By Bill Saidi
ZIMPAPERS is the only newspaper company for which I have worked for ten years at a stretch, in 53 years of journalism. The next record must go to Times Newspapers in Zambia, where I worked for nine years, At Zimpapers, I missed a great opportunity to meet the great (?) Kim Il Sung, leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in 1980.
Shortly after I had started working on The Herald, as the Assistant to the Editor, I was selected to be among journalists to accompany the Prime Minister, Robert Mugabe, on his very first State visit to a country whose support in the struggle had been invaluable.
Incidentally, the title of Assistant to the Editor was a “first” for me. At Times Newspaper in Zambia, I once held the title of Assistant Editor. In this new capacity at Zimpapers, I performed exactly the same functions as I did at Times I was excited. In 1978, as a senior editor at Times Newspapers in Zambia, I had been selected to visit India, where a conference on the Juche Idea – Kim Il Sung’s creation – was being held: the ostensible purpose was to discuss or “critique” the philosophy. I found the proceedings exceedingly boring. But I have always enjoyed a visit to India.
A meeting with the man himself would probably have had the equivalent, epic proportions of meeting The Great Helmsman himself, or Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
I had spent 17 years in Zambia. In that time, as a journalist, I had been bombarded from all sides by literature on all such ideologies, apart from Kaunda’s own Humanism, Nyerere’s African Socialism, Senghor’s Negritude and Nkrumah’s own.
For me, all were probably as legitimate as democracy as ideologies worth pursuing. But I always reduced myself to “a poor black man trying to make a living”. None of them, thus far, had translated themselves into something tangible which I could pursue with the genuine hope of improving my status - political or material.
Over the years, I had developed a distinctly cynical attitude towards all politics. My greatest regret was that there was little I could do to eliminate politicians from the running of any country. Who would replace them – priests? They had their own peculiar problems, including paedophilia.
Alas, some Great Unknown intervened: I won’t try to go so far as to say it was Fate. But Zimpapers were told that my name would not be included among the journalists accompanying Mugabe to the DPRK. After a few inquiries, I established that there was a generally negative attitude towards me.
I doubted that the PM himself would have been involved in striking down my name. After a moment of reflection, I decided it was perfectly predictable: I had never been as what you would call a”darling” of the ruling coalition government. In Zambia, I had clashed with both, each one claiming I was not performing my “national duty:” of supporting them in the struggle, as demanded of any Zimbabwean – journalist or not.
In New Delhi, I was most fortunate to meet two politicians, for the first time. Sikwili Moyo of Zapu and Dzingai Mutumbuka (Zanu) attended on their parties’ behalf. We maintained contact back home after independence. Sikwili who was older than me died a few years after returning home. I was touched by his death. He had displayed, throughout the years I knew him, a commitment to the country which I had always admired.
Dzingai, much younger than me, ended up in the Cabinet. He showed, quite often, a brusqueness which I suspect eventually led to his being caught up in the tsunami that was the Willowgate scandal. We kept in touch, briefly, when he ended up working fir the WHO in Nairobi.
Even as far as 1978, I had gleaned from talking to the two of them, that the schism between the two parties was bound to degenerate into something much uglier – which it did shortly after independence.
I came away from the Juche conference, as unenlighte4ned about this philosophy as I had been before.
What I appreciated the most was that it entailed self-reliance – hardly an original concept. It reminded me of Kenneth Kaunda’s Humanism, whose lynchpin was the capacity to help others – again, hardly a brand-new concept; Still, I was disappointed not to go to Pyongyang. During my stay in Zambia, I had visited the UK, the USA, Canada, India, Jamaica, the Soviet Union, the Philippines, West Germany, Tanzania, Egypt, Kenya, Malawi, Ethiopia and Pakistan. Was this failure to visit the DPRK to mark the beginning of the end of my globe-trotting?
At one time, Herald House had so many Zimbabweans from the Zambian episode, a few of us must have been tempted to speak to each other in Nyanja when we met in the corridors: Farayi Munyuki, Stephen Mpofu, Tim Chigodo and Tonic Sakaike – we had all met, for the first timer in Zambia.
We had not always displayed the camaraderie almost natural when people from the same country meet in a foreign land. In one or two cases, there was coldness, bitterness which ran through the relationships which you could cut with a knife or a badza.
As journalists, we had all benefited from our stay in Zambia. Particularly after independence, we benefited from the new government’s keenness to enhance our skills in the profession to match those of the rest of the continent. None of us would ever have been offered such opportunities in Southern Rhodesia.
There was, of course, always the resentment among the Zambians that we were taking jobs that rightly belonged to them – even if some of them were not as qualified or as experienced as we were. I was targeted as a columnist. At first, the “Saidi” with which I signed off Lusaka After Dark in The Central African Mail was assumed to be a nom-de-plume. But it soon became clear that there was a real person behind the name, a man who, though with a name that was distinctly Malawian or even Zambian, was in reality, a Rhodesian.
Incidentally, the title of Assistant to the Editor was a “first” for me. In Zambia, I had been appointed Assistant Editor, before being elevated to Deputy Editor, then Deputy Editor-in-Chief. In these capacities, my functions included – at one time or another – supervising the newsgathering operations, the subbing of the copy at an early stage and writing editorials.
I discovered much to my chagrin, that the Assistant to the Editor performed exactly the same functions. For a while, I toyed with the idea of protesting at my title: it gave the distinct impression of some kind of secretarial function, such as secretary to the Editor or personal assistant to the Editor. In the end, however I curbed myinitial rebellious reaction. After all, I was the first black man to occupy this position – so my friends told me. There as no need to ruffle feathers so early. What I was advised to do, instead, was to test the establishment’s sincerity: my position was not widow-dressing – or was it?
An old friend, the late John Cecil Matowe, who worked in the technical department, floated the idea that I apply for a car loan. That, according to him, had never happened before. So, I was turned into a guinea pig. But since it was in a very good cause, I was not entirely averse to such a short period of humiliation - going cap in hand to the “master”. This must have appeared, to some of the black staff, to be a distasteful affirmation of the old “master and servant” reality of the racist regime.
But victory seemed certain: the new dispensation must surely entail, certainly on the part of the whites who had chosen to remain the country after April 18, 1980, a definite shift in the degree to which the Africans could feel life had really changed for them – in reality.
I suspect that when my application reached George Capon’s desk, his reaction was predictable in the circumstances. He knew the huge perks I had enjoyed at Times Newspapers: a company car, a company house, an expense account and a personal secretary.
Soon, the loan application had been approved. Matowe said he predicted other senior black employees would be emboldened to apply for similar loans. As far as I can remember, there was nothing like a “flood” of such applications.
I suspect that both Robin Drew and George Capon had accurately read and interpreted the writing on the wall: their time was up. I had long suspected that I could have been their “token” as far as displaying their willingness to conform to the new dispensation was concerned. I had tried, in my own subtle way, to indicate to them that what had followed independence elsewhere among the African countries would not be avoided in the new Zimbabwe.
The government would take over the publishing company – lock, stock and barrel and there was precious little they could do about it. Once Farayi Munyuki had walked into my office at Herald House one day to announce that “we are taking over”, I knew the jig was up – in a manner of speaking.
Frankly, I have always wondered why most of the African countries which became independent in the 1960s were virtually obsessed with running and owning all the media outlets in their countries. I know that Nkrumah pioneered the obsession. I still wonder why – unless it was, as some of us suspected a few years later - to end, once and for all, the dream of real independence, for which thousands had died.
In Zambia, journalists were being sold on the idea that unless there was a one-party state of government, there would always be disunity in the nation. This would, in turn, almost halt development per se. Instead of concentrating all their energies on economic development, people would, instead, be preoccupied with politics.
The argument extended to the promotion of a free press. The people had to be “regimented” into an acceptance of the need for unity, which could only be achieved in a one-party system of government – with no dissent allowed. So, after 1981, my whole concept of a free media as a vehicle for the free, relatively unfettered exchange of ideas - radical, extremist and even quite often subversive – was shaken to its roots.
The freedom for which thousands had died did not, apparently, include the freedom to oppose or challenge the ruling authority.
Many Zimbabweans, among them people who fought the racist regime to the end – until victory was achieved – may still argue in favour of a controlled media, even in the 21st century. I spent ten years at Zimpapers. There were ten turbulent years. If any of the compatriots who were with me during those years, still believe we helped to build Zimbabwe, I ask them to answer this question: would we be where we are now if we had had a free media as far back as 1981?
Frankly, my answer would be an emphatic NO.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
COMBATING RACISM AND…. THAT OTHER THING….
.
By Bill Saidi
MOST journalists who launched their careers during the colonial period – as I did - gave priority coverage to one topic: racism. It was the basis of colonialism. The British and their surrogates in Southern Rhodesia could deny this until they were blue in the face. But it is a fact: colonialism was steeped in racism.
The war of liberation may not have rotated on racism. But somewhere in the background was the notion that freedom and democracy would be achieved by the majority only after racism had been wiped out – and that is the way it turned out.
Even after the imposition of the federation – with its much-ballyhooed policy of Partnership, the whites would not budge. In fact, her whites of Southern Rhodesia were the most obdurate. Their grand plan was to carve out an apartheid-style white supremacist system in their country.
The African journalist faced racism on a daily basis: he could be a talented reporter, one who could write a sizzling paragraph over which some of the whites would drool with envy, but his pay was a pittance compared with that of the whites at The Rhodesia Herald, the Sunday Mail or the Bulawayo Chronicle.
Personally, I was paid so little the only time I could afford a radio on my salary was when I left Southern Rhodesia to work in then Northern Rhodesia. After a year working for The Central African Mail, I could afford a shortwave radio and a radiogram. The bonus was I was able to buy my first record – Startime With The Dark Sisters. These ladies had made an indelible mark on me = their music had dominated the “Mahobho” scene in Harare township. To be able to listen to 12 tracks of theirs without having to buy beer or even dance made me feel like a king
I was fortunate that my parents had a radio and a gramophone – otherwise the only personal possession I could boast of was my bicycle. Even then, I had to buy it on credit.
