Rhodesia’s ‘First Lady’ has iron-clad confidence

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34123, 8 April 1976, Page 6

Rhodesia’s ‘First Lady’ has iron-clad confidence

'' By

JAMES MacMANUS.

in the "Guardian")

LONDON. . Mrs lan Smith takes a i brisk no-nonsense view I of men in politics: “Men are like little boys playing cowboys and Indians. I mean it’s a world of make-believe they live in. They talk round things, these diplomats. With them it’s all talk, camouflage and notes passed around the table. That’s why diplomatic matters take so long to settle. I just can’t understand that mentality.’’ That was in 1970. The latest crisis in Rhodesia has inevitably revived speculation about the political role and influence of the , Prime Minister’s wife, Janet I Smith. According to one of rhe more durable myths in -recent Rhodesian history she i has provided her husband with the nerve and resolve to sustain a decade of rebel-

lion against the British Gov-. ernment. The thesis is highly questionable particularly since the British Government, which has consistently underestimated the staying power of Mr Smith, has naturally tended to overestimate the power of his wife. nevertheless in public or private. British officials have consistently blamed JanetSmith for the intransigence and unpredictability of her husband during 10 years of fruitless negotiations. Former L.abour Minister Arthur Bottomley. who was Commonwealth Secretary at the time of Rhodesia’s unilateral declaration of independence in 1965. once said that Mrs Smith had brought the strongest possible pressure to bear on her husband 1 to carry out UDI. Speaking: in 1971, Mr Bottomley said that Mr Smith had accepted Britain’s five conditions for. independence until Mrs; Smith intervened. Then, said; the Minister, “he came, under the strongest possible pressure both from his reac- ■ tionary colleagues and front; his wife, a South African.! who although charming, is | more reactionary than his: political colleagues.” “UNCOMPROMISING” The late Godfrey Winn took a similar line after i interviewing Mrs Smith in; Salisbury. He portrayed the; Premier’s wife as the power; behind the throne in Rho-I desia and said that the influence could be called! “the most uncompromising i and far-reaching power of: all.” Other commentators have adopted the same viewpoint,] partly, of course, because' the idea of a Rhodesian! Lady Macbeth prowling the! corridors of power in Salis-1 bury is journalistically ap-l pealing, if not strictly accurate.

This, then, is the public image of a woman who has described herself as both “shy” and “outspoken,” but has remained very much a private person in a public position. Mrs Smith rarely gives interviews even to the local press, and she has not disguised her dislike of the

media for its treatment of her husband and his Government. The impression that emerges from her statements and from the accounts of those who know her well is that of a woman with a strong will and an iron-clad confidence in deeply conservative political principles. There is no question that Mrs Smith is a very political woman who has identified closely with her

husband's controversial career. Since most of her interviewers have raised the question, however timidly, of her political influence she has frequently gone on record to say that she offers advice to her husband — but no more.

She once said of the poli-l tical exchanges in the Smith household: “I made it my business to understand what politics were all about when II first came to Rhodesia (in 1947). I have never taken part in party politics, but I have always accompanied my husband on political tours. It is right and proper i that at all times I should be au fait with the Rhodesian political scene. “I arrive at my own con-1 elusions, quite independently: of anyone else’s thinking. Political discussion has always been encouraged in our household and lan, the children, and I have had long political discussions . . ; . He listens to me and he’s

] absolutely infuriating be- | cause when 1 know ihai I have hit the target, not by a glimmer does be show that I have done so. And that’s maddening, or it used to be." ■ There is little in Mrs Smith's background to indicate the origin of her politics. She was born in Britsrown. South Africa, some 58 years ago shortly after her parents had emigrated to the Cape from Aberdeenshire. Her father. a doctor, moved his practice to Cape Town when she was four years old. Janet Watt, as she then was. grew up and was 'educated in Cape Town. In 1970 she said of her childhood: “My parents were I ■think, ahead of their lime. (hey were deeply religious ; Presbyterians but they forced nothing on us except I one sole stipulation. We had |to have faith. But we were given the freedom of choice to find our own." ACADEMIC

; Mrs Smith left university with a list of honours — B.A. in history and geology (“I am not a week-end prospecjtor, I just like stones”) and i the titles of head woman 'student and captain of the hockey and tennis teams. I A friend who recalls her j • student days says: “She was: ;a good looking girl, a marvellous hockey player with: lots of guts and energy on !the field. She was involved ;in everything but I don’t! ! think she thought about politics in those days.” In 1940 Janet Watt, then a teacher, married Piet; Duvenage, a young doctor she met as a medical student. The couple had two children, but in 1946 Dr Duvenage died as a result of a freak rugby accident. A year later the young widow visited the small Rhodesian town of Selukwe and there met a former fighter pilot turned farmer. She married lan Smith in 1948. The same year the Prime Minister went into Parliament as a junior MP in the Liberal Party, a misnomer for a Right-wing grass roots I farmer’s party. At first Mrs Smith stayed at home to manage the farm, something 'she did very well appar-

ent.lv. while her husband grappled with the beginnings of a political career. When Smith emerged from the obscurity of the Whip’s office in 1964 to lake the Prime Minister’s job in the Rhodesia Front Government, few Rhodesians, black or white, knew who he was. A subsequent publicity campaign to present Smith to the people gave Janet Smith her first real public exposure. Since then Mrs Smith has played a prominent, but by no means dominant role behind the scenes. As an acquaintance put it: “She is very ambitious for her husband and for her own very firm principles. She is a ■ airly intelligent woman and there is a lot of substance in the general belief that, she has shaped rather than created his attitudes and policies — she is verv much part of the team.

“But don’t, think that she makes his mind up for him. If Janet says: ‘That’s a damn silly thing to do.’ Smith will have second thoughts. But more often than not she will articulate ideas and plans that are well advanced in Smith’s own mind anyway. This was the case over UDI where Janet was privately urging her husband not to let the I British sell the country down j the river but Smithy was well on the road to UDl.’’ i Mrs Smith’s own version ■of her influence is naturally more negative. She relies a great deal on woman’s instinct—she , feels that intuition is more developed in the ■ female than the male—and once warned her husband j against a British politician in I very strong terms. When the I Prime Minister asked his wife I the reason for her warning (the object of which it seems was Lord Alport) Mrs Smith found herself justifying her hunch on the grounds that the official wore suede shoes. “Good heavens,” the Prime Minister is said to have replied, “I have a pair of suede shoes myself.” Mrs Smith told this joke against herself some years ago. Suede or otherwise there is no reason to believe that she is not still advising—and warning—her husband . on ; both political and intuitional grounds.