The career of former Rhodesian prime minister Sir Garfield Todd who died on Sunday, aged 94, spanned half a century of dramatic change in Central Africa.
Todd, who was described variously as a flamboyant autocrat, a dangerous liberal and — more recently — the nation’s conscience, was elected to Parliament and then demonised by white settlers in his adopted homeland. In 1980 he was honoured by President Robert Mugabe’s government for his contribution to Zimbabwe’s independence.
Todd first came to what was then Southern Rhodesia in 1934 as a missionary from New Zealand. As superintendent of the Dadaya mission in the Shabani district he developed a life-long commitment to the colony’s African majority that was expressed in a political career spanning five decades.
Having built up the educational establishment at Dadaya through which generations of Zimbabweans were to pass, Todd was in 1946 elected by white miners and ranchers as MP for Shabani. His preaching skills stood him in good stead in an otherwise uninspiring chamber in Salisbury (now Harare), dominated by prime minister Sir Godfrey Huggins’s United Rhodesia Party.
Todd quickly climbed the political ladder, and when Huggins became prime minister of the newly-formed Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1953, Todd took his place as Southern Rhodesian prime minister.
While committed to widening the franchise and measures to improve opportunities for Africans in education and at the work place, Todd at first obeyed Huggins’s golden rule: “Be as liberal as you like, but don’t shout about it.”
He was ruthless in crushing an African miners’ strike at Wankie colliery in 1954 and, tall and debonair, gave an impression of vaulting self-confidence. But his brusque management style and growing sympathy for African nationalist aspirations alarmed Cabinet colleagues. Returning from holiday in Cape Town in January 1958 he was met by a delegation of ministers who submitted their resignations.
Native affairs minister Sir Patrick Fletcher, who led the revolt, privately disclosed years later that being made to watch Todd’s home movies of Ghana’s independence ceremonies was for many colleagues the last straw.
Todd tried to hang on with new ministers but his party, now amalgamated with more conservative forces in the United Federal Party, replaced him as leader with former finance minister and diplomat Sir Edgar Whitehead. In the ensuing general election Todd failed to win a single seat. But the events surrounding his dramatic departure had spawned a new party on the right, pledged to halting reforms aimed at enfranchising blacks or removing segregation.
Todd’s electoral eclipse did much to convince African opinion of the futility of interracial cooperation and constitutional gradualism.
After his defeat he faced more than 20 years in the political wilderness. His Central Africa Party, committed to a non-racial franchise, failed to make an impact in either Southern or Northern Rhodesia as the settler electorate on both sides of the Zambezi appeared set on fulfilling his prediction that “we are in danger of becoming a race of fear-ridden neurotics”.
When Ian Smith unilaterally declared Rhodesia independent in 1965, Todd, his wife Grace and their three daughters, were confined to their ranch at Dadaya. There, with a commanding view of the Ngezi River Gorge below, he had time to catch up on reading and writing. He referred to “the inhumanity” of the Smith regime and called on Britain to use force against it. His daughter, Judith, meanwhile mobilised international opinion.
He was subjected to house arrest in 1972 when the country was convulsed by black resistance to the Anglo-Rhodesian proposals for a political settlement. Smith’s supporters defaced signposts to the ranch, while local telephone operators listened in on calls.
At independence in 1980 Todd was honoured for his role in the struggle for Zimbabwe with an appointment to the new state’s Senate by the government of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe. He was knighted in 1985 on the recommendation of the New Zealand government.
Although at first indulgent towards the new order, Todd spoke out on the atrocities committed by security forces in the mid-1980s as Mugabe sought to crush Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union.
Todd had presided over the education of literally thousands of Zimbabweans whose fate he could not ignore. This led to increasing tension with the authorities in Harare, a development exacerbated by Todd’s human rights advocacy and identification with a new party, the Movement for Democratic Change, which came close to unseating Mugabe’s Zanu-PF in the 2000 election.
In a spiteful move the government earlier this year withdrew his citizenship and struck him off the voters’ roll — along with thousands of others. Todd, robust to the end, referred to the “torture and humiliation of our nation by Zanu-PF”.
“Defiant” would perhaps be the most appropriate description for a principled and transparently decent man who, together with his wife Grace who died last year, was regarded with respect and affection by generations of Zimbabweans, not least for his unwavering commitment to their freedom.
Iden Wetherell
Reginald Stephen Garfield Todd, born July 13 1908; died October 13 2002