The Zimbabwe Situation

Becoming a legend in his lifetime is a heavy burden for any man to bear. But it was typical of Sir Garfield Todd, the progressive prime minister of Southern Rhodesia in the mid-1950s, who has died aged 94, that he carried the load lightly, though being an internationally respected guru was little consolation for decades of exclusion from active politics. Todd's involvement in public life sprang from the empathy he felt with the Africans whose interests he had looked after as superintendent of the Dadaya mission school, in the vast Shabani district. This led him to conclude that only if he became an MP could he improve the prospects of black Rhodesians who, in that era, amounted to barely 2% of the voters' roll. Parliament in Salisbury (now Harare) was, of course, all white.

In 1946, Todd won the Shabani seat for the United Rhodesia Party, the most liberal of the groupings in the field. After rising through three ministerial postings, in 1953 he became prime minister and party president. He proceeded to introduce various progressive measures, including, in 1955, a five-year plan to give elementary education to every African of school age. His 1957 franchise bill cleared the way for multi-racial trade unions. He went to South Africa and the United States in search of financial backing for a new system of land husbandry in the tribal trust areas. As a sop to critics who said that Todd was "soft on natives", he dealt drastically with the first big African strike, at the Wankie colliery in 1954, calling in the tough mobile police unit. But basically, he was turning a blind eye to the old rule of white settler politics, which was "never be overtaken on the right".

His fall came when he proposed a revision of the franchise qualifications, which, he estimated, would add between 6,000 and 10,000 Africans to the roll. It was perhaps naive of him to try to reassure his critics that these black voters would amount, at most, to 20% of the number of qualified whites. In fact, the figure would have been closer to 16%, but Todd was not wily in those ways. When his ministers resigned en bloc in outrage at the proposals, he formed a new cabinet, but, three months later, the party rejected him as leader, in favour of Sir Edgar Whitehead. Todd went into the wilderness, initially forming a splinter party, which failed to win a single seat in the 1958 election. In a farewell statement, he spoke from the heart: "We must make it possible for every individual to lead the good life, to win a place in the sun. We are in danger of becoming a race of fear-ridden neurotics - we who live in the finest country on earth."

Todd was born in New Zealand, and worked, in his student years, at his father's brickmaking business. After university at Otago, he went to the Glen Leith Theological College, took holy orders in 1931, and was assigned to mission work in South Africa. This was interrupted by studies at Witwatersrand University, in Johannesburg, and at Butler University, in the United States, leading, in 1934, to the Dadaya mission posting. With his deep love of the land, and the perception that it was being neglected under a racially divisive system, Todd began buying up tracts of cheap land, until a very considerable agricultural development began to take shape. He built a school for African children. Indeed, several of today's leading Zimbabwean figures - including President Robert Mugabe - got their first experience of authority by trekking out to Shabani to teach at the Todd school.

Todd's period in power was followed by years of frustration and political humiliation. In an attempt at a comeback, he joined Sir John Moffatt, of Northern Rhodesia, in forming the Central Africa Party in 1960. But this, like another party he tried to form the following year, failed to gain seats in elections where white voters never numbered less than 96% per cent of the electorate. He further alienated himself from the settler community when, in 1960, he shared a platform with the African nationalist leader Joshua Nkomo, and jointly appealed to the British government to suspend Rhodesia's colonial constitution. Gradually, however, Todd began to emerge as the conscience of his country, increasingly honoured in the outside world. His handsome appearance and his remarkable fluency - he spoke at 200 words a minute - ensured him frequent radio and television exposure.

His appearance before the United Nations colonialism committee in New York, caused a particular furore in settler circles at home, and it was as more UN invitations began to arrive that, in 1965, the rightwing Ian Smith, who had recently declared Rhodesia's unilateral - and illegal - independence, decided to immobilise him. Todd, and his wife Grace, were put under house arrest at their ranch, for a renewable period of one year, and further harassments followed. Full-scale detention was ordered in 1972, and extended to Todd's daughter Judith, who had been campaigning on his behalf in London and other European capitals. Each promptly went on hunger strike, but the net was closing in. Judith went into exile for eight years, while her father remained at the ranch until June 1976, banned from even writing or receiving letters. For long periods, the phone line was cut. That October, Nkomo invited him to join his delegation at the unproductive Geneva conference on the future of Rhodesia.

However, as the Todds well knew, the bush war directed by Mugabe's skilful guerrilla commander, Josiah Tongogara, was getting under way. Seven years later, Smith and the settlers recognised that the game was up, and surrendered at the Lancaster House conference in London in 1979. With Zimbabwean independence, and the transfer of power to the African majority the following year, Todd was invited to serve as a senator for five years. In 1985, he was given a long-overdue knighthood, at the instigation of the New Zealand government. In his later years, with African majority rule spreading to South Africa, he found himself regarded as a source of wisdom, and the ranch at Dadaya drew a succession of admirers seeking enlightenment. Recent visitors found him as incisive and positive as ever; clear of mind and warm in his forgiveness of those who had persecuted him. He said his philosophy derived from the Bible: "Just keep throwing your bread upon the waters; if you're lucky, it will come back as ham sandwiches." Todd is survived by his three daughters, Judith, Cynthia and Alycen; his wife died last year.

