A LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

A LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

ON the 5th of November, in 1975, I received the following letter, dated 4th November:

“Dear Mr Saidi:

“I have been following very closely your work as a journalist. I have been particularly concerned about your misconceptions regarding our approach to nation-building in this country. As you yourself know, I have given you every opportunity to reform. Regrettably, I have found no improvements in your performance: on the contrary, evidence clearly demonstrates a deterioration. Consequently, your performance continues to be inconsistent with the philosophy and spirit of the paper which must be the mouthpiece of the Party and of which you are a leader,

I am, therefore, left with no option but to fire you with immediate effect. I wish you luck in your future endeavours in any field of your choice.

Yours sincerely,. (signature) President.

“Mr William Saidi, Times of Zambia , Ndola .”

The letter was handed to me personally by asn emissary who had been flown from Lusaka for this specific purpose. I read it as he waited for my reaction – or something. I held myself together, refusing to show alarm or shock to the man sitting in my office, waiting for an explosion of either tears or four-letter words. He would report all that in great detail to the president. I felt an irreverent sense of superiority. These people feared me to the extent they would fly an emissary all the way from Lusaka to Ndola just to deliver as letter to me. I knew the man who had brought the letter because his first name was similar to one of my own – Sylvester. Quietly, I put down the letter and thanked him. If I had commented on the contents, he might have had to take out his notebook to write it all down. I wasn’t sure I would be able to speak coherently or decently.

I was stunned, if not flabbergasted. The president of the Republic of Zambia , Kenneth Kaunda, had featured nowhere in my employment by Times Newspapers Limited. This company was owned by Lonrho Zambia Limited. As far as I was aware, the chairman of |Lonrho in the country was Tom Mtine. He and I had a sound working relationship.

Shortly after my appointment as deputy editor-in-chief of Times Newspapers Limited in 1974, he had handed out some advice to me: Don’t fraternise with your juniors. Now that you are at the top, you must keep a distance from them, socially. The specific reference was to Chao Daka, now the chief reporter of the newspaper in Kitwe and a personal friend. We had worked together from our days at The Central African Mail.

Our friendship continued, even after he left The Mail, now owned by the government, to join the then privately-owned Times of Zambia as a reporter. Chao Daka’s real name was Adyele Ngulube. His original home was in the Eastern Province, near the border with |Malawi. Chao said he had changed his name during the struggle for independence in Northern Rhodesia. I believed he was referring to his membership of a youth group which engaged in violence against the colonial regime. I assumed that Chao (which sounded distinctly Chinese,) Daka was his “Chimurenga name, in the context of that country’s struggle.

At one time, I was news editor of the newspaper. I interacted with all the bureaus’ chief reporter, but there was special bond with Chao. Our sense of humour, our mistrust of authority and our general view of what constituted news were almost the same. But I took Mtine’s advice. Gradually, I reduced personal contact with Chao. I was glad to notice that he had a thorough appreciation of my predicament. The last time I saw him was in Zimbabwe in the late 1980s, where he had come to attend a conference. He died shortly afterwards. I shall always remember him with fondness. Tom Mtine was a man of great charm and humility. You wouldn’t believe, on meeting him for the first time, that he was a tycoon, had a personal fortune which was rated among the biggest in the land. Yet he was so down-to-earth, so unassuming, the superstitious among his enemies was that it was his talisman: his personal charm.

The Times Newspapers offices were not far from Mtine’s offices in the centre of the city of Ndola. It was a short drive. I had telephoned him after the presidential emissary had left. He knew all about it, he said. His office, which I had never visited until now, was incredibly cluttered. There were piles and piles of files. But I was quite satisfied that Mtine knew where everything was: he was that kind of person – he knew where everything was. The only thing he didn’t know was this: why had Kaunda fired me so emphatically, so ceremoniously, as if I had committed the ultimate sin against his “commandments”?

I told Mtine my theory: a story about the struggle in Zimbabwe. He was inviting the nationalists to Lusaka to meet with him. He had told us (the media) that we were not to touch the story – until he had said so. We did that, almost to the letter. By now, we all knew what hell awaited any editor who crossed Kaunda’s path. Four years earlier, I had done that – inadvertently. His reaction was so abrupt and furious, for a moment I thought I would be deported out of the country – even if, by now, I had become a citizen of Zambia. We were ordered to State House to explain ourselves: Tom Mtine, Mike Pierson, the deputy editor in chief and myself, then writer of a column called The Sunday Times of Zambia Special. That meeting, attended also by Kaunda’s special assistant, Mark Chona, had all the elements of an explosive encounter between the most powerful man in the country – and a few minnows, except for Tom Mtine, who remained calm and collected throughout Kaunda’s tirade. My column had not touched on Zimbabwe, an issue so sensitive to the president that there was never any guarantee he would react rationally.

Still, he had the bit between his teeth: “Are you a spy for Smith?” he asked me. The voice was so filled with contempt I imagined whatever I had done or written must have resulted in some catastrophe for the country or for someone dear to the president. My denial was emphatic, so emotional, in fact, that I suspect Kaunda realized someone must have fed him information so untrue that there had to be an ulterior motive.

We left that meeting feeling chastised. True, we had been forgiven for whatever political infraction we had committed in our columns. But he seemed ready to giver us the benefit of the doubt.

In 1971, there had been an upheaval of sorts at the Times. The man Kaunda had appointed to replace the Englishman and former Kaunda friend, Richard Hall – my editor at the Central African Mail – was Dunstan Kamana, his former media assistant and a friend of mine. Dunstan had run the newspapers as real newspapers are run – not as conduits for Kaunda’s propaganda. Mike Pierson was a great journalist, an Englishman who loved Africa, as Hall did. Dunstan, once in the saddle, realized his own reputation as a journalist would be under scrutiny: The Times of Zambia and its sister Sunday edition, were to be as professionally produced as they had been before he came on the scene. Little did he interfere with the editorial content, particularly the editorial comment. This was absolutely unrelated to editorials written in The Zambia Mail, now under complete government control.

Kamana was fired and Kaunda appointed Vernon Mwaanga to replace him. Mwaanga was recalled from the United Nations, where he was the country’s permanent representative. It was a climb-down and in his autobiography, Mwaanga writes of how he had been taken completely by surprise. Kamana was to be reassigned to a job at the head of as parastastal: he was not going to take it lying down, and he said so plainly enough. Later, he was appointed ambassador to the Soviet Union. In 1973, I went to Moscow for a meeting of the Afro-Asian Writers’ Union. I visited his home in a classy area of the Soviet capital, but only his wife was present. He had apparently gone off on some diplomatic mission out of the country.

In 1975, it was my turn. But like Kamana, I wasn’t going to take this lying down. In retrospect, I believe what spurred me to fight the dismissal was the confidence which Tom Mtine displayed in my story. I told him I had written a letter to Kaunda after he had publicly condemned the story in which his plans to invite the Zimbabwean leaders to Lusaka had been published. He asked if I had a copy of that letter. A day later, after he had read it, he told me he would show it to the president.

Later, a few days later, he invited me to his office – from the company house which I still occupied

as deputy editor-in-chief. The president had eventually found the letter I had written. Effectively, I was in the clear. I had been fired for the wrong reason. But, said Mtine, it would “unpresidential” for Kaunda to rescind that decision so soon after I had been fired.

Still, the episode convinced me that the African journalist was truly an endangered species a s Frank Barton said in his book. But my relations with Kaunda did not improve. Years later, after my return to Zimbabwe, I had President Robert Mugabe asking me at a meeting with other editors: “What did you do to Kaunda?

My reply was long and detailed. I have no idea of its effect on the president – to this day.