page_title: Janet Smith (Rhodesia)
section_title: Farming and politics
hierarchical_section_title: Janet Smith (Rhodesia) / Farming and politics
caption_attribution_description: English: Federal government photograph of Ian Smith, then a Member of Rhodesia and Nyasaland's Federal Parliament, circa 1954. Smith was later Prime Minister of Rhodesia from 1964 to 1979.
context_page_description: Janet Duvenage Smith, CLM, was the wife of Ian Smith, Prime Minister of Rhodesia from 1964 to 1979. Born in Cape Town, South Africa, she studied history at the University of Cape Town and became a teacher. In 1942, she married Piet Duvenage, a rugby player, and had two children. He died in an accident on the rugby field in 1947. The next year, a short visit with family in Southern Rhodesia became permanent when she accepted a teaching job in Selukwe. There, she met her future husband, Ian Smith, who had recently come home from the Second World War. In 1948, the couple got married and bought a farm, and Ian was elected to the Southern Rhodesian Legislative Assembly.
  In 1964, when Ian Smith became Prime Minister of Rhodesia, the family moved to the premier's residence in Salisbury. Smith split her time between state functions and managing the farm back in Selukwe. After Zimbabwean independence from the United Kingdom, her husband was defeated at the 1980 election, but remained in the Parliament of Zimbabwe until 1987. Smith continued to divide her time between Harare and the farm until her death from cancer in 1994.
context_section_description: In July 1948, a general election was called in Southern Rhodesia after the United Party government, headed by the Prime Minister, Sir Godfrey Huggins, unexpectedly lost a vote in the Legislative Assembly. In August, about a month before election day, Ian Smith was approached by members of the opposition Liberal Party who asked him to run for election in Selukwe. Jacob Smit's Liberals, despite their name, were decidedly illiberal, chiefly representing commercial farming, mining and industrial interests. Smith was initially reluctant, saying he was too busy organising his life to stand, but agreed after one of the Liberal officials suggested that a political career might allow him to defend the values he had fought for in the Second World War. With their wedding barely a fortnight away, Smith was astonished to learn of her husband's decision to run for the Southern Rhodesian Legislative Assembly, having never before heard him discuss politics. She asked him, "Are you interested in politics—party politics?" He replied, "I can't say that I am really interested in party politics, but I've always been most interested in sound government."
  In addition to becoming a politician, August 1948 was important for the Smiths in two other ways: it was the month they got married, and the month they purchased their first farm. The 3,600-acre (15 km²) farm was a plot of rough land near Selukwe, bounded by the Lundi and Impali Rivers and bisected by a clear stream. They called it "Gwenoro", using the name that the local Karanga people used to refer to the stream, and set up a ranch where they ran cattle and grew tobacco and maize. Ian adopted her children, taking up the responsibilities of instant fatherhood, partially, as he explained, "because I knew [Piet Duvenage] so well" from playing rugby against him. After the wedding, and a few days' honeymoon in Victoria Falls, the Smiths returned home and went straight into the election campaign. On election on 15 September, Ian Smith won with 361 votes, a substantial 100+ vote majority over the second place Labour candidate. At 28 years old, he became the youngest MP in Southern Rhodesian history.
  Having grown up in an area of Cape Town so pro-Smuts that she had never had to vote, Smith did not think her husband's entry to parliament would alter their lives at all. "First of all I was marrying a farmer," she later said, "now he was going to be a politician as well. So I said, 'Well, if you are really interested in it, carry on.'... It never dawned on me—being so naive about politicians—that our lives would be affected in the slightest degree." However, it soon became evident that her husband's political office necessitated that he spend a lot of time away from Selukwe working in Salisbury, meaning she would have to run the farm during his absences. On 20 May 1949, their only son, Alec, was born in Gwelo.
caption: Ian Smith, circa 1954
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