adminThe Herald, July 5, 1980
SENATOR Garfield Todd yesterday told a capacity audience at the National Affairs Association meeting that if Zimbabwe is to refurbish and expand its economy, “we need infinitely more capital than we are every likely to get from straight aid”.
Nevertheless, he said he was “happily impressed” when he saw “on our vastly improved television service”, the American Ambassador explaining how he hoped to “filch” as much as $50 million for Zimbabwe, “while Mr Carter’s back was turned”.
He said if there had been a Marxist take-over of this country, all capital confiscated in the name of the State would have exceeded $2 billion – “just double what we seem to be offered by Dr Kissinger and his friends”.
Throughout the rural areas, Senator Todd said, the clear and insistent call was for more land. If the Government had confiscated in the name of the State to distribute land, “it will have failed as a Government . . . the Prime Minister will require all his wisdom to find a way”.
“We have the land and following the revolution, it might have been confiscated and redistributed. Capital might also have been confiscated and loans might have been dishonoured.
“The restraint which has been exercised in all these matters gives body and meaning to the Prime Minister’s policy of reconciliation and reconstruction”, Senator Todd said.
He added that no part of the Government’s plans was as important as the redistribution of land. And although land could be bought, “the land required, and the astronomical sums required for its purchase pose great problems”.
Although the acquisition of land was the “biggest single problem”, there were others. Among these was the future for red meat in a world which cannot afford to buy beef. But with 5 000 chickens and 50 hectares of good land one could produce 75 tonnes of meat in a year. To produce the equivalent in beef one would have to own 300 oxen and 1 500 hectares of land. This whole matter, Senator Todd said would need careful examination.
LESSONS FOR TODAY
Born on 13 July 1908, Sir Reginald Stephen Garfield Todd was an ex-missionary of the New Zealand Churches of Christ Mission, came to Zimbabwe in 1934, and became a prominent figure in the country’s politics.
Together with his wife Grace, they founded Dadaya High School in 1934, which became one of the centres of pre-independence Zimbabwean nationalism.
Todd held various roles in transitional politics, focusing on socio-economic, political, religious and technocratic solutions to contemporary African independence
He was a liberal Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia from 1953 to 1958, and later became a critic of white minority rule.
Todd died on 13 October 2002, two years after the land reform programme had started in earnest.
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