Alec Smith

Alexander Douglas Smith, commonly known as Alec Smith (25 May 1949 – 19 January 2006), was born in Gwelo, Southern Rhodesia. The son of Ian Smith, the Prime Minister of Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe) from 1964 to 1979, he became a chaplain in the Zimbabwe National Army and a farmer.

Ian Smith had married Janet Watt in late 1948, after returning from war service with facial disfigurement resulting from crashing his Spitfire while taking off from an airfield in Egypt. Watt was a South African school teacher who had previously been married to Dr Piet Duvenage, a South African who had died as the result of a sporting accident while playing rugby. At the time Watt met Ian Smith, she was struggling to support herself and two young children on a modest teacher's salary.

Ian Smith adopted Watt's two children, Robert and Jean, from her earlier marriage and brought them up, as his own, with Alec. Alec's relations with his mother were always more difficult than those he had with his father.

Alec grew up on the 21,500-acre (87 km²) family farm in Selukwe (now Shurugwi). Selukwe was a small mining and farming town with a population in the 1950s of around 8,500 (8,000 black and 500 white). In April 1964, when Alec was 14, his father became Prime Minister of Rhodesia. Alec later suggested that this had caused family life to suffer. In 1970 Alec started studying for a degree in law at Rhodes University in South Africa. On his own for the first time, Alec became increasingly alienated from his background and neglected his studies in favour of partying, alcoholism, and drugs. He first came to public attention at this time by applying for a British passport while declaring that he did not agree with his father's political views and still considered himself a loyal British subject. He was expelled from university at the end of his first year in 1971. While returning from a subsequent vacation in Mozambique, Smith was found to be in possession of LSD and amphetamines by the South African authorities. He was convicted of drug trafficking, fined and given a suspended prison sentence.

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