SIXTEEN years ago Ian Smith was still a household name. For fourteen years he had led Rhodesia's million whites in defiance of the tide of African liberation, the armed forces of international communism and the condemnation and sanctions of the entire world. The term "politically incorrect" hadn't been invented yet, but if it had, Mr Smith would have epitomised it.
Then in 1979 Mr Smith finally had to accept that the tide of history could not be held back. Under pressure from Britain's Margaret Thatcher, his government agreed to hand over power to a freely elected parliament, in which whites would be guaranteed 20 of the loo seats.
Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, and the Marxist hard liner, Dr Robert Mugabe became prime minister. By 1988, when the guaranteed seats deal lapsed, Mr Smith and his fellow "Rhodies" had become so obscure that the world scarcely noticed.
But while Rhodesia is long dead, Ian Smith lives on. Now 76 years old, the cattle farmer and former Spitfire pilot is a familiar sight in Harare's pleasant northern suburbs, where he lives in a large house beside the Cuban embassy. There are no bodyguards and no doormen, and his gate and front door are open literally to anyone who wants to walk in. Politics are an abiding concern for Ian Smith, despite his inevitable retirement from public life. In Zimbabwe's latest presidential election, held on March 16th and 17th, Dr Mugabe was even more of a certainty than normal because he was the only candidate. "It was a whole farce that election," Mr Smith says, unprompted. "I don't think there's much doubt about that. The whole thing was rigged."
The problem with Zimbabwe, he says, is that directly and indirectly Dr Mugabe's government is giving Zim $100 million (£7 million) a year to Dr Mugabe's party, the Zimbabwean African National Union Popular Front (Zanu-PF).
Corruption, nepotism and misuse of state funds provide ZANU with further sources of patronage with which to buy popularity, he claims. At the same time, the ordinary people knew or understood little of democracy. The government has made itself invulnerable to opposition.
"A lot of these people don't know what is going on around them, and they honestly believe that there is a box in the polling booth that tells the government how they voted," he says. "Maybe if you don't live here and know Africa you might find that hard to believe, but believe me they do."
Not surprisingly, he is outraged by Dr Mugabe's frequent promises to dispossess the white farmers who still control most of the country's farmland. This has got nothing to do with socialism or justice, he says, and everything to do with ZANU-PF's desperate need to cling onto power by manipulation manipulating the people's traditional hunger for land.
"They have bought five millions acres from whites on the willing seller, willing buyer principal. "They settled three million of it and then they stopped, because they were ruining the land," he says.
Land is lying derelict but they don't tell the people that. They as we know you want land but the white farmers refuse to sell. We are going to make legislation to take the land off them whether they want to or not. That is obviously evil. Racial hatred is of no consequence to them. Power is all that matters."
If Zimbabwe was such a totalitarian country, why then did it remain such a pleasant one, with relatively low crime and violence and a relatively healthy economy and infrastructure?
"Well, it's a good country. They inherited that, you see. They can be grateful to the previous colonial racists, as they call us. On the day Mugabe won the (1980) election he told me, Mr Smith, you don't know how lucky we feel, inheriting this jewel of Africa" he says.
He does not regret his government's 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI), which plunged his people into 14 years of ultimately unsuccessful repression and warfare.
You know why it is such a wonderful country compared to the rest of Africa? We had responsible government. We had independence. At the break up of the Rhodesian Federation (comprising present day Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi) a British civil servant told me that we had done far more for our blacks than the British had.
"The reason was this was our country, our home. We knew our children were going to go on living here. There was a saying that, the British civil servants went home every few years, but we went home every night."
Visitors to Rhodesia often told him that they saw "the happiest black faces in the world" there, he says, repeating a phrase which he made world famous back in the seventies.
He still believes that there was no great desire among ordinary blacks to overthrow the white dominated state set up in opposition to British efforts to promote majority rule. The agitation for "independence" came from outside the country, he says, from "communists" like Dr Mugabe and his rival, Dr Joshua Nkomo, who had been trained in communist states.
"I'm open to criticism, but please tell me what have they done for the people?" he asks. "When I go to town black people tell me, Mr Smith, we were better off under your government. Please tell Mr Mugabe how to run the economy.
He still maintains that the Rhodesian state was not racist. You had to meet certain standards of education and wealth before you could vote, but the standards were the same for whites as for blacks. If Rhodesia had been left to develop along those lines the blacks would have comprised a majority on the roll by now, he says.
"We simply set out to have a meritocracy, not a mobocracy. And our constitution came from the British government in the first place."
Time has not eroded his feelings of betrayal towards Britain whose efforts to promote majority rule in Rhodesia, as in its other former colonies, provoked the Unilateral Declaration of Independence.
"One moment we were the blue eyed boys, next moment we were racists and bad guys," he says. "Nobody ever heard our side of the story."
He regards Dr Mugabe's repeated threats to forcibly purchase white land and to force "white" financial institutions to blend cheaply to blacks not only as immoral but unwise. There are already more black millionaires than white millionaires in Zimbabwe, he says. Meanwhile, talk of expropriation and state intervention in the economy will only antagonise the investors and donors on whom Zimbabwe's government now depends.
He has no worries about his own personal safety, living as he does in an open and unguarded house. "It is Mugabe who has these hundreds of people around him. Cars and lorries full of armed men, armoured cars. I hear the latest thing is he now has an ambulance to follow him."
Although he has retired from active politics, he still feels it is his duty to receive anybody who wants to come and see him. He gets many visitors, he says, both black and white.
"If people come to talk to me I just can't say get out". I think the Rhodesians were wonderful, the way for 14 years we defied the world. They supported me for 14 years and I can't just walk out on them when they want to talk to me.
Given his general contempt for the post independence order in Zimbabwe, does he believe that it would be possible for any black people to govern the country properly? He hesitates for a moment.
"I know some very good black people. And anybody who thinks you can have a government that isn't black needs their head examined. So I think we've got to find the best black people and let them get on with it."
Mention South Africa's President Nelson Mandela and his face lights up.
"I can't get over Mandela. Incredible I was horrified at the idea of Mandela and the ANC coming to power because I thought they were communists. I can't get over the man's maturity, his wisdom, his compassion, the fact that he not only preaches reconciliation he practices it," he says.
"I think history will record Mandela as the first black statesman produced by Africa as opposed to politician. You know that a statesman thinks of the next generation, while the politician only thinks of the next election."
A year after his beloved wife, Janet, died suddenly from cancer, Mr Smith now lives alone in his big house, in a state whose very existence he fought bitterly to prevent.