The racism in Southern Rhodesia was palpable. As a boy, walking with my mother along the platform at Salisbury railway station, I was whacked in the face by a white man driving a trolley. There was no warning of the approaching vehicle or eve a shout from the white driver to me – such as “Get out of the way, you kaffir piccanniny!”
It was just the heavy WHAM in the face.
Before entering journalism, I worked in a fairly prominent position for a private company: I was the managing director’s assistant or clerk or typist – I was by his side all the time. My office, no more than alcove, was right next to his.
One day, while I pounded away on my typewriter, a white woman came into the shop. She saw me. I heard clearly, as she shouted in a voice dripping with hatred: “What’s that monkey doing there?”
Incidentally, decades later, after the racists had been vanquished and had slunk back into their lair, an African, as black as I am and as proud a Zimbabwean as I am, called me a monkey. It was in the presence of another Zimbabwean who didn’t even rebuke the foul-mouthed gentleman. Racism had been replaced by this other “thing”: xenophobia.
My experience with racism extends to an attempt to seek a job on a white newspaper. I had chalked up four years at African Newspapers. Admittedly, I had risen far enough to be an acting editor. But I gad packed a lot of experience under my belt. So, I applied for a job at The Evening Standard. Frankly, I did not reckon with the monster that was racism when I applied for the job. This paper was so different from The Rhodesia Herald, the standard bear of the Argus Group company in Southern Rhodesia. Rhys Meier was the editor and he had consented to interview me for the job. I was bubbling with enthusiasm – and hope. I had no testimonials or certificates: I thought they might at least giver me a chance to show my mettle with a probation period or something. In the end, I had no idea what decided Rhys Meier not to offer me the job. But for me it had to be that monster again – racism. There was no journalism school then, least of all for Africans. I
assumed they would have a training programme of sorts – as African Newspapers had. It was essentially “on the job” training: it had its faults, but I felt I was adequately equipped to work on any newspaper. I was disappointed not to get a job at The Standard. For a while, I was down in the dumps. I ended up working out of journalism, unhappily – until I received the call from Lusaka to join The Central African Mail.
In 1980, when I joined Zimpapers as assistant to the editor, Robin Drew, I had been around the block many times – in a manner of speaking. Even The Herald had carried the story of my dismissal from Times Newspapers by President Kaunda. But they had not carried the story of my reinstatement, which many people seem to ignore when they relate my “problem with Kaunda”.
In 1980, in September, to be exact, I was installed in an office at Herald House – all by myself, as I had in Ndola and Lusaka. Some people said I was the first African in the editorial department to be allocated an office of their own. It made me walk tall; I didn’t have a secretary of my own, as I had in Zambia. But Drew’s secretary did all my correspondence – such as it was.
George Capon and Robin Drew treated me with remarkable deference. We had first met in London at a meeting of the Commonwealth Press Union (CPU); I attended as chairman of the Zambian chapter. At a previous meeting, I had joined Derek Ingram and Bethel Njoku in campaigning vigorously for the Rhodesian delegation to be kicked out of the conference. They had no legitimacy, we said. I believe they remembered me from that confrontation.
Back in Salisbury in 1980, Capon maintained a remarkably level-headed attitude towards me. Even Robin Drew treated me with the utmost respect and dignity. Both men knew that as an editor on The Times of Zambia I had been part of a team which vilified the regime of Ian Smith and the media which supported it. None of us were impressed with the “blank spaces” to which the papers had resorted in protest against the censorship of their news by the regime. We still saw them as lackeys of the regime for they never openly called for majority rule throughout the 15 years of UDI.
I was impressed when Robin Drew asked me to write my first editorial comment for The Herald. He didn’t change a word of it. I had been circumspect in deciding what tone to take in the editorial. The white editorial hierarchy led by Drew, had adopted a certain stance towards the new dispensation. But they were not about to abandon everything. They still wished for a “civilized transition”, one in which the sentiments of the whites who had decided to remain in the country would be taken account of.
My first editorial didn’t raise any hackles with the white editorial hierarchy. But I like to believe they saw how, in the immediate future, the editorial thrust would had to take thorough account of the reality that white supremacy had died, never to be revived again.
Before The African Daily |News came on the scene in 1956, there was hardly any coverage of the “African story” in Southern Rhodesia. Up to that time, there were only two weekly newspapers, both owned by African Newspapers, The Bantu Mirror (in Bulawayo) and The African Weekly (Salisbury), aimed specifically at an urban African readership.
In Harare township, my cousins and I were among children who sold the weekly paper. Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would one day write for a newspaper which people would rush to buy. Until I left African Newspapers in 1961, I had no idea that the company was funded by the government. I understood, in retrospect, why we front-paged every story of Garfield Todd’s election campaign in 1958. Five years into federation, the whites rejected his pro-African advancement policies for a rigid racist policy which eventually culminated in the war of liberation in which an estimated 50 000, mostly Africans, died.
The Paver brothers, who nominally owned African Newspapers, were not what we called “bleeding heart liberals”. But they must have appreciated that none of us on the editorial staff harboured any hopes that they and their kith and kin would continue to “lord it”
over us. With Ghana’s independence in 1957, they too must have seen that the bell was tolling for white supremacy.
Posted by Bill Saidi at 2:29 AM 0 comments
Friday, July 16, 2010
By Bill Saidi
MOST journalists who launched their careers during the colonial period – as I did - gave priority coverage to one topic: racism. It was the basis of colonialism. The British and their surrogates in Southern Rhodesia could deny this until they were blue in the face. But it is a fact: colonialism was steeped in racism.
The war of liberation may not have rotated on racism. But somewhere in the background was the notion that freedom and democracy would be achieved by the majority only after racism had been wiped out – and that is the way it turned out.
Even after the imposition of the federation – with its much-ballyhooed policy of Partnership, the whites would not budge. In fact, her whites of Southern Rhodesia were the most obdurate. Their grand plan was to carve out an apartheid-style white supremacist system in their country.
The African journalist faced racism on a daily basis: he could be a talented reporter, one who could write a sizzling paragraph over which some of the whites would drool with envy, but his pay was a pittance compared with that of the whites at The Rhodesia Herald, the Sunday Mail or the Bulawayo Chronicle.
Personally, I was paid so little the only time I could afford a radio on my salary was when I left Southern Rhodesia to work in then Northern Rhodesia. After a year working for The Central African Mail, I could afford a shortwave radio and a radiogram. The bonus was I was able to buy my first record – Startime With The Dark Sisters. These ladies had made an indelible mark on me = their music had dominated the “Mahobho” scene in Harare township. To be able to listen to 12 tracks of theirs without having to buy beer or even dance made me feel like a king
I was fortunate that my parents had a radio and a gramophone – otherwise the only personal possession I could boast of was my bicycle. Even then, I had to buy it on credit.
The racism in Southern Rhodesia was palpable. As a boy, walking with my mother along the platform at Salisbury railway station, I was whacked in the face by a white man driving a trolley. There was no warning of the approaching vehicle or eve a shout from the white driver to me – such as “Get out of the way, you kaffir piccanniny!”
It was just the heavy WHAM in the face.
Before entering journalism, I worked in a fairly prominent position for a private company: I was the managing director’s assistant or clerk or typist – I was by his side all the time. My office, no more than alcove, was right next to his.
One day, while I pounded away on my typewriter, a white woman came into the shop. She saw me. I heard clearly, as she shouted in a voice dripping with hatred: “What’s that monkey doing there?”
Incidentally, decades later, after the racists had been vanquished and had slunk back into their lair, an African, as black as I am and as proud a Zimbabwean as I am, called me a monkey. It was in the presence of another Zimbabwean who didn’t even rebuke the foul-mouthed gentleman. Racism had been replaced by this other “thing”: xenophobia.
My experience with racism extends to an attempt to seek a job on a white newspaper. I had chalked up four years at African Newspapers. Admittedly, I had risen far enough to be an acting editor. But I gad packed a lot of experience under my belt. So, I applied for a job at The Evening Standard. Frankly, I did not reckon with the monster that was racism when I applied for the job. This paper was so different from The Rhodesia Herald, the standard bear of the Argus Group company in Southern Rhodesia. Rhys Meier was the editor and he had consented to interview me for the job. I was bubbling with enthusiasm – and hope. I had no testimonials or certificates: I thought they might at least giver me a chance to show my mettle with a probation period or something. In the end, I had no idea what decided Rhys Meier not to offer me the job. But for me it had to be that monster again – racism. There was no journalism school then, least of all for Africans. I
assumed they would have a training programme of sorts – as African Newspapers had. It was essentially “on the job” training: it had its faults, but I felt I was adequately equipped to work on any newspaper. I was disappointed not to get a job at The Standard. For a while, I was down in the dumps. I ended up working out of journalism, unhappily – until I received the call from Lusaka to join The Central African Mail.
In 1980, when I joined Zimpapers as assistant to the editor, Robin Drew, I had been around the block many times – in a manner of speaking. Even The Herald had carried the story of my dismissal from Times Newspapers by President Kaunda. But they had not carried the story of my reinstatement, which many people seem to ignore when they relate my “problem with Kaunda”.
In 1980, in September, to be exact, I was installed in an office at Herald House – all by myself, as I had in Ndola and Lusaka. Some people said I was the first African in the editorial department to be allocated an office of their own. It made me walk tall; I didn’t have a secretary of my own, as I had in Zambia. But Drew’s secretary did all my correspondence – such as it was.
George Capon and Robin Drew treated me with remarkable deference. We had first met in London at a meeting of the Commonwealth Press Union (CPU); I attended as chairman of the Zambian chapter. At a previous meeting, I had joined Derek Ingram and Bethel Njoku in campaigning vigorously for the Rhodesian delegation to be kicked out of the conference. They had no legitimacy, we said. I believe they remembered me from that confrontation.
