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a revealing and prescient historical document from a controversial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.
