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The "Boys in the Bush"

Interview with Garfield Todd

This interview with the New Zealand born former Rhodesian Prime Minister Garfield Todd is reprinted from the English paper "Anti-Apartheid News". Todd spent four years (1972-1976) under house arrest and now lives at his farm in the Shabani area in south central Zimbabwe (Rhodesia). In the interview he talks about the guerilla war in Zimbabwe and reactions to the "internal settlement".

What are the prospects for a referendum or elections to test the internal Rhodesian settlement?

I think there are now very poor prospects for any sort of referendum or elections, because the great majority of African people, that is, 80 per cent or more, live in the rural areas. Now the rural areas are largely under the control of the guerillas of either ZANLA (Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army) or ZIPRA (Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army) and in our area, for example, people are not paying their personal taxes. This is resistance. They are not likely while the guerillas say that they are against the internal settlement to register for an election or a referendum.

You say the rural areas are largely under control of the guerillas. Does that mean the guerillas have established their own organisations?

No, they haven't established organisations as far as I know and it is quite true that the soldiers can mount a sortie at any moment into any area. They can come in with their helicopters and with the paratroopers and their armoured cars and their big steel-bodied lorries. But what they have been quite unable to do is to halt the spread of the guerillas right through the rural areas.

What have Zimbabwe African reactions been to the internal settlement?

This is a very complex question because obviously the people who are concerned and those who are working with them think it's wonderful. Others that I know of course think it's terrible. And where the guerillas are, one gathers that the people are as much against the internal settlement as the guerillas themselves are.

What about middle-class Africans, businessmen and so on?

A number of those, I think, would be so keen on a settlement that they would go along with it. As far as many professional Africans are concerned, in education and so on, they have lost their jobs, schools are closed and so on, quite obviously they want to have a settlement.

I attended a meeting of whites and blacks in Gwelo recently, and at that meeting one black man almost surprised me by his clear statement that where Bishop Muzorewa, for example, had had a very wide support amongst the blacks, this was now in doubt because, he said, "Who was it who made Mr Smith ready to make these concessions? Was it Bishop Muzorewa? Or was it Revd Sithole? No," he said, "it was the boys in the bush."

Is there anything South Africa can do to resolve the situation ?

Oh yes! But does South Africa want to do it? This is the point. South Africa could simply turn off the oil as the Americans and the British have been hoping she would do for months past. There would be no war if there was no oil.

I wouldn't know how much support South Africa is giving, but by the number of helicopters that flew over Umtali on the sortie into Mozambique there must be considerable assistance being given from South Africa.

But financially and with petrol, every other way, South Africa keeps the Smith regime going and supports, apparently, the new interim settlement. So it's largely in South Africa's hands.

Are there many whites in Rhodesia who would look with equanimity to a Patriotic Front Government?

People just don't know what it would be like. All the propaganda is that it is going to be Marxist and destructive. I myself do not believe that. I don't want such a government. I look on the Patriotic Front as having agreed, as having taken on its shoulders the responsibility of clearing the way for a democratic state within Zimbabwe.

I would have hoped that Muzorewa would have worked for the same thing, but he stopped far too short. He stopped at a place where he himself has joined forces with Mr Smith, in a legal situation which does not allow him the power to make the changes which I am sure Bishop Muzorewa would like to make.

He may let out some detainees but he is not being able to stop the war. He is not being able, as far as I know, to really get into the prisons and release the people who are there on political sentences. So that he has gone into this situation bound almost hand and foot.

It is an ongoing situation set up by the Rhodesian Front under Mr Smith. It cannot be changed unless Mr Smith does not put in his veto, unless he agrees. I just think that they have landed themselves in an unfortunate mess from which none of us are easily going to extricate ourselves.

We hear that Bishop Muzorewa had a very large reception recently by 200,000 people. Does this indicate massive support for him?

If there were 200,000 people there, I would say this indicates massive support. I would say the figure was nearer 20,000. The Rhodesia Herald had a photographer in an aeroplane and they published that picture. It can almost be counted.

But I think the significant thing is not whether he had a large turnout to welcome him but whether he will have a large turnout to congratulate him at the end of three months of this government. That's going to be the testing time, the next three months.