. "They're very nice," says Smith. "I said in an interview that I 
preferred the Cubans to Mugabe, and the ambassador has waved cheerfully ever 
since." 

There is a logical flaw here, since Smith's first allegation (of many) 
against Zimbabwe's current president, Robert Mugabe, is that he is a 
communist. This provided the only moment during our conversation when I was 
convinced I had him nailed. 

"He is a communist," Smith was saying. "Still is. Absolutely dedicated. He 
stays in power so he can do what he wants to do." 

"Some people might say that's what you did." 

"THAT'S A LIE." 

It was an unusually unsubtle get-out. Time and again I asked him during the 
interview, in different ways, if (1) he had made mistakes; (2) he blamed 
himself at all for his country's plight; and (3) he regretted what he had 
done. The answers were: yes (though he declined to specify any mistakes); no; 
and "I don't dwell on the past." 

Funnily enough, the last bit was probably the biggest lie of all. The whole 
Rhodesian adventure was a piece of quixotry straight out of the past. A year 
after he took over, Smith made a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) 
to prevent Britain forcing him to accept majority rule. There were fewer than 
a quarter of a million whites, and 5m blacks. 

Harold Wilson considered invasion, then backed away, uncertain even of the 
British army's loyalty. White Rhodesia flourished, evading economic sanctions 
for more than a decade with a mix of 10% skill and ingenuity and 90% South 
African support. Britain looked pathetic. Then, as guerrilla warfare 
intensified, the South African president, the old soak and bully John 
Vorster, decided that this sideshow was jeopardising his own regime's 
survival, and forced Rhodesia to capitulate. 

By Smith's armchair is his own book, The Great Betrayal, which refers to the 
South Africans' behaviour. He also has Reach for the Sky, the biography of 
the war hero Douglas Bader; The Abolition of Britain, a sort of 
past-dweller's handbook by the eccentric Daily Express writer Peter Hitchens; 
and a compilation of cartoons by Giles, another Express favourite. I didn't 
dare tell him the paper is now edited by a dope-smoking Labour supporter, and 
a woman - no, lady - at that. 

He also has a huge painting of Spitfires over the Italian mountains, which is 
what he flew and where he flew them. He doesn't need much prompting to 
mention the war: that war, not the one he precipitated. 

Otherwise, his conversation is mostly about long-ago negotiations with 
politicians, mostly dead, all of whom were evidently far trickier than he 
was. UDI was not illegal, he insisted, the lawyers said so: it was a response 
to a breach of contract by the British. 

"We had majority rule," said Smith. "We had responsible majority rule. It was 
a system British ministers said to me time and again was a success. Harold 
Macmillan said so; Alec Home said so. On the day of UDI, Harold Wilson 
pleaded with me, 'Ian, please have a little more patience. You are our model 
for Africa.' Then he rushed to the House of Commons and said I was a 
traitor." Smith despises inconsistency in others but will never recognise it 
in himself. It is a very Rhodesian sort of trait. 

But his greatest venom is reserved for Mugabe. "When you see what these 
communist gangsters have done to this country." He shakes his head. "They 
inherited a wonderful country. He told me so. The day the 1980 election 
results came out he rang and asked me to see him. 

"Mugabe sat me down and said, 'I just want to tell you how lucky we are 
inheriting this jewel of Africa. We want to keep it that way.' He couldn't 
have been kinder or more polite. I couldn't believe what I heard. He talked 
like a sophisticated westerner, not like a communist. I said, 'You said it to 
me. Will you say it in public? And he did. 

"I used to go and see him regularly for the first 18 months, and he couldn't 
have been more gracious. Then suddenly he had a rush of blood and decided to 
create a one-party Marxist state. I was never welcome after that and I've 
never seen him since. Now we have a dictatorship. It's totalitarianism. 
You're not allowed to disagree, you're allowed to agree." 

It is a little hard to see how you can simultaneously have both 
totalitarianism and anarchy. And anyway, here we are in his sitting room, and 
he is disagreeing like crazy. "Mugabe never had such freedom in your day, did 
he?" 

"He had complete freedom. He was only arrested because he practised 
subversion, unconstitutional methods." Mugabe spent years in jail; Smith is 
incensed because he has been briefly arrested three times. 

"It doesn't feel like a communist country, does it?" 

"In the last couple of years, yes, people have spoken out. They're very 
clever, these totalitarian people. They took over the communications media, 
they instituted the CIO [Central Intelligence Organisation], which is as good 
as any Gestapo on the face of the earth. 

"You know, my friend, Africa is different. It's nothing like the free world. 
They believe in chiefs, in dictatorship." 

And so you go round in circles. Never mind that Smith's constitution denied 
the majority anything but the most rudimentary say. Come to think of it, 
peaceful demonstrations against the government were not a major feature of 
life under the Smith government. I tried to find something on which he might 
agree with Mugabe: and it's true, he doesn't care for homosexuality either. 

"I was brought up to believe it wasn't part of life. Sodomy was a crime. We 
were given this [he glances discreetly downwards] to procreate. I'm now told 
that there are inherent reasons for people being that way, that there's 
medical evidence. Well, all right, but you should keep it to yourself and not 
influence young people. I don't like it." 

He is worried about the internet too: "I'm a bit worried from what I hear of 
it. I hear it's a bit unsavoury, a lot of smut." And he is concerned about 
the British young: "I don't think they have enough pride in Britain." 

Here we have the very nub of Rhodesia. It was a country that embodied the 
values of the old Daily Express, where acceptable subversion might be safely 
contained in a Giles cartoon. Smith's Rhodesia ("Surrey with the lunatic 
fringe on top," as it was once characterised) had many old-fashioned Home 
Counties virtues: neighbourliness, civic pride, politeness, efficiency, 
practicality, discipline, reticence, pluck and a little light charity. For 
better or worse, women were always ladies (usually making the teas, not going 
on demos). It is as though the world was defied for a decade by some gigantic 
local bowls club. 

Smith himself was an unpretentious and accessible leader, driving home for 
lunch in a little Peugeot. Good old Smithy! Nowadays, Avis give renters 
special instructions about how to behave when confronted by a presidential 
motorcade. 

But the Rhodesians could not face up to the contradictions of their privilege 
and their position. There was no Great Betrayal. They were betrayed only by 
their own narrow-mindedness, selfishness and ignorance. 

"We were not racialists," Smith insists. And it is true that Rhodesia had no 
Whites Only signs, like South Africa. The phrase was "Right of Admission 
Reserved". Most people did not have to be told what that meant. 

Even now, Smith purports to believe that Mugabe has never won a fair 
election, and that he cheated more moderate leaders out of what was theirs - 
an assertion which everyone who understands anything of Zimbabwean politics 
thinks is nonsense. 

Ian Smith understood everything about Rhodesia. But that was another country. 
Indeed, it wasn't even a country at all. 

 

  

   

  
 
 
         
  
  Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000 


hkanteh

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