Ian Smith - Family and Early Life

Family and Early Life

Smith was born in Selukwe (now known as Shurugwi), a small mining and farming town located approximately 190 miles (310 km) southwest of the capital Salisbury (now Harare). He was the family's youngest child, with two older sisters, Phyllis and Joan. His father, John Douglas Smith (also known as "Jock"), had emigrated from Hamilton, Scotland in 1898 in search of gold, but instead became a farmer, butcher, baker, garage owner, and gold mine operator. His father married Agnes Hodson, who was from Cumbria in England, in 1911.

Ian Smith considered his father "a man of extremely strong principles" and "one of the fairest men I have ever met and that is the way he brought me up." After receiving his primary education at a local school in Selukwe, Smith enrolled at the Chaplin School in nearby Gwelo for his secondary studies. In his final year at Chaplin, Smith was head prefect, recipient of the Victor Ludorum in sports, and captain of the school's rugby, cricket and tennis teams. Smith later remarked, "I was an absolute lunatic about sport. I concede, looking back, that I should have devoted much more time to my school work and less to sport."

Smith enrolled at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa in 1938, where he began coursework towards a Bachelor of Commerce degree. Smith interrupted his studies during the Second World War and joined the Southern Rhodesia Air Force. After completing his flight training, he was seconded to the rank of Pilot Officer in the Royal Air Force. He served with distinction in the Royal Air Force at the RAF station in Pembrey, Wales. On 4 October 1943, his Hawker Hurricane plane crashed on take-off from Alexandria, Egypt due to a throttle malfunction. His harness, which was built to withstand a stress of nearly one tonne, snapped and his face rammed against the Hurricane's instrument panel. He sustained severe facial injuries and broke his jaw, a leg and a shoulder and also buckled his back. Six months after undergoing extensive plastic surgery at the 15th Scottish Hospital in Cairo, he returned to active service with the No. 237 Squadron RAF in Corsica. In July 1944 German anti-aircraft fire shot down Smith's Supermarine Spitfire over the Po Valley during a strafing attack on German ground forces. He parachuted safely from his aircraft, landing behind enemy lines in the Ligurian Alps. where Italian partisan and an Italian family (the Zunino's) gave him refuge. After assisting in the planning of bomb raids against Germans for nearly five months, Smith and three other Allied soldiers embarked on a 23-day hike through occupied Italy and Maritime Alps to reach Allied lines. After being repatriated to Britain, he served with the No. 130 Squadron RAF until the end of the war. Smith returned to civilian life and obtained his Bachelor of Commerce degree at Rhodes, where he was also elected chairman of the students' representative council. After college, he bought a farm in Selukwe, later expanding it into a 21,500-acre (87 km2) estate. Regarding his decision to start farming, Smith remarked, "ommerce and economics are associated with mathematics. Maths was one of my better subjects. Economics is one of the most important aspects of farming and so I decided to farm. It was as simple as that."

Smith married Janet Watt (d. 1994), a widowed South African schoolteacher, in 1948 and had one child, Alec, whom he raised with his wife's two children, Robert and Jean, from her earlier marriage to South African rugby player Piet Duvenage. He remained on close terms with his son Alec despite having major disagreements with him on a number of political issues. Alec deserted from the Rhodesian army while serving as a conscript in the 1970s and went to Europe. There he married Elisabeth Knudsen, a Norwegian national, by whom he had three children: one son and two daughters. Alec was a staunch supporter of majority rule in Rhodesia and South Africa and became an outspoken critic of the white regime's discrimination against the majority black population. Alec died on 19 January 2006 of a heart attack at London Heathrow Airport.

Smith's stepdaughter Jean married Rhodesian folk singer Clem Tholet in 1967. Tholet was famous for songs such as 'Vagabond Gun' and 'Rhodesians Never Die'. Tholet died on 6 October 2004 at age 56.