For more than a decade, Ian Smith served as Rhodesia's Prime Minister during the era of white minority rule. Following his death in 2007, he is still a man with the ability to excite powerful emotions. To some he is a leader whose formidable integrity led him into head-to-head confrontation with the Labor government of Britain in the 1960s. To others he is a demon best known for stating "I don't believe in black majority rule ever, not in a thousand years," for staunchly opposing Britain's insistence that majority rule be implemented before the nation’s independence, and for imprisoning the leadership of the newly emerged black nationalist movement. In this revealing autobiography, Smith tells his own side of the story and reveals how he sought to keep Rhodesia on a path to full democracy during the West's decolonization of Africa. He tells the remarkable story behind the signing of the country’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence and addresses the excesses of power that the current president, Robert Mugabe, has used to create the virtual dictatorship which exists in Zimbabwe today. This is a revealing and prescient historical document from a controversial figure charting the rise and fall of a once-great nation.
PRODUCT DETAILS
Publisher: John Blake Pub. Date: 1st May 2008 Catalog: Book Media: Paperback Number Of Pages: 462 Ean: 9781857826043 Isbn: 1857826043
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USER REVIEWS
How liberal guilt leads to more innocent bloodshed! ~ Written on May 11, 2009. 9 out of 10 users found this review helpful.
Prime Minister Ian Smith lays out in detail how the Western powers, motivated by an urge to atone for a leftist-inspired guilt complex over the past, have only caused more innocent blood to gush in a land far from them. That, along with South African Prime John Vorster's foolish attempt to appease African Marxist leaders and use Rhodesia as a foil to distract world attention away from his Apartheid regime, has only served to install a brutal thug whose regime has one of the worst human rights records. If Western liberals want a REAL reason to feel guilty, they need only look to Zimbabwe and read Ian Smith's book.
A wake up call. ~ Written on Jan 30, 2009. 12 out of 14 users found this review helpful.
This account of the deliberate destruction of Rhodesia by foreign powers helbent on disastrous political agendas which are also an existential threat to their own states and economies in 2009, is a wake-up-call for people with an interest in such matters. The bulk of Ian Smith's ire is directed towards Great Britain and its determined drive to placate the OAU and maintain the Commonwealth via the policy of No Independence Before African Majority Rule (NIBMAR) irrespective of the reality on the ground that Black-Africans desired any such a thing, or had the slightest ability to administrate it beyond a cadre of Marxiist-Lennist gangsters intent upon looting Rhodesia's capital core, for their own purposes.
As per Henry Kissinger's pragmatic advice and South Africa's disastrous détente policy, as aggressively advocated by John Vorster, Ian Smith accepted the inevitable. Rhodesia became Zimbabwe. And Robert Mugabe in consort with Zanu-PF, rapidly instigated their intended programme to reduce a successful and thriving African state into the catastrophe it now is, whilst pocketing the loot and remaining in power without any possibility of being challenged. Which is the point of Communism, as Ian Smith was reliably informed by a Black-African university graduate when asked why he was an advocate of Communism.
At the heart of this book is the observation that, when those who do not have to suffer the consequences of their actions persist in ignoring principles and sacrifice integrity for political expediency and personal gain, the state cannot survive.
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