His father Ian Smith had married Janet Watt in late-1948, after returning from war service with a facial disfigurement resulting from crashing his Hurricane whilst taking off from an airfield in Egypt.

He attended Chaplin High School,[4] and in 1970, Smith began studying law at Rhodes University in South Africa.

Whilst returning from a subsequent holiday in Portuguese-ruled Mozambique, Smith was found to be in possession of 200 grams (7 oz) of cannabis by the South African authorities.

In 1972, Smith declared himself a born-again Christian, stating that God had freed him from his past debauchery and helped him see the injustice of racial discrimination.

He aligned himself with the Moral Rearmament group, held public meetings promoting majority rule, and befriended a number of Black nationalist leaders.

The couple eventually married in Oslo, in June 1979, but his parents, despite being invited, were denied entry to attend the ceremony by the Norwegian government.

[8] Ian Smith later related considerable bitterness over the refusal of the international community to recognise Rhodesia, and described the Norway incident as 'the final straw'.

In this capacity, he assisted in the editing of his father's memoirs and assumed the management of the family's agricultural interests, including the estate at Shurugwi.

The black nationalist party ZANU-PF won the 1980 election outright, but elements in the white ruling class were plotting a military coup (Operation Quartz) to prevent it from taking control of the government.

[11] MRA members sought to prevent a renewal of the war and determined that the only way to do this was to broker a face-to-face meeting between Robert Mugabe (leader of ZANU-PF) and Ian Smith.

The matter was settled – Ian Smith accepted the verdict of the election while Mugabe agreed to continued white participation in the government and administration.