newsZimbabwe 2026: The past is another country – or is it?
Judith Todd on the right of David Coltart with other critics of the Constitution amendment bill at the Bulawayo meeting where they were not allowed to speak
Emmerson Mnangagwa wasn’t dubbed the Butcher of Matabeleland for nothing. So, it takes courage to criticise him and remind him in the market place that his step-down/sell-by date is long overdue. TREVOR GRUNDY reports –
A stinging attack on President Emmerson Mnangagwa for trying to turn Zimbabwe into a 2026 version of Ian Smith’s illegal Rhodesia has been made in Bulawayo by Judith Todd, one of that country’s best -known journalists, authors and political activists.
After attending a public consultation at the City Hall in Bulawayo on a plan to change the constitution, she told journalists she and the Mayor of Bulawayo, David Coltart, had not been allowed to speak.
She said –
“The last time was November 11, 1965 when Ian Smith declared UDI and that was an attempt then, of the powers that be, to hijack the country.
“The same thing is happening today.
“Ian Smith declared a state of emergency to handle that and he locked up a whole lot of people and he killed a whole lot of people and this led to war.”
Editor writes: Both Judith and her father, the liberal Prime Minister of Rhodesia from1953-1958, Sir Garfield Todd, were imprisoned by the Smith regime. Some Africanists estimate at least 35,000 people were killed in a war that started soon after 1965 and which ended with British and Commonwealth help in December 1979.
Judith Todd in London campaigning against illegal detentions and hanging in Rhodesia
Referring to the plan to change the constitution (CA3 – Constitutional Amendment 3), which would see the scrapping of the planned 2028 general election and the way presidents are chosen, not by the people but by parliamentarians, Judith Todd declared –
“I hope this does not lead to war but it is already leading to suffering. We must resist. A group of people who are in power have decided to hijack our country and the consequences are going to be too terrible.
“Smith did it to prevent the mass of people ever having one man one vote, then there was a war. Then Zimbabwe was based (after 1980) on one man one vote. Now the new hijackers are taking the vote away from us and we must say No thank you!”
A deep cloud hangs over the future of the public consultations on the plan to change the constitution.
On Monday, the Mayor of Bulawayo, and former government minister, David Coltart, was prevented from speaking.
He had this to say –
“The Chair of the meeting studiously ignored Judith Todd and me. I was there in time and I sat in the front row. I put my hand up every time a call was made for people to contribute, I stood up with my hand raised when it was clear the Chair was studiously ignoring me. The meeting was brought to an abrupt end at about 1130am and as a result both Judith Todd and I were deniedthe right to contribute and give our views.”
Similar concerns were raised by an opposition legislator Gift Ostallos Sizimba, who said he was denied the opportunity to speak at a meeting in Nketa, a high-density suburb in Bulawayo.
Concerns over the conduct of the hearings escalated after reports that a young activist, Denford Sithole, was taken by unidentified individuals shorty after making a presentation opposing the amendment bill at a meeting in also in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city.
Judith Todd with the late great Lawrence Vambe (Picture: Trevor Grundy)
Thought this is not her intention, it’s a fact that human rights violations in Africa get some attention when the story is told by white people.
So, these public intervention by Judith Todd and David Coltart are both timely and courageous.
Judith Todd is famous and the author of several books about Ian Smith’sillegal regime. One deals with the corruption that has been thrown, like a winding sheet, over the almost dead body of democracy in this former British colony,
Her words might lift the winding sheet. Even half an inch would let in the light.
Garfield Todd was no stranger to danger.
Neither is his daughter.