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Ex-Leader Vowed White Rule

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Los Angeles Times

Published: November 21, 2007

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Ian Smith, 88, the last white minority leader of Rhodesia, who vowed that blacks would not rule his country "in a thousand years," died Tuesday in a clinic outside Cape Town, after recently suffering a stroke.

To many white Rhodesians, Smith was a savior who vowed to preserve white minority rule and protect their interests against rising African nationalist sentiment. They saw as heroic his declaration of independence from Britain in 1965, when Britain was pulling out of its African colonies.

But to the blacks who fought an independence war, many of whom spent years in jail, including President Robert Mugabe, Smith was a ruthless despot who banned black nationalists, had leaders arrested and introduced laws curbing civil rights.

In his latter years, Smith believed he was more popular among black Zimbabweans than Mugabe, who has ruled since blacks won the right to vote in 1980.

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