Ian Smith has died

[Joe Republic]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7104552.stm

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[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

No tears from me. After all Mugabe only took power because of him in the first place.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

How appropriate that he should die on the same date as Franco.

[bgwah]

No tears from me. After all Mugabe only took power because of him in the first place.

Although it is kind of sad he was allowed to live out a long life and die peacefully. He deserved much worse.

[patrick1]

No tears from me. After all Mugabe only took power because of him in the first place.

So what year is your cutoff for supporting settlers or is that just arbitrary like everything?

[afleitch]

The worst leader of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe until..well the next one.

[Kevin]

RIP

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The worst leader of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe until..well the next one.

It is thanks to Ian Smith that Zimbabwe's next leader came to power via the barrel of the gun.  Those have almost always been some of the worst leaders.  That was the miracle of the American Revolution.  Our General wasn't a power-mad tyrant as so many others have turned out to be.

[Хahar 🤔]

Good riddance.

[minionofmidas]

The worst leader of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe until..well the next one.

I disagree. Robert Mugabe is the worst leader of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe since... well the one before.

[Democratic Hawk]

Frankly, the state of Zimbabwe now under Mugabe vindicates just about everything Smith stood for, repellant as it was

Dave

[Michael Z]

Frankly, the state of Zimbabwe now under Mugabe vindicates just about everything Smith stood for, repellant as it was

Not sure. The way I see it, as opposed to a white racist, the country now has a black racist in charge. It would be nice to see someone who isn't racist running Zimbabwe for a change, white or black.

(I do see your point, though. The thing about people like Mugabe is that they give plenty of ammo to individuals who want to make the point that black people "can't govern themselves", irrespective of the relative stability of countries like, say, Botswana or Senegal.)

That said, Mugabe's transformation is quite interesting (in a negative sense) since he wasn't such a dictatorial nutcase in the 1980s and early 90s - Zimbabwe was seen as a success story of multiracial harmony, at least compared to its neighbour South Africa, until Mugabe started carrying out his "land reform" in the late 90s, and things just went from there. What happened?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

What happened was that South Africa switched over to black majority rule.  Had he acted as he does now while the white minority still been in charge of South Africa, I have no doubt that the South African army would have crossed the border either in force to put some other black ruler in charge, or simply executed a strike mission to eliminate Mugabe and let someone else who hopefully learned his lesson take his place.