Back in Salisbury in 1980, Capon maintained a remarkably level-headed attitude towards me. Even Robin Drew treated me with the utmost respect and dignity. Both men knew that as an editor on The Times of Zambia I had been part of a team which vilified the regime of Ian Smith and the media which supported it. None of us were impressed with the “blank spaces” to which the papers had resorted in protest against the censorship of their news by the regime. We still saw them as lackeys of the regime for they never openly called for majority rule throughout the 15 years of UDI.
I was impressed when Robin Drew asked me to write my first editorial comment for The Herald. He didn’t change a word of it. I had been circumspect in deciding what tone to take in the editorial. The white editorial hierarchy led by Drew, had adopted a certain stance towards the new dispensation. But they were not about to abandon everything. They still wished for a “civilized transition”, one in which the sentiments of the whites who had decided to remain in the country would be taken account of.
My first editorial didn’t raise any hackles with the white editorial hierarchy. But I like to believe they saw how, in the immediate future, the editorial thrust would had to take thorough account of the reality that white supremacy had died, never to be revived again.
Before The African Daily |News came on the scene in 1956, there was hardly any coverage of the “African story” in Southern Rhodesia. Up to that time, there were only two weekly newspapers, both owned by African Newspapers, The Bantu Mirror (in Bulawayo) and The African Weekly (Salisbury), aimed specifically at an urban African readership.
In Harare township, my cousins and I were among children who sold the weekly paper. Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would one day write for a newspaper which people would rush to buy. Until I left African Newspapers in 1961, I had no idea that the company was funded by the government. I understood, in retrospect, why we front-paged every story of Garfield Todd’s election campaign in 1958. Five years into federation, the whites rejected his pro-African advancement policies for a rigid racist policy which eventually culminated in the war of liberation in which an estimated 50 000, mostly Africans, died.
The Paver brothers, who nominally owned African Newspapers, were not what we called “bleeding heart liberals”. But they must have appreciated that none of us on the editorial staff harboured any hopes that they and their kith and kin would continue to “lord it”
over us. With Ghana’s independence in 1957, they too must have seen that the bell was tolling for white supremacy.
Posted by Bill Saidi at 2:29 AM 0 comments
Friday, July 16, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
THE DAILY NEWS: Media madness to die for
By Bill Saidi
IT was almost a dream come true, for me, when Modus launched The Sunday Gazette magazine, with me as editor. In the five years that I worked for Elias Rusike’s newly-acquired possession 1990-1995, this venture was more spectacular and exhilarating than anything else I had done before.
I had put together a dummy and showed it to the chairman of the board, the late Eric Kahari. His comment, after looking through it, was: “It’s so good – can you top this?”
I had written every word myself. It was a labour of love. Later, I realised I had not put so much energy into one project as I had done with this dummy – except what I have always rated as my two most cherished novels – Day of the Baboons and The Brothers of Chatima Road.
The magazine did well: its contents appealed to many readers who were inclined towards literature and the arts in general. But Elias Rusike had his eye – quite naturally, I suppose – on the balance sheet. Before he pulled the plug on it, I had received a warm, congratulatory letter from Terence Ranger, still then a luminary at the University of Zimbabwe. He praised it as something he had looked forward to for some time.
I was not exactly shattered when we had to shut up shop. But I know I had a great time editing that magazine and the two men who helped me, Farai Nyandoro and Praise Zenenga, went on to bigger things. I like to believe they were spurred by what we had done on the magazine.
Yet it paled into insignificance, when placed side by side with the fine madness that was The Daily News adventure in 1999. I entered that adventure in the minor role of Assistant Editor. The initial pay was scandalous: by then I had chalked up 22 years in journalism, 17 of them in Zambia, where I had finished up as deputy editor-in-chief of Times Newspapers, that country’s largest publishing group.
Apart from winning joint first prize in a 1966 short story contest in Zambia, I had published three novels, two in Zambia and one in Zimbabwe. This was the much-praised The Brothers of Chatima Road. One reviewer had bubbled with such admiration for it; he had proposed it for a secondary school textbook.
Yet here I was, in a skyscraper off Samora Machel Avenue, about to start work as the Assistant Editor of The Daily News. Geoff Nyarota was Editor-in-Chief and Davison Maruziva, who had been his deputy at The Chronicle, was his deputy here again. Both had much less experience than I had. In their favour, perhaps, were spells of formal training. Nyarota had spent time at Zimbabwe Newspapers, and Maruziva had done it, of all places, in the UK.
Yet they knew and I knew that there was, as in all other fields of human endeavour in this world, no substitute for experience. As we launched into the nitty-gritty of the adventure, they let nature take its course: they deferred, decently, to my superior hands-on expertise.
Not much has been made, even now, of the fact that Nyarota had initially offered me the job of editor-in-chief. In 1996, while I worked for Andy Moyse’s Horizon magazine, he had come to me with his proposition: he was about to launch a new publication. Would I be interested? Could we discuss it over lunch at The Pavillion at Meikles? It would be all on him, he said.
Now, not to put too fine a point to it, Nyarota and I had an ups-and-downs relationship since first meeting at Herald House in 1980. He had then just come to the editorial department of The Herald. Previously, he and a few others, including Tonic Sakaike, had worked on a pretty ill-disguised “African” companion of The Herald.
But by 1980, a new dispensation had been ushered even into the staid and rather racist cloisters of the new company. In an independent Zimbabwe: not even the smugly “superior” people at the Argus Group in South Africa, could pretend that Harold Macmillan’s “wind of change” had left Herald House untouched. The Herald was about to be hit by a whirlwind of such force some of the staff would not know what hit them.
Meanwhile, there was a curious development which caused me, personally, some moments of deep reflection and anxiety. Almost at the same time, Nyarota and Abby Rusike resigned from The Herald, both of them to join the government media.
I was the new Assistant to the Editor, Robin Drew. In ranking, I was above them. In Zambia, I had been above Rusike at Times Newspapers. He was business editor and I was, by then deputy editor-in-chief. We had had an altercation over a story which I had eventually turned down for use in the paper. It was on the grounds the man interviewed had what I knew to be a “shady record”.
Rusike was visibly angry with me. Shortly afterwards, as Zimbabve emerged into nationhood, he resigned and left for Salisbury. I followed later, to become Robin Drew’s assistant.
But even with the salary unfit for a cadet reporter, I reveled in the Daily News adventure. I was asked to write a piece for the inaugural issue, which I did with gusto, as it was of my memories of work on The African Daily News. For some strange reason, the concluding paragraphs of the piece were lost. I initially suspected sabotage.
Later, I decided to put it down to the excitement of a new adventure: there were people on the staff who were clearly overwhelmed by the enormity of the task before us: launching an independent daily newspaper to fight for the market with the government-owned, well-established Herald.
For me the teething problems of the newspaper were nothing to be upset about. I had been in at the beginning of a number of new ventures. Rarely was anything smooth sailing at the start. Eventually, The Daily News found its stability. Whatever else people said later about his editorship, Geoff Nyarota carved a niche for himself in the annals of newspaper publishing with The Daily News.
There was, to be sure, a period during which the management seemed to hang in limbo. There were changes at the top. But editorially, the newspaper prospered well beyond our wildest dreams. People seemed to have been waiting for the paper for years. Soon, it eclipsed The Herald in circulation. To say that this alarmed The Establishment is an understatement. I wrote a regular column, Bill Saidi On Wednesday. There were occasions when some people thought the editorial comment in the paper reflected the views expressed in my column. Initially, Nyarota, Maruziva and I alternated in writing the editorials. Our styles were different, but since they eventually passed through me there was an attempt to regularise their presentation.
Nonetheless, I was not duly alarmed when a caller asked me: “Are you a Zimbabwean?” I said I was. Was he? I asked. There was no response to that question.
There had never been, in the history of publishing in the country since independence, a newspaper that had caused so much controversy as The Daily News. For me, the reasons were clear: the newspaper pulled no punches. It was thoroughly irreverent of The Establishment. As far as I know, it never used abusive or insolent language in discussing politics, particularly in highlighting the failures of the government and the governing party.
But what it was doing had never been done before so openly. I suspect this is what set The Establishment fuming. The accusation was that it was undermining the authority of the government, that it was subversive in some of its comments.
For me, The Daily News adventure was something to die for or to kill for. I wouldn’t exchange it for anything on earth. It ushered into Zimbabwe a thoroughly new kind of journalism, one in which there was not a trace of fear or hesitation. In years to come, people will speak of the period during which this paper ruled the media roost with such exclamations as “Wow!” or “By Jove, they did it!”
Others might ponder quietly: “How did they get away with it for so long?”
IT was almost a dream come true, for me, when Modus launched The Sunday Gazette magazine, with me as editor. In the five years that I worked for Elias Rusike’s newly-acquired possession 1990-1995, this venture was more spectacular and exhilarating than anything else I had done before.
I had put together a dummy and showed it to the chairman of the board, the late Eric Kahari. His comment, after looking through it, was: “It’s so good – can you top this?”
I had written every word myself. It was a labour of love. Later, I realised I had not put so much energy into one project as I had done with this dummy – except what I have always rated as my two most cherished novels – Day of the Baboons and The Brothers of Chatima Road.
The magazine did well: its contents appealed to many readers who were inclined towards literature and the arts in general. But Elias Rusike had his eye – quite naturally, I suppose – on the balance sheet. Before he pulled the plug on it, I had received a warm, congratulatory letter from Terence Ranger, still then a luminary at the University of Zimbabwe. He praised it as something he had looked forward to for some time.
I was not exactly shattered when we had to shut up shop. But I know I had a great time editing that magazine and the two men who helped me, Farai Nyandoro and Praise Zenenga, went on to bigger things. I like to believe they were spurred by what we had done on the magazine.
Yet it paled into insignificance, when placed side by side with the fine madness that was The Daily News adventure in 1999. I entered that adventure in the minor role of Assistant Editor. The initial pay was scandalous: by then I had chalked up 22 years in journalism, 17 of them in Zambia, where I had finished up as deputy editor-in-chief of Times Newspapers, that country’s largest publishing group.
