Prime minister Garfield Todd of Southern Rhodesia became known outside
the country in January 1958 when his Cabinet rebelled and resigned.
Within the country, the wonder was that he became Prime Minister in the
first place.
Todd personified the failed liberal dream in Africa after the Second
World War when Britain was in the process of dismantling her empire and
attempting to create a multi-cultural show-piece in Central Africa - the
Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland - which would form a
British-influenced economic and political entity that effectively
separated an encroaching Marxist-influenced black nationalism in the
north from an equally militant form of white Afrikaner nationalism
emanating from South Africa, particularly after the establishment of
apartheid, the Nazi-inspired system of racial segregation, in 1948. The
failure of Todd, and the European liberals who supported him, cleared
the decks for what they most feared: a head-on racial collision that
cost at least 35,000 lives during the war of liberation between the
years 1972 and 1979.
This book traces the development, triumph and failure of the man who
unexpectedly found himself at the centre of political life in Southern
Rhodesia, during the explosive years of 1953 to 1958. Todd was born in
New Zealand and sent to Southern Rhodesia in 1934 by the Churches of
Christ to take over their small mission station near Shabani in
Matabeleland. Having built this up into a thriving centre of a wide
circle of churches and schools, Todd entered Parliament in 1946 in Sir
Godfrey Huggins' United Party. Here he established a reputation as a
sound, intelligent M.P. and a fine speaker.
Todd's missionary years formed the foundation of his premiership, the
basis of his close relationship with blacks (including many who would
become leaders of their people), and his understanding of their
difficulties, frustrations and growing ambitions.
When Todd was ousted from the premiership he continued his increasingly
desperate attempts to persuade the whites that their only hope for the
future lay in co-operating with black nationalism. He was so vilified by
them that he withdrew entirely from formal politics - but he still did
what he could - writing, speaking, lobbying influential people in
Britain and the USA - to avert the inevitable disaster. He was arrested
three times (once on a capital charge); restricted to his ranch twice,
for a total of five-and-a-half years; and imprisoned in solitary
confinement for six weeks; but never charged or tried in a court of law.
At Independence, he served as a Senator for five years.
