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Ndabaningi Sithole, Garfield Todd and the Dadaya school strike of 1947

1992; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 18; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03057079208708316

1465-3893

Michael O. West,

African history and culture analysis

Like the more well‐known railway workers’ strike of 1945 and the general strike of 1948, a strike by students at the Dadaya mission school in 1947 was an important background episode to the rise of African nationalism in Southern Rhodesia. The two main antagonists in this strike were Ndabaningi Sithole and Garfield Todd, both of whom went on to play important political roles in the colony, the one as African nationalist theoretician and practitioner and the other as Prime Minister from 1953 to 1958 and later as a leading white critic of Ian Smith's break‐away Rhodesia. Todd, the principal of Dadaya at the time of the strike, fired Sithole (along with three other African teachers) for his alleged role in ‘instigating’ it. Considerable political turmoil subsequently ensued. Todd, who had been elected to the Legislative Assembly on the ruling party's ticket the previous year, demanded that the government bar Sithole from teaching, while various African political and professional associations rallied to Sithole's defence. Sithole, however, does not mention this incident in his highly influential African Nationalism. The reason for this ‘cover‐up,’ it is suggested, was the political rapprochement that had taken place between Sithole and Todd in the period leading up to the publication of the book in 1959. Todd, who wrote the foreword to it, had been removed as prime minister in a ‘cabinet coup’ the previous year, because of his supposed liberalism toward Africans. By 1961 Todd had joined Sithole as a supporter of African nationalism. With the advent of independence in 1980, Todd became a more esteemed figure in the new nation‐state than Sithole, re‐emerging in 1990 to flay the government for its handling of a student strike at Dadaya that bears a striking resemblance to the one in 1947. After several years of self‐imposed exile Sithole too recently returned home to take up the mantle of opposition leader.