Ian Smith: Not in a Thousand Years | Full Rhodesia History Documentary

IAN SMITH: NOT IN A THOUSAND YEARS (1:02:16)

In 1965, Ian Smith declared Rhodesia independent rather than accept majority rule, and promised it would not come 'in a thousand years'. It came in fourteen, after sanctions, a republic no country recognised, and a guerrilla war that cost tens of thousands of lives. This is the story of the fighter pilot and farmer who led white Rhodesia's rebellion against Britain and history: who backed him, what it cost, and why it failed.

This is an educational history documentary. Claims are attributed to their sources; casualty figures for the Rhodesian Bush War and for cross-border raids are estimates and remain disputed. Archive photographs are used under their licences and restyled as paper collage; each on-screen caption describes what the picture shows.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Cold open: Salisbury, 11 November 1965
2:39 Part One — The Colony
7:32 Part Two — The Pilot
11:46 Part Three — The Farmer
15:53 Part Four — The Wind Of Change
20:14 Part Five — The Declaration
24:22 Part Six — Sanctions
29:07 Part Seven — The Republic
32:38 Part Eight — The War
36:48 Part Nine — Détente
41:29 Part Ten — The Dirty War
45:42 Part Eleven — The Internal Settlement
49:27 Part Twelve — Lancaster House
53:39 Part Thirteen — The Stayer
57:34 Part Fourteen — The Reckoning
1:01:34 Closing & credits

SOURCES (selected)
- Ian Smith, The Great Betrayal (1997) / Bitter Harvest (2001)
- Martin Meredith, The Past Is Another Country: Rhodesia 1890–1979
- Robert Blake, A History of Rhodesia
- The Bingham Report on the supply of petroleum to Rhodesia (1978)
- Report of the Pearce Commission on Rhodesian Opinion (1972)
- UN Security Council Resolutions 216, 217, 232 and 253
- Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Rhodesia, Civil War in Rhodesia (1976)
- Obituaries of Ian Smith: BBC, The Guardian, The New York Times (November 2007)

PRODUCTION NOTES
Narration is a synthetic (AI) voice. The score is original and was composed procedurally for this film. All photographs are archival or documentary images obtained via Wikimedia Commons under public-domain or Creative Commons licences (PD, CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA); the full per-image credit and licence list is here: https://viralzim.com/ian-smith-image-credits.txt

Produced by Upright Films