Garfield Todd, 94, Ex-Prime Minister of Rhodesia -- Rest in Peace

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Subject: Garfield Todd, 94, Ex-Prime Minister of Rhodesia

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Zimbabwe

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Date Posted: October 17, 2002 5:35:56 EDT

Garfield Todd, a prime minister in the white-ruled British colony of Rhodesia who championed black rights, died on Sunday in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. He was 94.

Mr. Todd, who was born in New Zealand, was prime minister from 1953 to 1958 of what was then Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. He was voted out of power because whites thought he was too sympathetic to the black cause of social and political equality, a fight later led by Robert Mugabe, who became president of Zimbabwe.

Mr. Todd became an implacable opponent of the white government of Ian Smith, who issued a unilateral declaration of independence for Rhodesia in 1965.

Mr. Todd became increasingly vocal during the 1960's against what he said were injustices against blacks perpetrated by Mr. Smith's government, which Mr. Todd once compared to Nazi Germany.

"The inhumanity of the Smith regime in Rhodesia makes it impossible to deal with him without using some kind of force," he once said.

Mr. Smith's government detained Mr. Todd in 1965 and kept him under house arrest for five years for his opposition to the declaration of independence, whose purpose was to keep the white minority in power.

Mr. Mugabe selected Mr. Todd to serve in Zimbabwe's Senate at the advent of black majority rule in 1980, but Mr. Todd eventually fell out with what he termed an increasingly corrupt government.

His survivors include his daughter, Judith. His wife, Grace, died in January.

Earlier this year, a Zimbabwe court overruled attempts by Mr. Mugabe's government to bar Mr. Todd, who came to Zimbabwe as a missionary in the 1930's, from voting in the March presidential elections under a law barring dual citizenship. The government took away his passport in February.

In July the High Court ordered the government to issue a passport to Judith Todd, whom Mr. Mugabe's administration had stripped of Zimbabwean citizenship because she took no steps to renounce a possible claim to a New Zealand passport.

Mr. Mugabe's government accuses Zimbabwean whites of supporting the main opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change, which aims to topple his government over its seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks.

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