Apart from winning joint first prize in a 1966 short story contest in Zambia, I had published three novels, two in Zambia and one in Zimbabwe. This was the much-praised The Brothers of Chatima Road. One reviewer had bubbled with such admiration for it; he had proposed it for a secondary school textbook.
Yet here I was, in a skyscraper off Samora Machel Avenue, about to start work as the Assistant Editor of The Daily News. Geoff Nyarota was Editor-in-Chief and Davison Maruziva, who had been his deputy at The Chronicle, was his deputy here again. Both had much less experience than I had. In their favour, perhaps, were spells of formal training. Nyarota had spent time at Zimbabwe Newspapers, and Maruziva had done it, of all places, in the UK.
Yet they knew and I knew that there was, as in all other fields of human endeavour in this world, no substitute for experience. As we launched into the nitty-gritty of the adventure, they let nature take its course: they deferred, decently, to my superior hands-on expertise.
Not much has been made, even now, of the fact that Nyarota had initially offered me the job of editor-in-chief. In 1996, while I worked for Andy Moyse’s Horizon magazine, he had come to me with his proposition: he was about to launch a new publication. Would I be interested? Could we discuss it over lunch at The Pavillion at Meikles? It would be all on him, he said.
Now, not to put too fine a point to it, Nyarota and I had an ups-and-downs relationship since first meeting at Herald House in 1980. He had then just come to the editorial department of The Herald. Previously, he and a few others, including Tonic Sakaike, had worked on a pretty ill-disguised “African” companion of The Herald.
But by 1980, a new dispensation had been ushered even into the staid and rather racist cloisters of the new company. In an independent Zimbabwe: not even the smugly “superior” people at the Argus Group in South Africa, could pretend that Harold Macmillan’s “wind of change” had left Herald House untouched. The Herald was about to be hit by a whirlwind of such force some of the staff would not know what hit them.
Meanwhile, there was a curious development which caused me, personally, some moments of deep reflection and anxiety. Almost at the same time, Nyarota and Abby Rusike resigned from The Herald, both of them to join the government media.
I was the new Assistant to the Editor, Robin Drew. In ranking, I was above them. In Zambia, I had been above Rusike at Times Newspapers. He was business editor and I was, by then deputy editor-in-chief. We had had an altercation over a story which I had eventually turned down for use in the paper. It was on the grounds the man interviewed had what I knew to be a “shady record”.
Rusike was visibly angry with me. Shortly afterwards, as Zimbabve emerged into nationhood, he resigned and left for Salisbury. I followed later, to become Robin Drew’s assistant.
But even with the salary unfit for a cadet reporter, I reveled in the Daily News adventure. I was asked to write a piece for the inaugural issue, which I did with gusto, as it was of my memories of work on The African Daily News. For some strange reason, the concluding paragraphs of the piece were lost. I initially suspected sabotage.
Later, I decided to put it down to the excitement of a new adventure: there were people on the staff who were clearly overwhelmed by the enormity of the task before us: launching an independent daily newspaper to fight for the market with the government-owned, well-established Herald.
For me the teething problems of the newspaper were nothing to be upset about. I had been in at the beginning of a number of new ventures. Rarely was anything smooth sailing at the start. Eventually, The Daily News found its stability. Whatever else people said later about his editorship, Geoff Nyarota carved a niche for himself in the annals of newspaper publishing with The Daily News.
There was, to be sure, a period during which the management seemed to hang in limbo. There were changes at the top. But editorially, the newspaper prospered well beyond our wildest dreams. People seemed to have been waiting for the paper for years. Soon, it eclipsed The Herald in circulation. To say that this alarmed The Establishment is an understatement. I wrote a regular column, Bill Saidi On Wednesday. There were occasions when some people thought the editorial comment in the paper reflected the views expressed in my column. Initially, Nyarota, Maruziva and I alternated in writing the editorials. Our styles were different, but since they eventually passed through me there was an attempt to regularise their presentation.
Nonetheless, I was not duly alarmed when a caller asked me: “Are you a Zimbabwean?” I said I was. Was he? I asked. There was no response to that question.
There had never been, in the history of publishing in the country since independence, a newspaper that had caused so much controversy as The Daily News. For me, the reasons were clear: the newspaper pulled no punches. It was thoroughly irreverent of The Establishment. As far as I know, it never used abusive or insolent language in discussing politics, particularly in highlighting the failures of the government and the governing party.
But what it was doing had never been done before so openly. I suspect this is what set The Establishment fuming. The accusation was that it was undermining the authority of the government, that it was subversive in some of its comments.
For me, The Daily News adventure was something to die for or to kill for. I wouldn’t exchange it for anything on earth. It ushered into Zimbabwe a thoroughly new kind of journalism, one in which there was not a trace of fear or hesitation. In years to come, people will speak of the period during which this paper ruled the media roost with such exclamations as “Wow!” or “By Jove, they did it!”
Others might ponder quietly: “How did they get away with it for so long?”
THIS JOB CAN KILL YOU TOO
By Bill Saidi
MOST journalists are acutely aware of the perils endemic in a story that walks into the newsroom, screaming its head off about being The Big Story of the day.
A story for which the reporter does not have to sweat has all the danger signals of being either a non-story, or a story likely to explode into the reporter’s or the editor’s face – sooner or later.
Most reporters learn, through being in the trenches for long, that a good story must, first of all, wear the badge of “public interest” on its lapel. If it doesn’t, then it needs to be probed thoroughly before a reporter is assigned to it.
Once it passes that rigorous test, the next thing is to assess its source. This has to be a fairly reliable source. The source may not want to be identified no further than being “reliable”.
The reporter must ascertain that the reason for this anonymity is genuine and justified. If it cannot be proved to the satisfaction of both the reporter and the editor, then it should be announced that “all bets are off”.
The source must be identified or there will be no story. This is necessary, in the first place, for the paper’s credibility. Then, of course, there is the question of defamation. The editor could always take the decision on the probability that the source would have no legitimate reason to “tell a long story” to the paper.
But there should be no hesitation either way: the cost to the newspaper could be enormous. Quite often, it could involve the lost of a life or lives. This might be far-fetched on the face of it. But a good editor knows enough about the job to realize there is this adage: If in doubt, don’t.
The mention of death, though brief, has to be taken seriously. Of course, journalists have been killed for more grievous errors of omission or commission than relying too much on an unreliable “reliable source”.
A recent conference of African journalists in Harare was told the 13 of their number had been killed on the continent – mostly in Somalia. It’s hardly likely that these journalists were in the “crossfire” of the civil war that has raged in that country since the overthrow of the dictator Mohammed Siad Barre as president.
In most cases, they were deliberately targeted. They were suspected of siding with one side of the conflict against the other – or for reporting that one side was losing the war when that same side believed they were scoring success after success.
In Zimbabwe, the most well-publicised death of a photo-journalist, at the hands of persons unknown, was that of Edward Chikomba. He formerly worked for the state TV. He had become a freelance photojournalist after being retrenched.
So far, there have been no arrests in connection with his death.
Journalists been arrested and locked up for doing their job. Under the notorious Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, journalists have been picked up and locked up by the police.
Before that law came into effect, the same measures could be taken against journalists under the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act. This law was passed by the settler regime to deal with rising African agitation against the colonial administration.
In 2001, I was one of the four journalists from The Daily News, locked up at the Harare central police station over a story relating to the alleged looting of farm property by the police or some other such law enforcement agency. With me in the lockup were the editor, Geoffrey Nyarota, the news editor, John Gambanga and the senior reporter, Sam Munyavi. Only he is still out of the country, the rest of us being around and trying hard to do what we were trained todo–be journalists again.
My time in the cells – about ten hours, reminded me, rather horribly, that you could get killed in this job – or die of other causes.
In 2001, I was 64 years old. I have suffered from Type 2 diabetes since I was 34 years old. Nyarota is diabetic too. We shared his medication. If we had been locked up for longer, there is no telling how we would have fared underf the harsh conditions in the crowded cells.
The faint-hearted cadet reporter, entering journalism from the idealistic standpoint of trying to “make a difference”, might find the real-life conditions of the job so frightening, they might decided there and then to quit – join the priesthood or become a teacher or go farming.
To stick it out –as some of us have – takes a commitment to what has been called a thankless job for society. The genuine journalists are driven by the adventure of making a difference. Each story is graded on its potency for making a difference to people’s lives – however insignificant. If people conclude that the news they read or watch or listen to makes a difference to their lives, they develop an attachment to the purveyors of such news.
In my mind, as I sat in my underpants in the cells at Harare central police station in 2001, ran the question: Am I assumed to have committed a crime against society – or was I about to commit such a crime?
Fortunately for the four of us, the wheels
of justice prevailed eventually. Our lawyers managed to convince a judge that we were being held illegally. We were released. The threat was that we would still be charged with a crime arising from a story
we had published – which had “caused alarm and despondency..
All four of us must have reflected, at some point, we were fortunate not to have been killed. As far as I know, all of us have not changed our minds about journalism as a result of that frightening experience. That is as it should be. If others before us had not stiffened their resolve after similar challenges, where would journalism be today?
MOST journalists are acutely aware of the perils endemic in a story that walks into the newsroom, screaming its head off about being The Big Story of the day.
A story for which the reporter does not have to sweat has all the danger signals of being either a non-story, or a story likely to explode into the reporter’s or the editor’s face – sooner or later.
Most reporters learn, through being in the trenches for long, that a good story must, first of all, wear the badge of “public interest” on its lapel. If it doesn’t, then it needs to be probed thoroughly before a reporter is assigned to it.
Once it passes that rigorous test, the next thing is to assess its source. This has to be a fairly reliable source. The source may not want to be identified no further than being “reliable”.
The reporter must ascertain that the reason for this anonymity is genuine and justified. If it cannot be proved to the satisfaction of both the reporter and the editor, then it should be announced that “all bets are off”.
The source must be identified or there will be no story. This is necessary, in the first place, for the paper’s credibility. Then, of course, there is the question of defamation. The editor could always take the decision on the probability that the source would have no legitimate reason to “tell a long story” to the paper.
