This is taken from The Times:

Ian Mills
Journalist who reported on Rhodesia for the world’s media
December 21, 1932 - February 23, 2007

As the guerrilla war intensified in Rhodesia from 1974 onwards, one man dominated media coverage of the conflict.

Ian Mills was a correspondent for the BBC in Salisbury but under various pseudonyms also worked for The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, United Press International, Agence France Press, the Italian news agency Ansa, Newsweek, Time magazine and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

It was a tribute to his energy and skill that he was able to tailor his output to the needs of his various employers, who were happy with his service even though they were aware that, in some cases, he was working for their competitors. The deepening crisis in Rhodesia in the mid1970s drew staff correspondents from all over the world to Salisbury, many of whom worked from Mills’s office in the centre of the city.

Unlike the journalists to whom he played host, Mills never repaired at night to the dingy delights of the Quill club — which resembled a seedier version of Rick’s café in Casablanca as a meeting point for nationalists, foreign correspondents and Rhodesian agents. He worked late, returned home and was back in the office early next morning.

His talents were best seen in his daily broadcasts from Salisbury for the BBC for which he remained a correspondent long after the country gained independence as Zimbabwe. But his skill in briefing and shepherding the BBC’s many correspondents and camera crews was just as crucial to the corporation’s coverage.

Ian Henry Mills was born in impoverished circumstances in Dorking. He missed much schooling as a result of recurring scarlet fever, failed his 11-plus exam, left secondary modern school at the age of 14 and took a job as a messenger. From the age of 8 he had played first the kettle drum and then the trumpet with the local Salvation Army band, an early manifestation of talent that was to make him a fine jazz musician.

The austerity of postwar Britain persuaded the Mills family to emigrate to Southern Rhodesia in 1949. After jobs as a customs officer and a soldier in The King’s African Rifles, Mills finally found his vocation at the age of 26 when he joined the Rhodesia Herald. The year was 1958. The Central African Federation was staggering towards break-up, and the fast-growing African nationalist movement challenged the whole concept of white minority rule in Southern Rhodesia.

By night Mills led what was hailed as southern Africa’s finest dance band, Sounds Anonymous; by day he sharpened his skills on the daily drama of colonial politics. He rose rapidly on the paper, becoming political editor, a key position after Rhodesian UDI in 1965.

In 1973 he bought a news agency from Peter Niesewand, a journalist for The Guardian who had been imprisoned and then expelled from Rhodesia by the regime of Ian Smith. The release of the nationalist leaders, including Robert Mugabe, the following year turned what had been a low-intensity guerrilla warfare into full-scale conflict and Mills slipped easily into the role of correspondent for much of the world’s media.

After independence in 1980 Mills retained his position with the BBC and played an important role in the coverage of the farm seizures and the resulting economic chaos in the country.

He is survived by his wife, Heather, their two daughters and by two sons of his first marriage.

Ian Mills, journalist, was born on December 21, 1932. He died of cancer on February 23, 2007, aged 74