A GOOD MAN IN AFRICA
previous article next article back to contents
(The NCS&M does not always have its tongue in its cheek.)
> From The Telegraph (UK).
> ---------------------------
> Sir Garfield Todd (Filed: 14/10/2002)
Sir Garfield Todd, who died yesterday aged 94, was the missionary
and former prime minister of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)
whose commitment to African advancement exasperated his
successors in the former British colony.
He was locked up twice by Ian Smith's
government for supporting black majority rule. Yet later, after
being created a senator by President Robert Mugabe in 1980, Todd
became increasingly appalled by the suffering, torture and
humiliation being inflicted on Zimbabweans.
During the general election of 2002, he was stripped of his
Zimbabwean citizenship. A curt note informed him of the decision
only days after three schools, near his home at Bulawayo, had
been named after him and his wife Grace.
In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Todd said that he was
grateful that his wife, who had died two months earlier, had not
lived to witness this insult, since she had had high hopes of
Mugabe when he was a young teacher. "What is that expression
about power corrupting, and absolute power corrupting
absolutely?" he asked. On arriving at his polling station to
vote he was turned away by an election officer whom he had once
taught.
It is doubtful whether the policies aimed at achieving a genuine
multi-racial society, which Todd introduced as prime minister of
Southern Rhodesia from 1953 to 1958, could have succeeded for
long; the pan-African desire for independence had been fanned by
Harold Macmillan's "Wind of Change" speech. But Todd's
fall from power certainly ended any chance that the blacks would
perceive the white-led Central African Federation as the
appropriate channel for their aspirations.
His rise to the colony's premiership was proof of his remarkable
abilities and charismatic personality, since the white electors
had a strong antipathy towards missionaries such as himself. Even
after they had rejected the pace of African progress which Todd
demanded - a policy dictated by his own autocratic character as
much as by his principles, some believed - the white majority
found it impossible to ignore him.
Long before Ian Smith declared independence, Todd found himself increasingly harassed: he was subjected to house arrest, imprisoned and charged with treason for aiding terrorists. Each threat only strengthened Todd's resolve and drew the world's press to his comfortable farm in the bush.
Reginald Stephen Garfield Todd was born at Invercargill, New Zealand, on July 13 1908, the grandson of a Scottish brickmaker who had been employed on the Marquess of Bute's estate before emigrating.
Young Garfield began work in his father's brickworks, swinging a pick for 22s 6d a week, before going to Otago University and Glen Leith Theological College. After two years as a Church of Christ minister at Oamaru, where he married Jean Wilson, with whom he was to have three daughters, he set out for Southern Rhodesia in 1934.
As Superintendent of the mission at Dadaya, 300 miles south of Salisbury, Todd put his practical skills as a bricklayer, stonemason and carpenter to good use in expanding the local school. He also found himself regularly acting as a doctor, binding up wounds and assisting at births - tasks which became so frequent that he felt obliged to take a year off on a medical course at Witwatersrand University in South Africa.
But if Todd joined in every aspect of the
Africans' lives - for 14 years his family had no white neighbours
- he also had a strong Christian belief in the duty to chastise
wrongdoers. This led to trouble when he personally caned on the
buttocks a group of rebellious girl students, much to the
consternation of their parents who regarded them as of
marriageable age. A brief strike in protest was led by one of the
teachers, Ndabaningi Sithole, the future founder of the Zimbabwe
African National Union.
Todd was unlike other missionaries, who rejoiced in embracing as
closely as practicable the Africans' poverty, in that he not only
shared the settlers' belief in their value to the country but was
willing to take up land for a private farm. For a time he owned
90,000 acres, though later he gave much of it to Africans.
His first foray into politics came at a meeting in 1942 when he
so vigorously heckled the prime minister, Sir Godfrey Huggins,
that four years later Huggins wrote inviting him to make amends
by standing as a candidate for the governing United Party.
Not long after his election as a United Party MP, Todd proposed
giving an address on "The Native as a Human Being", but
withdrew gracefully after Huggins made it known that the subject
might prove embarrassing.
Over the following years Huggins talked freely to Todd about his
colleagues, making it clear that he had no intention of offering
him a post. But when Huggins resigned in 1953 to become Prime
Minister of the new Central African Federation (made up of
Nyasaland, Northern and Southern Rhodesia), Todd was chosen to be
his successor as premier of Southern Rhodesia.
On forming a United Rhodesia Party government and decisively
winning a general election, Todd settled into office without any
sign of self-doubt. He showed little reluctance to call in
territorial troops to suppress a strike by black miners and white
railwaymen which he said followed a "Communistic
pattern". A trouble-making union leader was sent back to
Britain. Todd also threatened to suppress the local African
National Congress.
But, while recognising the colony's need for skilled white
labour, he soon began to express disappointment that Commonwealth
countries failed to provide £5 million for African housing
projects.
