Ian Smith

Ian Smith

Ian Douglas Smith, GCLM, ID (8 April 1919 – 20 November 2007) was a politician active in the governments of Southern Rhodesia, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Rhodesia, Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and Zimbabwe from 1948 to 1987, most notably serving as Prime Minister of Rhodesia from 13 April 1964 to 1 June 1979. Born and raised in Selukwe, a small rural town in the British self-governing colony of Southern Rhodesia, Smith served in the Southern Rhodesian Air Force and British Royal Air Force during the Second World War and, after graduating from Rhodes University in South Africa, bought a farm in his home town in 1948. At the same time, he was elected as Selukwe's representative in the legislative assembly, running for the Southern Rhodesia Liberal Party; in doing so he became Southern Rhodesia's youngest ever member of parliament.

Smith supported the creation of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1953, and won the Midlands federal constituency for the United Federal Party (UFP) in that year's inaugural federal election; following his election at federal level he resigned the territorial Selukwe seat. He served as the UFP's Chief Whip in the Federal Assembly from 1958 to 1962 before resigning to help form the pro-independence Rhodesia Reform Party, which shortly merged with the Dominion Party to form the Rhodesian Front (RF). After the RF's victory in the 1962 Southern Rhodesian general election Smith became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Treasury under Prime Minister Winston Field.

After Field failed to win the country's independence from Britain on the federation's dissolution in 1963, Smith took his place in 1964 and, running on an election promise of independence, led the RF to a clean sweep of the 50 largely white-elected "A" roll seats in the May 1965 general election. Frustrated by repeated failures to achieve this goal by negotiation with the British, who insisted on an immediate handover to the African nationalists, Smith's government unilaterally declared Rhodesia's independence from the United Kingdom on 11 November 1965. Smith remained as premier until 1 June 1979 as the head of a white minority government; the state failed to gain international recognition and United Nations economic sanctions were instituted.

The Smith administration fought against African Marxists during the Bush War as part of its campaign to maintain its policy of a gradual transition of power, and negotiated an Internal Settlement with black moderates in 1979 – this agreement led to majority rule, the renaming of the country to Zimbabwe Rhodesia and a coalition government led by the country's first black prime minister, the United African National Council leader Abel Muzorewa, who included Smith in the cabinet as a minister without portfolio.

This still did not lead to international recognition for the country, however, and it was only in 1980, after the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement, the British-supervised election of Robert Mugabe as prime minister in April 1980 and the adoption of the name Zimbabwe that international acceptance came. Smith remained active in the Zimbabwean parliament until 1987, when he retired to the farm he still owned in the town of his birth. He relocated in 2005 to Cape Town, South Africa, where he died in 2007.