Alec Smith

Alec Smith

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

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. Contemporary accounts indicate that Watt was very much the driving force behind Ian Smith's rise in politics. Alec's relations with his mother were always more difficult than those he had with his father.