But there should be no hesitation either way: the cost to the newspaper could be enormous. Quite often, it could involve the lost of a life or lives. This might be far-fetched on the face of it. But a good editor knows enough about the job to realize there is this adage: If in doubt, don’t.
The mention of death, though brief, has to be taken seriously. Of course, journalists have been killed for more grievous errors of omission or commission than relying too much on an unreliable “reliable source”.
A recent conference of African journalists in Harare was told the 13 of their number had been killed on the continent – mostly in Somalia. It’s hardly likely that these journalists were in the “crossfire” of the civil war that has raged in that country since the overthrow of the dictator Mohammed Siad Barre as president.
In most cases, they were deliberately targeted. They were suspected of siding with one side of the conflict against the other – or for reporting that one side was losing the war when that same side believed they were scoring success after success.
In Zimbabwe, the most well-publicised death of a photo-journalist, at the hands of persons unknown, was that of Edward Chikomba. He formerly worked for the state TV. He had become a freelance photojournalist after being retrenched.
So far, there have been no arrests in connection with his death.
Journalists been arrested and locked up for doing their job. Under the notorious Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, journalists have been picked up and locked up by the police.
Before that law came into effect, the same measures could be taken against journalists under the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act. This law was passed by the settler regime to deal with rising African agitation against the colonial administration.
In 2001, I was one of the four journalists from The Daily News, locked up at the Harare central police station over a story relating to the alleged looting of farm property by the police or some other such law enforcement agency. With me in the lockup were the editor, Geoffrey Nyarota, the news editor, John Gambanga and the senior reporter, Sam Munyavi. Only he is still out of the country, the rest of us being around and trying hard to do what we were trained todo–be journalists again.
My time in the cells – about ten hours, reminded me, rather horribly, that you could get killed in this job – or die of other causes.
In 2001, I was 64 years old. I have suffered from Type 2 diabetes since I was 34 years old. Nyarota is diabetic too. We shared his medication. If we had been locked up for longer, there is no telling how we would have fared underf the harsh conditions in the crowded cells.
The faint-hearted cadet reporter, entering journalism from the idealistic standpoint of trying to “make a difference”, might find the real-life conditions of the job so frightening, they might decided there and then to quit – join the priesthood or become a teacher or go farming.
To stick it out –as some of us have – takes a commitment to what has been called a thankless job for society. The genuine journalists are driven by the adventure of making a difference. Each story is graded on its potency for making a difference to people’s lives – however insignificant. If people conclude that the news they read or watch or listen to makes a difference to their lives, they develop an attachment to the purveyors of such news.
In my mind, as I sat in my underpants in the cells at Harare central police station in 2001, ran the question: Am I assumed to have committed a crime against society – or was I about to commit such a crime?
Fortunately for the four of us, the wheels
of justice prevailed eventually. Our lawyers managed to convince a judge that we were being held illegally. We were released. The threat was that we would still be charged with a crime arising from a story
we had published – which had “caused alarm and despondency..
All four of us must have reflected, at some point, we were fortunate not to have been killed. As far as I know, all of us have not changed our minds about journalism as a result of that frightening experience. That is as it should be. If others before us had not stiffened their resolve after similar challenges, where would journalism be today?
Friday, July 16, 2010
PI’d from a capacity to expose
By Bill Saidi
JOURNALISTS, particularly in Africa, can be viewed as “dangerous to national interests” for any number of reasons, some of them as weird as being accused of wearing hip-hugging shorts. Journalists have been killed all over the world, including many in Africa. In summary, the reason for this is their ability to a expose – crime, corruption, scandal, lies and massacres.
The exact definition of these “interests” can vary from country to country, from leader to leader. But, almost always, it hinges on their published perceptions of a country, the leaders, their rivals for power and even their peccadilloes.
So, it is nothing unusual for a journalist to be barred from entering a country. The government is under no obligation to disclose its reasons – at least, not that I know of.
In 1974, I was declared a Prohibited Immigrant from Malawi. My Zambian passport described me, accurately, as a journalist. By then, I had already used it to travel to Kenya, the United Kingdom, the United States, West Germany, the Soviet Union – and Malawi. Every trip was premised on my function as a journalist, or – in the case of the Soviet Union - as a short story writer. .
In 1973, I had had my winning short story published in a journal of the Soviet Writers’ Union. I had been accepted as a member of the Afro-Asian Writers’ Union on the strength of that story, whose title in Russian or Kirilitsa was A Man’s Heart. The officials in Malawi had no idea that a man with the distinctly Malawian surname of “Saidi” had scored something of a “first” in this huge foreign country, one of the world’s two superpowers, then.
My short story had been selected because it had won joint first prize in a nationwide short story competition in Zambia, only three years after I had arrived there from Southern Rhodesia.
I was shocked when, at Chileka airport in Blantyre. I was very politely asked to stand aside before being “processed” to enter the country. After a few tense moments – for me - I was handed a form to sign. I read the small print in real terror, after glancing with alarm at the large print – PROHIBITED IMMIGRANT.
At the back of my mind was a thought which, I believed, my father might have viewed with either disgust or idle curiosity. That would depend on his understanding – wherever he was then - of present-day politics in his country - nay, his continent. Agonelepi Saidi had died in 1951, when I was 14 years old. I was in Standard Five at the Salisbury African West school in Harare township. It’s Chitsere today.
My mother had broken the news to me when we were at St Peter’s in Chihota, outside Salisbury, where her mother’s people lived. Incidentally, these people traced their origins from Chaminuka, the great Shona prophet. Personally, I had listened to my grandmother speak, with nostalgia, of her time in Chitungwiza, the legendary headquarters of this prophet. I could have played up this ancestral connection, to the hilt, to boost my own image. My grandmother’s totem was Rwizi, which would immediately suggest an ancestral origin going back to Chaminuka.
All I can say now to all those who have spoken disparagingly of my alien” origins, is: “Eat your heart out!”
I cried. I cried because I had not known the man as intimately as sons get to knows their fathers. I was told, by my mother, that I had met Mr Saidi, a tailor by profession, once. Our meeting was in the Old Bricks, where I grew up. Throughout my adult life I have tried to build a picture of him in my mind, all in vain.
My mother told me he left the country after our meeting in the Old Bricks. She told me he had asked me to write a letter to his people in Nyasaland – that he was coming home.
My mother says I did write the letter. I was in Standard One at the time. I have only a vague recollection of the incident. But it always brings a glow to my heart. Although he never married my mother, he must have harboured some kind of love for the result of their intimacy, enough for him to seek my help in communicating with his people.
But here I was now, in 1974, being told by the government of Hastings Kamuzu Banda, the president of the republic, that I was being legally thrown out of my father’s country. At first, I was aghast. Then I landed on the terra firma of African politics. Nobody cared a fig about such coincidences.
There was dirty politics at work here. The previous year, I had visited Malawi without a hitch. My mission, which I believe I accomplished with some brilliance, was to send money to my mother in Salisbury. Since almost all ties with Rhodesia had been severed by the Zambian government after UDI, there was no easy way to send money to her – except through Malawi. My research on this had been thorough. I sent her a total of eighty Kwacha – a lot of money at the time – from Blantyre and Lilongwe.
That trip had turned out to be something entirely different from what I had planned and the reasons were as entirely political, as was my subsequent deportation from that country.
I boarded the plane to Chileka at Lusaka airport. I was officially on leave from my job in the Lusaka head office of the group. Also at the airport were Vernon Mwaanga and Alexander Chikwanda. Mwaanga was editor-in-chief of Times Newspapers. His friend, Chikwanda, was a minister in the government of President Kaunda. They were fairly young and had been seriously described as “the young turks” of the UNIP leadership. I knew them from way back, before independence in 1964.
Then they introduced to the man they had come to see off at the airport – Aleke Banda. Like me, he too had been born in Southern Rhodesia, but his people were originally from Malawi. Aleke was now big in the government of his namesake. In fact, he was something of a luminary, having taken care of things while Banda and the other stalwarts of the struggle, including Yatuta and Dunduzu Chisiza and Henry Chipembere, were in prison. We knew of each other by reputation.
After the introductions, we boarded the plane, Aleke in first class. What happened upon my arrival was so spectacular, for me, I was initially alarmed. The VIP treatment was a complete surprise. I was assigned a government vehicle from the airport to Mount Soche hotel in Blantyre. From there until I left the country, I was treated like a guest of the government of Malawi. Everything was laid on, including an escort. What they had worked out was an itinerary which included all the tourist attractions of this beautiful country, including Lake Malawi, As a journalist, I have always learnt to treat such political generosity with suspicion. I knew, almost instinctively, that Aleke Banda had a lot to do with it. What would be the payoff? They would expect something from me. Aleke had to be as consummate a politician as all those others I had known in the past, including Vernon Mwaanga and Alex Chikwanda: their breed did not lavish generosity on non-politicians – particularly journalists - for nothing.
My escort was something of a surprise. Harvey Mlanga was now the editor of The Malawi News, the party newspaper. We had known each other for years, back in Salisbury. He was a much-respected journalist, not a party hack, or someone routinely assigned to sing praises to the ruling party and the government. I knew then that I was being accorded this royal treatment for a specific reason – although, for the life of me, at the time, I had no idea what it could be.
Harvey and I toured Malawi like old friends. He was older than me, but we had known me for such a long time, we both knew what we believed was the duty of the journalist – to be honest with themselves and not to “sell out” the profession for any reason. We also accepted that there was this vague thing called “national duty”, over which you could excuse working for a party or a government newspaper. So, we walked about where we would draw the line – it was as vague as it could be: only when you believed it was utterly immoral and a repudiation of all you stood for as a journalist.
At the end of my tour, Aleke Banda held a reception for me. We both spoke glowingly of what had been done. I was, to be honest, still in something of a haze. But I did sent money to my mother.
