HARARE, Zimbabwe — Ian Smith — Rhodesia’s last white prime minister, whose attempts to resist black rule dragged the country now known as Zimbabwe into isolation and civil war — died Tuesday. He was 88.
Smith, who recently suffered a stroke, died at a clinic near Cape Town, South Africa, where he spent his final years with his family, said longtime friend Sam Whaley, a senator in the former Rhodesia.
Smith unilaterally declared independence from Britain on Nov. 11, 1965. He served as the prime minister from 1965 to 1979 during white minority rule. The country failed to gain international recognition, and the United Nations imposed economic sanctions.
He finally bowed to international pressure, and Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party won elections in 1980.
To many white Rhodesians, he was “good old Smithy.” To most blacks, his rule symbolized the worst of racial oppression.
“I don’t believe in black majority rule ever for Rhodesia, not in a thousand years,” Smith once said.
For him, the increasingly tyrannical abuse of power in recent years by Mugabe, still the president, and Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation and economic collapse vindicated that belief.
“We have never had such chaos and corruption in our country,” Smith said during a brief return to the political fray in 2000.
“What Zimbabweans are looking for is a bit of ordinary honesty and straightforwardness.”
Zimbabwe’s state television and radio briefly reported Smith’s death on late-night news shows Tuesday.
“Zimbabwe will remember Smith for his unrepentant racist attitude and the killing of thousands of innocent people” in the struggle for independence, state TV said.
Despite their bitter differences, Smith and Mugabe shared one bond — their deep dislike of Britain, which they saw as a meddling colonial power.
Smith was born to Scottish immigrants in western Rhodesia on April 8, 1919, but renounced his claims to British citizenship in 1984.
He graduated with a degree in commerce from Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. Two years after the outbreak of World War II, he joined Britain’s Royal Air Force as a fighter pilot.
He lost two planes in combat. Plastic surgery to fix scars from the first crash paralyzed the right side of his face, giving him a sinister, expressionless appearance.
After the war, Smith returned to Rhodesia to raise cattle and grow corn. He entered politics in 1948, backing the opposition Liberal Party. That year, he married a South African-born teacher, Janet Watt. They had two sons and a daughter.
Smith was elected to Parliament five years later as a member of the ruling United Federal Party.
He rose through party ranks as an opponent of black rule before joining the newly formed right-wing Rhodesian Front Party in 1962 at a time when colonial powers were granting independence to black leaders in Africa.
The Front won a surprise victory in elections that year, and Smith became minister of the treasury. In a right-wing revolt in 1964, Smith ousted the party leader for being too soft in dealings with Britain.
Smith became premier of the British Crown Colony of Southern Rhodesia in April 1964. On Nov. 11, 1965, he issued a declaration of independence.
He swiftly and ruthlessly imprisoned thousands of black leaders, drove others into exile and introduced draconian laws curbing civil rights and controlling the already tame press.
In 1970, Smith declared Rhodesia a republic with a racially based constitution. Two years later, he declared the country at war with black nationalist guerrillas infiltrating from neighboring countries.
After 14 years of punitive U.N. sanctions and a seven-year bush war that killed an estimated 40,000 people, Smith’s resolve was sapped, and he embraced more moderate black nationalists.
He persuaded Bishop Abel Muzorewa to stand in elections in 1979 and form a government of national reconciliation, which included Smith.
The rest of the world was unimpressed, and then-President Carter announced that U.S. sanctions would continue, as did Britain.
The political settlement left out the country’s two main nationalist movements and fighting increased after the vote.
After his rise to power, Mugabe expelled Smith from Parliament in 1986 and Smith retired to his Zimbabwe farm and then moved to Cape Town, where there is a sizable community of white Zimbabweans.
