Guy Clutton-Brock

Arthur Guy Clutton-Brock (5 April 1906 – 29 January 1995), generally known as Guy Clutton-Brock, was an English social worker who became a Zimbabwean nationalist and co-founder of Cold Comfort Farm.

Born in Norwood, London, and educated at Rugby School, he graduated from Magdalene College, Cambridge. He had a career in the prison and probation services, youth and community work in the East End of London and in post-war Germany. During the Second World War he ran Oxford House, Bethnal Green, 1940–44, with the assistance of John Raven, Peter Kuenstler and later Merfyn Turner, all four being conscientious objectors.

He emigrated to Southern Rhodesia in 1949 as an agricultural demonstrator and missionary, turning St Faith's Mission into a famous pioneering non-racial community.

Clutton-Brock joined in founding the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress in 1957, and was largely responsible for its non-racial and Black/White partnership policies. As a member, he was detained without trial in 1959.

After similar ventures in Bechuanaland and Nyasaland, he returned to Rhodesia. With the eloquent support of Trevor Huddleston, Fenner Brockway, Michael Scott, Mary Benson and many others, Guy, his wife Molly (1912–2013), Didymus Mutasa, George Nyandoro and Michael and Eileen Haddon founded Cold Comfort Farm in Southern Rhodesia, which became a widely acclaimed pattern for racial freedom and regeneration in the poverty-stricken countries of Africa.

He was deported by the Rhodesian government led by Ian Smith in 1971, though by now he was the friend of four African presidents, Kenneth Kaunda (Zambia), Julius Nyerere (Tanzania), Hastings Banda (Malawi) and Seretse Khama (Botswana), as well as Robert Mugabe, who, as President of Zimbabwe, declared Clutton-Brock upon his death to be a National Hero of Zimbabwe, the only European to be accorded that honour. He was buried in Heroes Acre outside Harare.