Back in Zambia, I thought I had done myself proud. In 1974, after I had been promoted to deputy editor-in-chief and moved to Ndola, I took the plane to Chileka again. I had missed something after my return. An article had been published in The Times of Zambia, which I had not seen before its publication – as I might have done, in my capacity as a senior editor.
I only realized how its contents had been explosive after my return from Malawi: it was a praise song for Aleke Banda, predicting he would succeed Kamuzu Banda as president of the republic. There was no byline.
Evidently, there was fury in Kamuzu Banda’s camp. He had not sanctioned the grooming of Aleke Banda as his successor. Who was trying to promote the idea? Who, from The Times of Zambia, which had published the sensational article, had recently been feted by the same Aleke Banda? Bill Saidi, of course.
To this day, I still don’t know who wrote that piece, for which I paid the price, with deportation. I visited Malawi only after Kamuzu Banda had been defeated by Bakhili Muluzi in the 1990s. My name, I was glad to discover, had been removed from the list of Prohibited Immigrants.
I have a feeling that Agonelepi Saidi, wherever he might be, will be shaking his head in amusement. “that's life, my boy,” he might have said. “It's not a picnic.” Certainly, for a journalist, there is no time for that picnic. They can give you the impression of affording you something like a picnic. But always beware of the payoff.
JOURNALISTS, particularly in Africa, can be viewed as “dangerous to national interests” for any number of reasons, some of them as weird as being accused of wearing hip-hugging shorts. Journalists have been killed all over the world, including many in Africa. In summary, the reason for this is their ability to a expose – crime, corruption, scandal, lies and massacres.
The exact definition of these “interests” can vary from country to country, from leader to leader. But, almost always, it hinges on their published perceptions of a country, the leaders, their rivals for power and even their peccadilloes.
So, it is nothing unusual for a journalist to be barred from entering a country. The government is under no obligation to disclose its reasons – at least, not that I know of.
In 1974, I was declared a Prohibited Immigrant from Malawi. My Zambian passport described me, accurately, as a journalist. By then, I had already used it to travel to Kenya, the United Kingdom, the United States, West Germany, the Soviet Union – and Malawi. Every trip was premised on my function as a journalist, or – in the case of the Soviet Union - as a short story writer. .
In 1973, I had had my winning short story published in a journal of the Soviet Writers’ Union. I had been accepted as a member of the Afro-Asian Writers’ Union on the strength of that story, whose title in Russian or Kirilitsa was A Man’s Heart. The officials in Malawi had no idea that a man with the distinctly Malawian surname of “Saidi” had scored something of a “first” in this huge foreign country, one of the world’s two superpowers, then.
My short story had been selected because it had won joint first prize in a nationwide short story competition in Zambia, only three years after I had arrived there from Southern Rhodesia.
I was shocked when, at Chileka airport in Blantyre. I was very politely asked to stand aside before being “processed” to enter the country. After a few tense moments – for me - I was handed a form to sign. I read the small print in real terror, after glancing with alarm at the large print – PROHIBITED IMMIGRANT.
At the back of my mind was a thought which, I believed, my father might have viewed with either disgust or idle curiosity. That would depend on his understanding – wherever he was then - of present-day politics in his country - nay, his continent. Agonelepi Saidi had died in 1951, when I was 14 years old. I was in Standard Five at the Salisbury African West school in Harare township. It’s Chitsere today.
My mother had broken the news to me when we were at St Peter’s in Chihota, outside Salisbury, where her mother’s people lived. Incidentally, these people traced their origins from Chaminuka, the great Shona prophet. Personally, I had listened to my grandmother speak, with nostalgia, of her time in Chitungwiza, the legendary headquarters of this prophet. I could have played up this ancestral connection, to the hilt, to boost my own image. My grandmother’s totem was Rwizi, which would immediately suggest an ancestral origin going back to Chaminuka.
All I can say now to all those who have spoken disparagingly of my alien” origins, is: “Eat your heart out!”
I cried. I cried because I had not known the man as intimately as sons get to knows their fathers. I was told, by my mother, that I had met Mr Saidi, a tailor by profession, once. Our meeting was in the Old Bricks, where I grew up. Throughout my adult life I have tried to build a picture of him in my mind, all in vain.
My mother told me he left the country after our meeting in the Old Bricks. She told me he had asked me to write a letter to his people in Nyasaland – that he was coming home.
My mother says I did write the letter. I was in Standard One at the time. I have only a vague recollection of the incident. But it always brings a glow to my heart. Although he never married my mother, he must have harboured some kind of love for the result of their intimacy, enough for him to seek my help in communicating with his people.
But here I was now, in 1974, being told by the government of Hastings Kamuzu Banda, the president of the republic, that I was being legally thrown out of my father’s country. At first, I was aghast. Then I landed on the terra firma of African politics. Nobody cared a fig about such coincidences.
There was dirty politics at work here. The previous year, I had visited Malawi without a hitch. My mission, which I believe I accomplished with some brilliance, was to send money to my mother in Salisbury. Since almost all ties with Rhodesia had been severed by the Zambian government after UDI, there was no easy way to send money to her – except through Malawi. My research on this had been thorough. I sent her a total of eighty Kwacha – a lot of money at the time – from Blantyre and Lilongwe.
That trip had turned out to be something entirely different from what I had planned and the reasons were as entirely political, as was my subsequent deportation from that country.
I boarded the plane to Chileka at Lusaka airport. I was officially on leave from my job in the Lusaka head office of the group. Also at the airport were Vernon Mwaanga and Alexander Chikwanda. Mwaanga was editor-in-chief of Times Newspapers. His friend, Chikwanda, was a minister in the government of President Kaunda. They were fairly young and had been seriously described as “the young turks” of the UNIP leadership. I knew them from way back, before independence in 1964.
Then they introduced to the man they had come to see off at the airport – Aleke Banda. Like me, he too had been born in Southern Rhodesia, but his people were originally from Malawi. Aleke was now big in the government of his namesake. In fact, he was something of a luminary, having taken care of things while Banda and the other stalwarts of the struggle, including Yatuta and Dunduzu Chisiza and Henry Chipembere, were in prison. We knew of each other by reputation.
After the introductions, we boarded the plane, Aleke in first class. What happened upon my arrival was so spectacular, for me, I was initially alarmed. The VIP treatment was a complete surprise. I was assigned a government vehicle from the airport to Mount Soche hotel in Blantyre. From there until I left the country, I was treated like a guest of the government of Malawi. Everything was laid on, including an escort. What they had worked out was an itinerary which included all the tourist attractions of this beautiful country, including Lake Malawi, As a journalist, I have always learnt to treat such political generosity with suspicion. I knew, almost instinctively, that Aleke Banda had a lot to do with it. What would be the payoff? They would expect something from me. Aleke had to be as consummate a politician as all those others I had known in the past, including Vernon Mwaanga and Alex Chikwanda: their breed did not lavish generosity on non-politicians – particularly journalists - for nothing.
My escort was something of a surprise. Harvey Mlanga was now the editor of The Malawi News, the party newspaper. We had known each other for years, back in Salisbury. He was a much-respected journalist, not a party hack, or someone routinely assigned to sing praises to the ruling party and the government. I knew then that I was being accorded this royal treatment for a specific reason – although, for the life of me, at the time, I had no idea what it could be.
Harvey and I toured Malawi like old friends. He was older than me, but we had known me for such a long time, we both knew what we believed was the duty of the journalist – to be honest with themselves and not to “sell out” the profession for any reason. We also accepted that there was this vague thing called “national duty”, over which you could excuse working for a party or a government newspaper. So, we walked about where we would draw the line – it was as vague as it could be: only when you believed it was utterly immoral and a repudiation of all you stood for as a journalist.
At the end of my tour, Aleke Banda held a reception for me. We both spoke glowingly of what had been done. I was, to be honest, still in something of a haze. But I did sent money to my mother.
Back in Zambia, I thought I had done myself proud. In 1974, after I had been promoted to deputy editor-in-chief and moved to Ndola, I took the plane to Chileka again. I had missed something after my return. An article had been published in The Times of Zambia, which I had not seen before its publication – as I might have done, in my capacity as a senior editor.
I only realized how its contents had been explosive after my return from Malawi: it was a praise song for Aleke Banda, predicting he would succeed Kamuzu Banda as president of the republic. There was no byline.
Evidently, there was fury in Kamuzu Banda’s camp. He had not sanctioned the grooming of Aleke Banda as his successor. Who was trying to promote the idea? Who, from The Times of Zambia, which had published the sensational article, had recently been feted by the same Aleke Banda? Bill Saidi, of course.
To this day, I still don’t know who wrote that piece, for which I paid the price, with deportation. I visited Malawi only after Kamuzu Banda had been defeated by Bakhili Muluzi in the 1990s. My name, I was glad to discover, had been removed from the list of Prohibited Immigrants.
I have a feeling that Agonelepi Saidi, wherever he might be, will be shaking his head in amusement. “that's life, my boy,” he might have said. “It's not a picnic.” Certainly, for a journalist, there is no time for that picnic. They can give you the impression of affording you something like a picnic. But always beware of the payoff.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF JOURNALISM
BY Bill Saidi
AT 21years of age, I was locked up in a police cell for the first time in my life. It all happened in 1958. The cause of my incarceration was journalism – indirectly, I suppose. But the chances are if I had not been a reporter on The African Daily News, riding a company motorcycle, I would never have ended up in the original Harare police station.
That place is now officially called Mbare police station. My journey to the police cell had been long and painful, in the end. But it had begun with the promise of achievement such as young people dream of at 21 years of age. I had been a reporter for a year or so. My major assignment at the time was the coverage of R.S. Garfield-Todd’s election campaign in Salisbury.
I had travelled to most of the venues of his meetings on the motorcycle. I could drive a motorcycle, even without a licence, because I had learnt to do so with my friend, Cecil John Matowe’s Norton Roadholder, a 600 cc monster on which I had also had an accident. So, T`he African Daily News, a 150 cc “baby”, was child’s play by comparison.