Andrew Meldrum writes: Garfield Todd remained a vital, vigorous voice in Zimbabwean politics right up to his death. The nation paid close attention to his principled and pointed statements against corruption, human rights abuses and the worsening plight of the average Zimbabwean - even if Robert Mugabe did not heed his words. Last February, when told he had been stripped of his citizenship - like thousands of Zimbabweans whose parents were born in foreign countries - and would not be allowed to vote in the hotly contested presidential election, the former premier responded in typically forthright fashion. He said he would not willingly agree to lose his vote, and felt bound to "shoulder the responsibility of totally rejecting the disenfranchisement of Zimbabweans by Zanu PF [Mugabe's ruling party].

"I am horrified by the destruction of our economy, the starving of our people, the undermining of our constitution, the torture and humiliation of our nation by Zanu-PF," he said. "Just as we stood with courage against the racism of the past, so today we must stand with courage against the terror of the present. Come what may, I will be going to the polling station to claim my right as a very senior citizen of Zimbabwe, to cast my ballot for good against evil." So, on voting day, the defiant Todd stood in the polling queues, his erect bearing and full shock of white hair belying his years, only to be turned away by apologetic officials. He remained determinedly optimistic that good would prevail.

Reginald Stephen Garfield Todd, politician, born July 13 1908; died October 13 2002

Part Two

Pressure is increasing almost by the day from every corner of the world for "regime change" in Zimbabwe, for the termination of a Mugabe autocracy perceived to be so criminal and illegitimate that even Nelson Mandela has called on Zimbabweans to rise up and overthrow it by force of arms. Only last Tuesday as Mandela's good friend former US president Bill Clinton was speaking out in Nigeria against the election-rigging and intimidation of political opponents in Zimbabwe, a senior United Nations human rights investigator from Malaysia, Param Cumaraswamy, denounced Mugabe's "systematic attack on the rule of law". Three days later the prime minister of Australia, John Howard, announced his government would examine imposing "targeted sanctions" against Zimbabwe, in the manner of the US, that since February prohibits entry to top Zimbabwean officials, and the European Union which so far this year has imposed visa bans and asset freezes on 72 members of the Mugabe regime. In both the US and Europe moves are afoot to shut off a possible leak in the sanctions system by extending it to include people who do business with Zimbabwe. As Lord Renwick, a former British ambassador to South Africa and the US and one of Mugabe's most vocal critics, told el País: "In order to put more pressure on Mugabe you must obviously tie up his associates - among other things, by freezing their assets."

The Mugabe regime's leading foreign business partner, Oryx Natural Resources, is not yet on any sanctions list, although when the company sought to list itself last year on the London Stock Exchange it was turned down. As the Sunday Times wrote at the time, "The bid to float Oryx sits uncomfortably with a campaign by the British government to organise an international ban on sales of 'blood diamonds' from conflict areas". Yesterday's el Pais, in the first of a two-part series on Zimbabwe's "mafia state", made a list of allegations against Oryx and its chairman, Omani businessman Thamer Said Ahmed Al Shanfari, based on detailed testimony from two individuals closely involved with the affairs of Oryx and the Zimbabwean government. Oryx has contacted el Pais and declared the allegations to be "completely untrue". The allegations, in essence, are that the company made cash payments to senior members of the Zimbabwean government or individuals otherwise close to President Robert Mugabe; bought "blood" or "conflict" diamonds in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in some cases smuggled them abroad, among other places to Belgium, where they were eventually sold, passed off as having been extracted from a mining concession that Oryx shares with the Zimbabwean government in the diamond-rich Congo area of Mbuji Mayi.

"I refute all the allegations," said Geoffrey White, who together with a company lawyer in London has been responding in the last two days, by fax and by telephone, to issues raised by el País. "This is rubbish," Mr White said, adding that he believed that el País had fallen victim to an elaborate hoax. He said that two ex-employees of Oryx, "frauds" "driven by revenge" against the company, which they believed owed them money, had been spreading malicious lies. In a letter faxed later, Oryx's London lawyer, Mischon de Reya, said the allegations against his client were "grossly defamatory". The lawyer wrote that, according to Mr White, the people he believed to be the sources for the el País investigation were "motivated by extreme malice towards Oryx Natural Resources" and were "trying to defraud" the company's owner, Thamer Al Shanfari. These two individuals whom Mr White believes to be the sources on which el País is relying are not named in the letter but, according to Mischon de Reya, had "made threats to kill both Thamer Al Shanfari and Geoffrey White". By contrast, Mr White declared in the first of his faxed responses to el País, received on Friday, "The Oryx Group prides itself on conducting itself with honesty and integrity."

