Ian Smith, 88; Defiant Leader Of White-Separatist Rhodesia

Mr. Smith continued to provoke the black population with racially discriminatory laws, notably the Land Tenure Act of 1970, which gave Rhodesia's 240,000 whites 44 million acres of land, while nearly 5 million blacks received 45.2 million acres.

As internal dissent grew, Mr. Smith resorted to martial rule and did not hesitate to use a commando unit called the Selous Scouts to kill alleged terrorists in Rhodesia or anti-government forces using Mozambique as a staging ground. Even as some whites started to flee the violence, Mr. Smith maintained his country was a safe and prosperous land. He saw himself as a conservative savior for "Christian civilization" during the Cold War. He promoted Rhodesia as a haven -- unpolluted by either Communist values or Western permissiveness. He instituted forms of press censorship and banned such Western influences as Playboy magazine and the disco records of Donna Summer for their suggestive lyrics.

South Africa's 'Betrayal'

What contributed greatly to his downfall was the decision in the mid-1970s by leaders in apartheid South Africa, particularly Prime Minister B.J. Vorster, to abandon financial and political support under pressure from the United States. Vorster feared that Rhodesia's civil war would spill over into South Africa.

The title of Mr. Smith's 1997 memoir, "The Great Betrayal," referred more to his attitude toward the South Africans than to the homegrown resistance against him.

From that point, Mr. Smith worked to create a biracial government with a moderate black leader, Methodist Bishop Abel Muzorewa, at its head in 1978. Muzorewa, whom Mr. Smith and his supporters viewed as malleable, was not a favored choice among opposition groups. Mugabe, in particular, denounced the arrangement because whites continued to dominate the cabinet.

In 1979, all major Rhodesian parties as well as American and British diplomats convened in London. Mr. Smith won concessions that allowed whites to retain large swaths of property and postponed discussions of land redistribution. In later years, Mugabe, who has taken the title of president, encouraged the often-violent expulsion of whites from their lands.

On the 100-seat parliament, 20 seats were reserved for whites for seven years, and Mr. Smith controlled the white bloc. He used his position to urge the country's 200,000 whites to stay despite Mugabe's increasingly bloody purges of political opponents, notably with the massacres at Matebeleland, the stronghold of his rival Joshua Nkomo.

In the late 1980s, the black majority suspended Mr. Smith from parliament for urging whites in South Africa to maintain apartheid rule. He soon retired from political office but continued to give interviews criticizing Mugabe as a "communist gangster."

In 1948, he married Janet Watt, a widowed South African schoolteacher. She died in 1994. His son, Alec Smith, from whom he was estranged for many years, died in 2006.

Survivors include two stepchildren, Robert and Jean; and six grandchildren. His late son-in-law Clem Tholet, a folk singer, composed an anthem of Mr. Smith's rule, "Rhodesians Never Die."