The election had ended. Garfield Todd had lost, in spite of The African Daily News’s spirited front page coverage of his speeches. This assignment should have been done by Albert Dumbutshena, the paper’s chief reporter and my mentor. Since he was indisposed, it fell to me to do the job. It was an enormous challenge for a 21-year-old cadet reporter who had only recently graduated to a junior reporter. The senior editors, including Nathan Shamuyarira, had placed so much faith in my ability to carry out this arduous task I felt honoured. I had picked up some gems of advice from the veteran. We all called him “Dumbs” or Sapa, after the South African Press Association. Another senior reporter named Moses Mwale was AP – for Associated Press. Many of the foreign copy we used was from Sapa-AP. Dumbutshena and Mwale were recognised as the “stars” of the newsroom, hence their nicknames.
I probably would have joined this distinguished league if I had not had the accident on the motorcycle. The cause of it was a moment of pure madness on my part. A great friend of mine, Willie Sondayi, ran a barbershop at Matapi hostels in what is now called Mbare, but was then Harare towmship.
We had been to school together, After school, we had formed a singing group, The Stargazers. We never went on stage.. But forming the group and doing rigorous rehearsals was great fun while it lasted. Willie was well-read. Every day, he would buy a copy of The Herald and The Sunday Mail. He knew a lot, as a result of the Suez Canal crisis – much more than I did, although I was the journalist. .her and been firm friends after school. With him at the time was another friend. The proposal was made that we celebrate the end of my assignment with a boozer-up at t a nightclub in the city. In our enthusiasm, we ignored the obvious and essential statistic relating to the motorcycle manufacturer's idea of how people could ride on it at a time.
But as I said, there was madness in the air. We had the accident before we had reached town. The three of us fell in a heap when, I believe, we hit a cyclist. He wasn’t seriously hurt. But when the police got to the scene and discovered how the accident had occurred, there was no escape for me.
Needless to say, by the time the police had succeeded in hauling me to the station, I had sobered up – more or less.
I might have had a nightmare or two while trying to sleep in the unfriendly circumstances of the cell. I don’t remember conversation with any of my fellow occupant s. They seemed as disinterested in me as I was disinterest in them. All I was praying for was for this waking nightmare to end.
It ended the next morning. I was all alone again, the company nowhere to be seen. The magistrate – a stern-faced white person – was unsparing. He fairly laid it on the line for me: here I was, supposedly a responsible citizen setting an example for probity and uprightness. But the truth? I was a drunk and drunken driver, to boot. I deserved the maximum, he said: Thirty Pounds fine.
The company paid the fine. I was lectured, but not fired – for which I was eternally grateful. Since then, over the years, I have pondered over the company’s code of…something. They knew I had no licence. They knew this was illegal. Had I been thrown to the wolves? Moreover, to cap it all, they demanded their money back. I chafed at the unfairness of it all. Bit Providence was on my side. They threw other challenges at me. What was clear top me was this: someone UP THERE (among the senior editor or in the back of the Beyond) had absolute faith in my capacity to endure all vicissitudes and still emerge unscathed.
I was appointed, during my four years at African Newspapers, assistant sports editor, during which I wrote a column, Generally Speaking. I covered soccer at the Number One Ground (before they turned it into Rufaro Stadium). My great lesson was to research everything, to sharpen my understanding of the English idiom, to read and read as much as I could – magazines, novels, classics and thrillers.
So, I had a great time as acting editor of The Bwalo la Nyasaland, The African Parade – during which I received an unexpected raise from the managing director himself.
|At some point, I wrote a short story for OUR AFRICA, a Catholic magazine published in South Africa Other short stories were published in our magazine, Parade. For one such short story, I received the invaluable expert advice of the late Angeline Mhlanga (nee Makwavarara). We worked on the magazine together, under the editorship of Kingsley Dinga Dube... .
There were a few challenges, but none insurmountable..It's exhilarating to discover you are in your element: I loved to be on the magazine. This love affair did not go unnoticed. It taught me a salutary lessons: once you invest love and dedication into your work, people are bound to notice it. It will be some time before I forget meeting the managing director, Mr Cedric Paver, on the stairs leading to the newsroom upstairs. He mentioned a piece I had done for the magazine. It had impressed him, he said. As if in an afterthought, he asked how much I was getting. I disclosed, almost in a whisper, the paltry rewards of my precious labour. He wasn't visibly aghast at the disclosure, but his reply spoke volumes “You'll go up to thirty pounds immediately,” he announced, with something like triumph in his voice. This amounted to a wage boost of seven pounds and ten shillings. I didn't exactly do a wild dance of joy. But Paver could see how excited and grateful I was.
At that time, during federation and its fake policy of “partnership” between black and white, it was tempting to see black people downgrading each other. For me, praise from a white chief executive was rare. But praise from a black editor, except Kelvin Mlenga, was even rarer.at African Newspapers. I enjoyed my time as acting editor of Parade, until I assigned myself to investigate the running of SA “house of ill repute” in home turn of Highfield.
The story had been broken by - who else? – Moses Mwale, the “UP” in the African The Daily News newsroom. My intention was daring:- to actually prove beyond any reasonable doubt that there was a former Johannesburg beauty queen offering her services to all who could afford them.
To this day, I have no idea how I intended to play the game – go for broke, as they say, or chicken out with apologies at the last moment. I had made sure I was well-prepared, sartorially, for the great occasion. I had passed through the famous Highfield Cocktail Bar at Machipisa.shopping centre. I had taken one or two to help build my self-confidence.
In the lounge, with its soft lights and lazy music, I sat down alone – until she came in: She was tall ands slim, dressed in an off-the-shoulder dress allowing me to study and admire her shoulders and deep cavity between her breasts. She sat down and lay back in my easy-chair, ready to engage her in conversations old as the hills.
I have always suspected The Madame was startled by the sound of my voice – whichever part of the house she was listening from. Our conversation had not developed into the languid, lazy but dreamy routine which always precedes the initiation of…something in these scenarios. She was screaming, obviously upon recognising me, and appreciating that I had recognised her – she worked in our canteen at African Newspapers.
I made a dash for the door. She made her own dash – for some place where her bodyguard or bouncer was to be located for emergencies. He emerged. I had only a flitting glance of him, a short,muscular man with determination writ large on his face..I was young, relatively strong, even with a few beers under my belly. I ran and he pursued me. His marksmanship as almost uncanny. He thew a rock at me and hit me smack on the back of the head. I went down, but got up immediately. He gave up the chase, convinced I had been neutralised..... . ..
AT 21years of age, I was locked up in a police cell for the first time in my life. It all happened in 1958. The cause of my incarceration was journalism – indirectly, I suppose. But the chances are if I had not been a reporter on The African Daily News, riding a company motorcycle, I would never have ended up in the original Harare police station.
That place is now officially called Mbare police station. My journey to the police cell had been long and painful, in the end. But it had begun with the promise of achievement such as young people dream of at 21 years of age. I had been a reporter for a year or so. My major assignment at the time was the coverage of R.S. Garfield-Todd’s election campaign in Salisbury.
I had travelled to most of the venues of his meetings on the motorcycle. I could drive a motorcycle, even without a licence, because I had learnt to do so with my friend, Cecil John Matowe’s Norton Roadholder, a 600 cc monster on which I had also had an accident. So, T`he African Daily News, a 150 cc “baby”, was child’s play by comparison.
The election had ended. Garfield Todd had lost, in spite of The African Daily News’s spirited front page coverage of his speeches. This assignment should have been done by Albert Dumbutshena, the paper’s chief reporter and my mentor. Since he was indisposed, it fell to me to do the job. It was an enormous challenge for a 21-year-old cadet reporter who had only recently graduated to a junior reporter. The senior editors, including Nathan Shamuyarira, had placed so much faith in my ability to carry out this arduous task I felt honoured. I had picked up some gems of advice from the veteran. We all called him “Dumbs” or Sapa, after the South African Press Association. Another senior reporter named Moses Mwale was AP – for Associated Press. Many of the foreign copy we used was from Sapa-AP. Dumbutshena and Mwale were recognised as the “stars” of the newsroom, hence their nicknames.
I probably would have joined this distinguished league if I had not had the accident on the motorcycle. The cause of it was a moment of pure madness on my part. A great friend of mine, Willie Sondayi, ran a barbershop at Matapi hostels in what is now called Mbare, but was then Harare towmship.
We had been to school together, After school, we had formed a singing group, The Stargazers. We never went on stage.. But forming the group and doing rigorous rehearsals was great fun while it lasted. Willie was well-read. Every day, he would buy a copy of The Herald and The Sunday Mail. He knew a lot, as a result of the Suez Canal crisis – much more than I did, although I was the journalist. .her and been firm friends after school. With him at the time was another friend. The proposal was made that we celebrate the end of my assignment with a boozer-up at t a nightclub in the city. In our enthusiasm, we ignored the obvious and essential statistic relating to the motorcycle manufacturer's idea of how people could ride on it at a time.
But as I said, there was madness in the air. We had the accident before we had reached town. The three of us fell in a heap when, I believe, we hit a cyclist. He wasn’t seriously hurt. But when the police got to the scene and discovered how the accident had occurred, there was no escape for me.
Needless to say, by the time the police had succeeded in hauling me to the station, I had sobered up – more or less.
I might have had a nightmare or two while trying to sleep in the unfriendly circumstances of the cell. I don’t remember conversation with any of my fellow occupant s. They seemed as disinterested in me as I was disinterest in them. All I was praying for was for this waking nightmare to end.
It ended the next morning. I was all alone again, the company nowhere to be seen. The magistrate – a stern-faced white person – was unsparing. He fairly laid it on the line for me: here I was, supposedly a responsible citizen setting an example for probity and uprightness. But the truth? I was a drunk and drunken driver, to boot. I deserved the maximum, he said: Thirty Pounds fine.
