"Sad Day"

In five years as Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia, Garfield Todd became a symbol and something of a saint to the 2,220,000 Africans who comprise 92% of the population. More than any other white leader in the Central African Federation (the united British territories of Southern and Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland), Todd fought to advance the rights of black men. He tried to give the vote to more Africans, to increase Africans' wages. But in his zeal for racial "partnership," Garfield Todd, longtime Churches of Christ (Disciples) missionary, gradually antagonized more and more of Southern Rhodesia's 175,800 whites. Last month his own Cabinet resigned in protest and demanded that Todd himself quit (TIME, Jan. 27). Africans warned it would be a "sad day" if Todd went. Last week the sad day had come; Todd had been ousted as leader of the Southern Rhodesian division of the United Federal Party, forcing his resignation as Prime Minister.

In up-to-date Salisbury (pop. 190,700), Southern Rhodesia's capital, during a tense congress of the party that ground on for eleven hours, Todd's critics put their case: in the elections scheduled later this year, Todd would be a liability in the battle against the white-supremacy Dominion Party. For 1 1/2 hours Todd spoke in his own defense, and on the first ballot to determine a party leader, Todd topped the poll. The leader of the reactionary faction, Sir Patrick Fletcher, was eliminated from the race. But on the next ballot Todd mustered only 129 votes to 193 for a compromise candidate, Sir Edgar Whitehead, 53, the Federation's minister in Washington.

A shy bachelor farmer and former Finance Minister with an IBM-like memory, Whitehead was hailed by the party's moderates as a sounder man, whose advocacy of racial partnership was hard-headedly based on economic necessity rather than evangelizing zeal. The Africans were not reassured. Declared George Nyandoro, secretary-general of the African National Congress in Southern Rhodesia: "Whitehead is a status quo man. A government led by Whitehead would only make concessions when concessions were forced upon it. The Africans will have to do the forcing."

The one man who could have saved Todd did not lift a finger on his behalf--Sir Roy Welensky, the burly Prime Minister of the Federation and overall leader of the United Federal Party. Welensky is worried about his party's electoral chances if the opposition tars it with the label of "liberal." He was also determined to leave the Southern Rhodesians to their own struggles. As Whitehead patched together a new Cabinet that included Todd, and neatly balanced the party's opposing factions, Welensky was off on a vacation.

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