Customer Reviews

Bitter Harvest: Zimbabwe and the Aftermath of its Independence

5 star:		(3)
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3 star:		(1)
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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.

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.

Ian Douglas Smith was born in 1919, the year after WWI ended. He was a relic of what "British" used to mean before socialism, before the nanny state, and before political correctness. For better or worse, he wanted to bring British rule of law, and the British way of thinking, to the Rhodesian Africans along with the resulting prosperity. He succeeded in bringing prosperity; most historians agree the Rhodesian Africans were more prosperous than any others. Smith immediately recognized Robert Mugabe for the savage thug he has always been. The problem was numbers: 270,000 Europeans compared with five million Africans in Rhodesia. Once the AK-47 arrived from Russia in large numbers it was only a matter of time. Rhodesia was something of an embarrassment for the rest of the white world with the civil rights movement in its early years of promise. It was so easy for distant Americans or Europeans to mouth the words "Black Majority Rule" without any understanding of reality. That reality included two very different peoples that whites feel free to lump together as "black", the Shona and the Matabele. The Shona, other than Mugabe and his thugs, are known as artistic, creative, intelligent and friendly people compared with the Matabeles, who are descended from the same folk as the Zulus. Both groups hated white people much LESS than they hated each other. In that sense, white rule was the Africans' second choice. Not good, but better than rule by the other African group. That fact explains why so few whites were able to rule so many Africans for so long, with the able assistance of African soldiers and police, all of whom were volunteers.
Rhodesia was thrown to to wolves by South Africa in order to buy that country's Apartheid system a few more years. Smith had no choice but to take what he could salvage, which included civil rights for white people and a white quota in the parliament for seven years. To give the devil his due, Mugabe waited the seven years to begin killing white people and taking their large farms. The whites knew how to run large farms but the Africans either did not or had little incentive to do so under new price controls. The predictable results include mass starvation and women forced to South Africa and prostitution in order to feed their children. Today there are fewer than 20,000 whites in the country, few of them in the countryside. Like many savages (see Ben Bernanke) Mugabe believed real wealth comes from printing money. Unlike our own Federal Reserve, Mugabe learned his lesson and no longer bothers to print his own worthless currency.
Here are a few telling comparisons between Smith and Mugabe. When Smith lived in the Prime Minister's residence it was often unguarded; he often answered the door himself. Mugabe has always lived there surrounded by sandbags, barbed wire, and machine guns. Smith often drove accompanied by one police officer. Mugabe drives with at least a company of heavily armed bodyguards. Any ordinary driver who does not stop immediately until the entourage passes risks being beaten to a pulp.
Is there a lesson for the future? Mind our own business; stop trying to "help" people we do not understand. Trade and visit, but no military alliances; no sanctions, no "spreading democracy" at gunpoint.

First things first: I am no apologist for the murderous and soulless tyrant Robert Mugabe, and unlike most outside observers I don't dodge the question of his rise to power. Ian Smith was a courageous and noble man because he kept Rhodesia out of Mugabe's reach for decades through deft international maneuvering. In his position, I never could have done what he did. I am glad this book was written because it gives us great insight into Smith's mind. Furthermore, I would not give this book less than five stars out of any personal disagreement with his views.

However, this book suffers from several flaws, many of which are linked into Smith's own personality. Throughout the first half of the book, he variously refers to the black uprising in Rhodesia as "terrorists", "communists", and "Marxist-Leninists". The reader would be forgiven for assuming that Smith is a prototypical dictator who despises anyone who battles against his will. It is only towards the end of the book that we discover that Smith had a far more complex image of these rebels than the ideology he presses onto us; with characteristic honesty, he tells us on page 314 that guerilla leader Josiah Tongogara struck him as both a reasonable and a trustworthy person whom he was happy to negotiate with. Obviously, an American president would not describe Islamic terrorists in this way. (Tongogara was assassinated by Mugabe in 1979 but is still well-remembered today.) Later on he acknowledges that Marxism-Leninism was in fact fairly meaningless to the rebels themselves. If only he had considered the intelligence of these guerrillas earlier and tried to integrate them into his government before they got out of control.

Similarly, he often states that the vast majority of blacks agreed with his government, but that's easy for him to say as the white prime minister. He does not supply nearly enough examples of the situation on the ground for blacks, given the high burden of proof a skeptical reader would place on him. Once again, Smith intimates that he does have extensive understanding of the black situation which the contemporary Afrikaners to the south of him lacked; but in this case, a full explanation frustratingly eludes us. The book is worse for it, and secrets of how the white Rhodesian Front managed (or mismanaged) black politics have now gone to the grave with Smith.

This book is pretty much a litany of the various negotiations he performed and his evaluations of the characters of the people he faced against. It seems sometimes like Smith's entire worldview was born out of World War II, where good guys were fighting bad guys, while the nobility or cowardliness of figures on both sides was easily judged. He seems to take pleasure in listing the broken promises and betrayals of the Rhodesian people by outsiders, as well as pointing out to us the queasy flip-flopping of key British officials in the face of international pressures. His self-evaluation, however, seems limited to unlikely "what if" scenarios. He is happy to list for us all the successes of his rule, and tons of fan mail and drawings he has been sent are reprinted in the text for our appreciation, but rarely does he mention criticism, and I don't think he bothers to respond to it once. I have to agree with the fellow quoted in the introduction who calls him a "schoolboy" character; he considers his own views as unquestionably just, and looks down upon those less self-assured.

One final observation is that after Mugabe's rise to power the narrative deteriorates into cut-and-paste headlines in chronological format, bringing to my mind the image of Smith opening up a Word document every year or so and adding a few sentences on what happened during the year. The book could have used a sharp-witted editor. With these complaints in mind I cannot recommend this book as a good overview of Rhodesia or its transition to Zimbabwe.