Last Rhodesian PM Ian Smith dies
Former Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith dies aged 88
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Tuesday, 20, Nov 2007 07:59
Ian Smith, the last prime minister of the rogue state of Rhodesia, has died aged 88, it has been reported.
He reportedly died at a residential home in Cape Town, South Africa, after a period of illness.
Mr Smith achieved lasting notoriety with the unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) in November 1965, which saw Rhodesia become a sovereign state illegally.
He had previously been the prime minister of the semi-autonomous UK colony South Rhodesia.
For the next 14 years he led a white minority government that presided over the first-ever country to face economic sanctions from the United Nations.
Britain had refused to grant Rhodesia's independence unless it was governed by a black majority and Mr Smith's UDI led to a sustained period of international isolation.
During the 1970s the prime minister's Rhodesian Front party fought black nationalists in the Rhodesian Bush war, a conflict it would ultimately lose at the end of the decade.
The disenfranchisement of the black majority population ended with the election of Robert Mugabe as prime minister in 1980 and the renaming of the country to Zimbabwe, with Mr Smith staying on as an MP for most of the 1980s before relocating to neighbouring South Africa.
Up until his death the former leader remained unrepentant over his actions, saying the Communist ideologies of opposition figures gave him no choice but to declare independence.
Today Zimbabwe again finds itself an international pariah due to the violent crackdown upon any political opposition to Mr Mugabe's regime, while its population suffers from the world's most hyper-inflated economy.