He attacked Huggins for faltering over the location of the Kariba
dam in Southern Rhodesia, and made a speech calling for the
veteran prime minister's retirement, which had the effect of
making Huggins stay on an extra year. "Why did you do
that?" Todd was asked by Sir Roy Welensky, Huggins's
acknowledged successor. "You knew he was going."
"God told me to make that speech," Todd replied.
The Central African Federation was committed to partnership
between the races intended to lead at some unspecified date to
equality. Todd encountered no difficulties when he introduced the
appellation "Mr" for Africans instead of "AM"
(African Male), or when he permitted blacks to drink European
beer and wine, though not spirits.
But as the white electorate became aware of the high hopes he was
creating in the black population, trouble surfaced in cabinet
over a Private Member's Bill to make sexual relations between
white men and black women legal. It took a more serious turn when
Todd managed to push through a measure increasing the number of
African voters by threatening to resign if it failed.
There was more dissent during talks about amalgamating his party
with the Federal United Party; it emerged that Todd had been
talking privately to the African leaders Sithole and Joshua
Nkomo, as well as to the white liberal Guy Clutton-Brock.
Eventually, Todd demanded the resignation of his four cabinet
ministers and governed alone for a week - a unique achievement in
the parliamentary history of the Empire - before appointing new,
more liberal colleagues. Instead of meeting the Assembly, he
chose to face a party congress.
Here Todd was at his best. A tall, commanding figure with a
noticeable New Zealand twang emphasising his difference from
those present, he drew applause for his eloquent and witty
speech. But he decisively lost a vote of confidence, and resigned
his office.
It became an article of faith for white Rhodesians that Todd's
successor, Sir Edgar Whitehead, advocated equally liberal
policies. But the fall of Todd, already considered "the
Moses of our times" by some Africans, was marked by a
popular African record which had the refrain Todd has left us/Go
well old man.
Freed from the necessity of carrying the support of white
electors, Todd made some show of supporting the federation, but
within two years he was describing it as a police state. An
attempt to form a genuine multi-racial Central African party
failed. Todd's strident warnings put off white recruits, while
black members soon decided to switch to their territorial African
National Congresses.
By 1962, he was appealing at the United Nations in New York for
Britain to retain its powers in Southern Rhodesia even if it
granted independence to Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, the
future Zambia and Malawi.
Just before the unilateral declaration of independence by the
colony in 1965, now called simply Rhodesia, Todd was served with
an order restricting him to his farm. He was about to fly to
Britain to address a teach-in at Edinburgh University with Sir
Alec Douglas-Home.
Ian Smith, the prime minister, feared that if Todd was abroad
when UDI was declared, Harold Wilson might try to set him up as
an exiled leader. But the order attracted far more attention and
sympathy for Todd than he would have received if he had been able
to go. Fourteen television crews appeared on his lawn to record
his comments and admire the persecuted man's gardens, which were
beautifully tended by African servants.
Todd's 22-year-old daughter Judy flew to Edinburgh to capitalise
on the righteous indignation being expressed in Britain. On her
return home, in a black leather coat and Dior dress, she told
reporters at Salisbury airport that white Commonwealth troops
should be sent in to end UDI.
By now Todd was a hated figure among the whites in Rhodesia,
although he shared with his former colleagues their contempt for
the pusillanimity of all British governments. He had 30 pieces of
silver hurled at him at Salisbury airport; a baboon was loosed in
the centre of Bulawayo with "Garfield Todd" written on
its back.
In 1971 Todd warned Lord Pearce's committee that any new
settlement arrived at with London should not be rammed down
African throats. Smith then locked him up for two months, and
placed him under house arrest for another four years. Every
afternoon Todd sat on his verandah counting the number of railway
tankers carrying sanctions-busting petrol to Salisbury, then
passed the information to MI6 contacts.
He finally emerged to join Joshua Nkomo's team visiting London in
search of a settlement, and found Smith's hatred as strong as
ever. Just as the transition to direct British rule was finally
being effected, Todd was arrested for supplying food and a motor
car to terrorists near his farm. The charges were dropped only at
the insistence of the Governor, Lord Soames.
After an independent Zimbabwe was achieved,
Todd told the Guardian that a one-party state might indeed be
best for the country. But as the standard of living for the
ordinary African declined, Todd became so appalled by the spread
of corruption that he declared that Mugabe should go. He was not
reappointed to the senate.
In his later years Todd surprised many by his ability to greet
former enemies as though there had been no rift between them.
Britain might not have appreciated his efforts, but his fellow
New Zealanders showed they had not forgotten him when he was
recommended for a knighthood in the dominion's 1986 honours list.
If at times Todd's actions seemed inspired as much by his own
personality as his principles, he was steadfast in his Christian
belief in the goodness within every man; and he retained, in
private at least, an awareness of what a sacrifice had been
demanded in expecting the whites to give up all they had built up
in Africa. "Living as we do," he told the historian
Lord Blake, "all of us are guilty."