In his book The War of Lost Opportunities, German general Max Hoffman recounts the timeline of WWI from its beginning to its end, mapping out a sequence of alternative universes in which the Germany would have won the war if only the country’s leaders had listened to him at each turn. And indeed Hoffman was a great strategist. If not for his leadership on the Eastern Front in August and September of 1914, Germany would have lost the war already then, instead of four years later. And if not for his calling Trotsky’s bluff at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918, the Baltic States would have come under Soviet Control already then, instead of 25 years later. Poland would have become Soviet as well. But Germany would not have won the war in any case.
Ian Smith’s political autobiography Bitter Harvest should perhaps have been titled The Country of Lost Opportunities. Like Max Hoffman, Smith believes his country’s cause would have prevailed if only certain alternative paths had been taken at various points. The difference is that Smith was prime minister of his country for much of the period in question, so the decisions that in his opinion should have been made were not those of his own government, but those of governments before or after his tenure, or the governments of other countries.
During the years of his own prime ministership, he lays most of the blame on Britain and South Africa, the two countries he, like most white Rhodesians, felt closest to. The two inflection points he cites in particular are the narrow Labor Party victory in Britain in 1964, and South African Premiere B.J. Vorster’s policy of détente towards Rhodesian insurgents and the African countries backing them following the Portuguese “Carnation Revolution” of 1974.
He faults the South Africans and the African countries they were trying to curry favor with in the late 1970s for not holding up their end of the agreement they made with Rhodesia in 1976. Smith had, as agreed, left office within two years paving the way for the first elections held on a one-man one-vote basis in 1979. However, the countries party to the agreement neither recognized Rhodesia nor pressured its enemies to end the war.
The most significant inflection point he cites in the years before he was prime minister is the referendum of 1923, when Rhodesians voted not to join the Union of South Africa. While Smith is himself a staunch Rhodesian patriot, he thinks that had Rhodesia joined the Union of South Africa then, this would have prevented the rise of the National Party in that country in 1948. This was the party that implemented Apartheid in South Africa that year, and also the party that stuck the fork in Rhodesia 30 years later. What Smith means to suggest here is that South Africa should have been remade as a greater version of Rhodesia, instead of, as it turned out, a greater version of the Boer republics.
In the years after leaving office, Smith faults his successor, Abel Muzorewa, with being indecisive and undermining his own chances for reelection in 1980 by attempting to disassociate himself from the Rhodesian establishment that had brought him to power. Smith writes of Muzorewa and his party, the UANC: “It would have been an intelligent tactic if they had claimed success in turning UDI to their advantage, using it to bring in the majority rule for Zimbabwe that had always been their cherished objective.”
He faults the British for reneging on their promise to disqualify insurgents who failed to disarm from participating in the elections of 1980. He likewise faults the last cadre of Rhodesian security chiefs and the leaders of the black opposition parties for their reluctance to pressure the British to guarantee the fairness of the election and to challenge the election results.
He also puts stock in a ZANLA commander named Josiah Tongogara, whom he claims to have known from childhood. The two men renewed their acquaintance at the Lancaster House talks in London in 1979 when they sat on opposite sides of the political divide. Smith claims Tongogara was a political moderate who would have helped steer the country in a more responsible direction and that for this reason he was assassinated later that year.
At each turn, Smith can still see a path to salvation. Like Hoffman, Smith was both a capable strategist as well as an inveterate optimist. Even in the early days of Robert Mugabe’s rule in Zimbabwe, Smith seems to have held out hope for some better turn of events. In his last interview before his death in 2007, he remained hopeful:
Africa is a continent which is subject to a great deal of friction and argument and change. That’s part of the world generally, but moreso Africa than anywhere else. So because of that, we live in hope. We think that the people there in the end will say: We’ve had enough. When you’ve been sitting in a queue for two days and two nights and sometimes when it’s been raining hoping that when you get to the other end there will be something, a bit of food, and when you get there you find there’s nothing... We live in hope.
The Confederate States of America, too, had some great strategists and leaders who likewise prolonged its existence far beyond expectations. But at least Thomas Jackson and Robert E. Lee knew their cause was a lost one.
And the reason Rhodesia’s cause was lost before it began is simple: The white population within the borders of what is now Zimbabwe never exceeded much more than 7%. And yet the government of this country was for most of the twentieth century entirely white. Where it gets complicated is the precise nature of the laws that facilitated this white minority rule. They had strict educational and financial requirements for voters. In 1970, they introduced separate voter rolls for blacks and whites. From 1970 there were also some reserved seats in parliament for tribal chiefs. Making matters ever more incomprehensible for the student of history is that Rhodesia had five different constitutions before becoming Zimbabwe in 1980.
Yet two patterns remain consistent throughout all of Rhodesia’s political incarnations: First, there was no denial of voting rights on racial lines as there was in Apartheid South Africa. Second, Smith and the other white leaders of Rhodesia objected to the principle of “one man, one vote” in what amounted to any reasonable timeframe within their own lifetimes. As he explained in an interview with William F. Buckley in 1974:
But I think the fact is in these countries to the north of us that while they started off with this wonderful thing of “one man, one vote,” they only had it once. Because thereafter it became a one-party state which in other words is virtually a dictatorship.
Smith became prime minister in 1964 and made several attempts to balance electoral liberalization with political stability in a way that would satisfy the British government, who were still the colony’s patrons. He lamented it was all progressing too fast and would lead to inevitable communist takeover. But the rest of the world saw it as progressing too slowly, and Smith’s government unilaterally declared the country independent in 1965.
Smith’s leadership during this period allowed Rhodesia’s economy to continue to grow and its military to successfully fight off attacks launched from neighboring countries, mostly Zambia and after 1974, Mozambique. All the while, he attempted to improve infrastructure and education for black Rhodesians and to negotiate international diplomatic recognition. He hoped that a combination of more local opportunity and less international condemnation, combined with rising economic conditions and military victories, would deprive the rebels of support.
Of course, it was never enough, but he was more successful than anyone in 1965 could have possibly imagined and inspired much confidence and pride among white Rhodesians.
Successive British governments all viewed Rhodesian independence as illegal. No country, not even Apartheid South Africa, recognized it. It was subject to economic embargo, its enemies financed rebel military activity against it, and within 15 years, it was gone.