In 1965, Smith had defiantly declared UDI, cut ties with Britain, without consultations with the black majority. In doing so, Smith benchmarked on South Africa, the apartheid state where blacks were stripped of their human rights and lived in hell on earth while the whites lived in heaven on the same planet.
Rhodesia shared borders with apartheid RSA to the South and Mozambique, a Portuguese colony under dictator, Antonio Salazar to the East. Apparently, Smith admired the two white supremacist centres and felt his fate was tied to them. Black-ruled adjacent Zambia and Malawi held no lesson for Smith the blockhead; obsessed with supremacy of the white race, he was convinced his action could turn the tide in the stampede of independence which was in full swing at the time as he boasted: “We have struck a blow … and not in a thousand years! ” He suffered myopic vision and pathetic ignorance of the ‘wind of change,’ the phenomenon his kinsman, Harold Macmillan saw gathering speed beyond the horizon. Addressing the white Parliament in Cape Town, and anticipating racist Hendrik Verwoerd’s response (that apartheid was SA’s business), the British Premier preemptively remarked, “We may be told, to keep out of SA domestic policies because this was none of our business; but what if your business affected my business?” Or words to that effect.
