THE PRESS FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1980. Mr Todd’s trial

Press, 22 February 1980, Page 12

THE PRESS FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1980. Mr Todd’s trial

Whether the charges laid against Mr Garfield Todd will be dropped may be known within hours. He is due to stand trial tomorrow (New Zealand time) on charges of aiding guerrillas in Rhodesia. Nothing more serious than giving $3OO to Zimbabwe African Nationalist Union members for a car for election purposes in the forthcoming elections seems to have been cited; though Rhodesian police are said to be active in looking for other evidence. New Zealand has a special interest because Mr Todd was born in this? country and he has returned from time to time to visit members of the family. A former Premier of Southern Rhodesia, he ' can speak with some authority on the affairs of Rhodesia. Because of his New Zealand connections it was entirely appropriate that Mr P. Wilkinson, the former AttorneyGeneral in New Zealand, now an observer of the elections, should express concern about Mr Todd’s arrest. Mr Todd appears confident that the outcome .of. the case, will be favourable to him and has requested no further

aid from the New Zealand Government. Yet the case will be watched with care by many apart from New Zealanders. Mr Todd has a long history of making himself unpopular with the Government of Rhodesia because he opposed the Unilateral. Declaration of Independence made in 1965 and he opposed other measures taken by the Government of Mr lan Smith. He has been detained on a number of occassions. At the moment he seems convinced that if Mr Robert Mugabe, the Marxist, wins the election, whites will not accept his victory. Mr Todd has not been detained, a condition attributed by some to the intervention of Lord Soames, the British Governor. If the impression is created that the Rhodesian police are determined to see Mr Todd convicted because they consider him a trouble-maker, and that they will not recognise any changes in white supremacy after the election, then it will do much to create scepticism about the whites’ belief in the significance of the election.