The Oryx Group first became involved with the Mugabe regime four years ago. Everything flowed from a proposal President Laurent Kabila of the Congo made to Mugabe in 1998. Facing heavy military pressure from rebel armies backed by Uganda and Rwanda, Kabila proposed to Mugabe that he would give him access to a diamond concession in the Congo valued at one billion dollars - the concession in Mbuji Mayi - in exchange for the loan of his army. Mugabe readily agreed to the diamonds-for-soldiers deal but what he did not have was the technical or commercial expertise to extract the diamonds. Enter Kamal Khalfan, a weapons dealer, Oryx shareholder and old Harare resident who rejoiced in the title of honorary consul of Oman in Zimbabwe. Khalfan suggested to Mugabe that Shanfari might be just the partner he needed. Shanfari, a 34-year-old graduate of the Colorado School of Mines who comes from a lavishly wealthy and influential Omani family, flew to Harare and met Mugabe. A company was created, a joint venture between Shanfari's Oryx, a company called Osleg (the business wing of the Zimbabwean armed forces) and a third co-signatory to the agreement, dated 16 July 1999, "the government of the Republic of Zimbabwe" - meaning the clique who ran Zanu PF. Osleg already had a partnership agreement with Congo's Comiex, a private company linked to the Presidency in Kinshasa. Under the terms of the agreement with Osleg, Oryx would run the diamond mining enterprise in Mbuji Mayi and take 40 per cent of the profits. The problem, Oryx was to find, was that - owing to the war and the logistical problems presented by the Congo's poverty and its vastness - the diamond concession of Mbuji-Mayi was not producing diamonds on a scale remotely proportionate to its one billion dollar valuation.

Individuals who have worked on the mine have said in recent weeks that the quantities of diamonds mined have been minimal. One source familiar with a United Nations investigation going on now into the looting of the Congo's mineral wealth maintained that the Oryx mine was generating little more than 100,000 US dollars worth of diamonds per month. "That's nothing in the diamond business," the source said. A senior congressional staffer in Washington who closely monitors events in Zimbabwe and the Congo made a similar point: "No one has been able to make money out of Congo diamond mining yet and so no reason to believe the Zimbabweans and their foreign partners were going to. The whole business is a bust, save as a cover for other stuff."

Other stuff, such as trading in "blood diamonds" at a time of war and mass starvation, which has enriched a group of no more than a dozen Zimbabwean individuals notable among whom have been Mr and Mrs Mugabe and Emmerson Mnangagwa, identified by the UN, the EU and the US as prime beneficiaries of the Congo-Zimbabwe apocalypse In the case of Mnangagwa, known in Zimbabwe these days as "chief executive" of the Congo as well as "Son of God" (because of the general assumption that he is Mugabe's chosen successor) , the wonder is that no one has put him on a sanctions list sooner. Or perhaps tried him for war crimes. Mnangagwa, who is 56, was minister of state security and head of the secret police at the time of the notorious Matabeleland massacres of 1983, in which the Zimbabwean army's North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade killed more than 10,000 innocent civilians inhabiting a region of Zimbabwe considered to be opposed to Mugabe. Mnangagwa, identified by human rights groups as the man who organised the massacres, was rewarded by Mugabe with the job of justice minister, a job he kept for 12 years. Mnangagwa, whom diplomats in southern Africa believe to have been the vote-rigger-in-chief in the presidential elections held in March this year, was described in a United Nations Security Council report put out at the end of last year as "the architect of the commercial activities of Zanu PF" (Zimbabwe's ruling party) and the prime mover behind the illicit diamond trading in the Congo.

Mnangagwa, identified by el País' sources as Shanfari's closest associate in the Congo diamond partnership, has been a regular guest of honour at large dinners that Shanfari has hosted at his Harare home. Another guest, the sources claimed, used to be Chenjerai Hunzvi, better known by his chosen nickname "Hitler". Hitler, who died a year ago of natural causes, rose to prominence four years ago as the man who led the invasions of Zimbabwe's white-owned farms. Under the protection of – among others - Mnangagwa when he was justice minister, Hitler would encourage his storm troopers to rob and commit murder safe in the knowledge there would be no legal consequences. It was in such a climate, in such a country, with such people, that Oryx's Mr Shanfari has judged the circumstances propitious during the last four years to do business. His number two at Oryx, Geoffrey White, says the company is proud of its "honesty and integrity". Yet, as the top foreign business associate of what Nelson Mandela has called the Mugabe tyranny, he can deny all the allegations that he wishes but he cannot deny that he is an accomplice of a small power clique that uses food as a weapon to starve its political opponents, that murders and tortures political rivals with impunity, that steals elections, that has profited from a savage war in the Congo, that sets the perpetuation of its own power and wealth above the welfare of the six million Zimbabweans that today are facing famine, that has destroyed its own country and has blood all over its hands.