Leadership Quote by Ian Smith

Victimhood is doing a lot of political work here. Ian Smith frames “about thirty years” as an exhausting siege, a long moral winter in which “the world against us” becomes a faceless, unfair jury. The phrasing is bluntly selective: “Everything” and “the world” flatten history into a single, hostile chorus, while “accusing us of things we didn’t do” invites the listener to skip past specifics and land on a feeling: persecution.

That’s the intent. Smith, the prime minister of Rhodesia during its Unilateral Declaration of Independence (1965) and the international backlash that followed, is arguing for legitimacy by treating condemnation as evidence of bias rather than a response to policy. The subtext is a reframing of accountability as harassment. Sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and global outrage over minority rule are recast as petty criticism, as if the central charge was misunderstanding, not the maintenance of an unequal political order.

Notice the rhetorical trick in “we.” It’s elastic. Sometimes it means a government, sometimes a nation, sometimes a beleaguered community. That ambiguity lets supporters hear themselves in it, converting a controversial regime into a collective identity under attack. “Things we didn’t do” is also carefully vague; it doesn’t refute particular allegations, it denies a moral category. The line works because it’s emotionally legible: a small group standing firm against mass judgment. It’s also a classic move of embattled leaders: make isolation feel like proof of principle, and turn the world’s verdict into a conspiracy of noise.