The company paid the fine. I was lectured, but not fired – for which I was eternally grateful. Since then, over the years, I have pondered over the company’s code of…something. They knew I had no licence. They knew this was illegal. Had I been thrown to the wolves? Moreover, to cap it all, they demanded their money back. I chafed at the unfairness of it all. Bit Providence was on my side. They threw other challenges at me. What was clear top me was this: someone UP THERE (among the senior editor or in the back of the Beyond) had absolute faith in my capacity to endure all vicissitudes and still emerge unscathed.
I was appointed, during my four years at African Newspapers, assistant sports editor, during which I wrote a column, Generally Speaking. I covered soccer at the Number One Ground (before they turned it into Rufaro Stadium). My great lesson was to research everything, to sharpen my understanding of the English idiom, to read and read as much as I could – magazines, novels, classics and thrillers.
So, I had a great time as acting editor of The Bwalo la Nyasaland, The African Parade – during which I received an unexpected raise from the managing director himself.
|At some point, I wrote a short story for OUR AFRICA, a Catholic magazine published in South Africa Other short stories were published in our magazine, Parade. For one such short story, I received the invaluable expert advice of the late Angeline Mhlanga (nee Makwavarara). We worked on the magazine together, under the editorship of Kingsley Dinga Dube... .
There were a few challenges, but none insurmountable..It's exhilarating to discover you are in your element: I loved to be on the magazine. This love affair did not go unnoticed. It taught me a salutary lessons: once you invest love and dedication into your work, people are bound to notice it. It will be some time before I forget meeting the managing director, Mr Cedric Paver, on the stairs leading to the newsroom upstairs. He mentioned a piece I had done for the magazine. It had impressed him, he said. As if in an afterthought, he asked how much I was getting. I disclosed, almost in a whisper, the paltry rewards of my precious labour. He wasn't visibly aghast at the disclosure, but his reply spoke volumes “You'll go up to thirty pounds immediately,” he announced, with something like triumph in his voice. This amounted to a wage boost of seven pounds and ten shillings. I didn't exactly do a wild dance of joy. But Paver could see how excited and grateful I was.
At that time, during federation and its fake policy of “partnership” between black and white, it was tempting to see black people downgrading each other. For me, praise from a white chief executive was rare. But praise from a black editor, except Kelvin Mlenga, was even rarer.at African Newspapers. I enjoyed my time as acting editor of Parade, until I assigned myself to investigate the running of SA “house of ill repute” in home turn of Highfield.
The story had been broken by - who else? – Moses Mwale, the “UP” in the African The Daily News newsroom. My intention was daring:- to actually prove beyond any reasonable doubt that there was a former Johannesburg beauty queen offering her services to all who could afford them.
To this day, I have no idea how I intended to play the game – go for broke, as they say, or chicken out with apologies at the last moment. I had made sure I was well-prepared, sartorially, for the great occasion. I had passed through the famous Highfield Cocktail Bar at Machipisa.shopping centre. I had taken one or two to help build my self-confidence.
In the lounge, with its soft lights and lazy music, I sat down alone – until she came in: She was tall ands slim, dressed in an off-the-shoulder dress allowing me to study and admire her shoulders and deep cavity between her breasts. She sat down and lay back in my easy-chair, ready to engage her in conversations old as the hills.
I have always suspected The Madame was startled by the sound of my voice – whichever part of the house she was listening from. Our conversation had not developed into the languid, lazy but dreamy routine which always precedes the initiation of…something in these scenarios. She was screaming, obviously upon recognising me, and appreciating that I had recognised her – she worked in our canteen at African Newspapers.
I made a dash for the door. She made her own dash – for some place where her bodyguard or bouncer was to be located for emergencies. He emerged. I had only a flitting glance of him, a short,muscular man with determination writ large on his face..I was young, relatively strong, even with a few beers under my belly. I ran and he pursued me. His marksmanship as almost uncanny. He thew a rock at me and hit me smack on the back of the head. I went down, but got up immediately. He gave up the chase, convinced I had been neutralised..... . ..
THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF JOURNALISM
BY Bill Saidi
AT 21years of age, I was locked up in a police cell for the first time in my life. It all happened in 1958. The cause of my incarceration was journalism – indirectly, I suppose. But the chances are if I had not been a reporter on The African Daily News, riding a company motorcycle, I would never have ended up in the original Harare police station.
That place is now officially called Mbare police station. My journey to the police cell had been long and painful, in the end. But it had begun with the promise of achievement such as young people dream of at 21 years of age. I had been a reporter for a year or so. My major assignment at the time was the coverage of R.S. Garfield-Todd’s election campaign in Salisbury.
I had travelled to most of the venues of his meetings on the motorcycle. I could drive a motorcycle, even without a licence, because I had learnt to do so with my friend, Cecil John Matowe’s Norton Roadholder, a 600 cc monster on which I had also had an accident. So, T`he African Daily News, a 150 cc “baby”, was child’s play by comparison.
The election had ended. Garfield Todd had lost, in spite of The African Daily News’s spirited front page coverage of his speeches. This assignment should have been done by Albert Dumbutshena, the paper’s chief reporter and my mentor. Since he was indisposed, it fell to me to do the job. It was an enormous challenge for a 21-year-old cadet reporter who had only recently graduated to a junior reporter. The senior editors, including Nathan Shamuyarira, had placed so much faith in my ability to carry out this arduous task I felt honoured. I had picked up some gems of advice from the veteran. We all called him “Dumbs” or Sapa, after the South African Press Association. Another senior reporter named Moses Mwale was AP – for Associated Press. Many of the foreign copy we used was from Sapa-AP. Dumbutshena and Mwale were recognised as the “stars” of the newsroom, hence their nicknames.
I probably would have joined this distinguished league if I had not had the accident on the motorcycle. The cause of it was a moment of pure madness on my part. A great friend of mine, Willie Sondayi, ran a barbershop at Matapi hostels in what is now called Mbare, but was then Harare towmship.
We had been to school together, After school, we had formed a singing group, The Stargazers. We never went on stage.. But forming the group and doing rigorous rehearsals was great fun while it lasted. Willie was well-read. Every day, he would buy a copy of The Herald and The Sunday Mail. He knew a lot, as a result of the Suez Canal crisis – much more than I did, although I was the journalist. .her and been firm friends after school. With him at the time was another friend. The proposal was made that we celebrate the end of my assignment with a boozer-up at t a nightclub in the city. In our enthusiasm, we ignored the obvious and essential statistic relating to the motorcycle manufacturer's idea of how people could ride on it at a time.
But as I said, there was madness in the air. We had the accident before we had reached town. The three of us fell in a heap when, I believe, we hit a cyclist. He wasn’t seriously hurt. But when the police got to the scene and discovered how the accident had occurred, there was no escape for me.
Needless to say, by the time the police had succeeded in hauling me to the station, I had sobered up – more or less.
I might have had a nightmare or two while trying to sleep in the unfriendly circumstances of the cell. I don’t remember conversation with any of my fellow occupant s. They seemed as disinterested in me as I was disinterest in them. All I was praying for was for this waking nightmare to end.
It ended the next morning. I was all alone again, the company nowhere to be seen. The magistrate – a stern-faced white person – was unsparing. He fairly laid it on the line for me: here I was, supposedly a responsible citizen setting an example for probity and uprightness. But the truth? I was a drunk and drunken driver, to boot. I deserved the maximum, he said: Thirty Pounds fine.
The company paid the fine. I was lectured, but not fired – for which I was eternally grateful. Since then, over the years, I have pondered over the company’s code of…something. They knew I had no licence. They knew this was illegal. Had I been thrown to the wolves? Moreover, to cap it all, they demanded their money back. I chafed at the unfairness of it all. Bit Providence was on my side. They threw other challenges at me. What was clear top me was this: someone UP THERE (among the senior editor or in the back of the Beyond) had absolute faith in my capacity to endure all vicissitudes and still emerge unscathed.
I was appointed, during my four years at African Newspapers, assistant sports editor, during which I wrote a column, Generally Speaking. I covered soccer at the Number One Ground (before they turned it into Rufaro Stadium). My great lesson was to research everything, to sharpen my understanding of the English idiom, to read and read as much as I could – magazines, novels, classics and thrillers.
So, I had a great time as acting editor of The Bwalo la Nyasaland, The African Parade – during which I received an unexpected raise from the managing director himself.
|At some point, I wrote a short story for OUR AFRICA, a Catholic magazine published in South Africa Other short stories were published in our magazine, Parade. For one such short story, I received the invaluable expert advice of the late Angeline Mhlanga (nee Makwavarara). We worked on the magazine together, under the editorship of Kingsley Dinga Dube... .
There were a few challenges, but none insurmountable..It's exhilarating to discover you are in your element: I loved to be on the magazine. This love affair did not go unnoticed. It taught me a salutary lessons: once you invest love and dedication into your work, people are bound to notice it. It will be some time before I forget meeting the managing director, Mr Cedric Paver, on the stairs leading to the newsroom upstairs. He mentioned a piece I had done for the magazine. It had impressed him, he said. As if in an afterthought, he asked how much I was getting. I disclosed, almost in a whisper, the paltry rewards of my precious labour. He wasn't visibly aghast at the disclosure, but his reply spoke volumes “You'll go up to thirty pounds immediately,” he announced, with something like triumph in his voice. This amounted to a wage boost of seven pounds and ten shillings. I didn't exactly do a wild dance of joy. But Paver could see how excited and grateful I was.
At that time, during federation and its fake policy of “partnership” between black and white, it was tempting to see black people downgrading each other. For me, praise from a white chief executive was rare. But praise from a black editor, except Kelvin Mlenga, was even rarer.at African Newspapers. I enjoyed my time as acting editor of Parade, until I assigned myself to investigate the running of SA “house of ill repute” in home turn of Highfield.
The story had been broken by - who else? – Moses Mwale, the “UP” in the African The Daily News newsroom. My intention was daring:- to actually prove beyond any reasonable doubt that there was a former Johannesburg beauty queen offering her services to all who could afford them.
To this day, I have no idea how I intended to play the game – go for broke, as they say, or chicken out with apologies at the last moment. I had made sure I was well-prepared, sartorially, for the great occasion. I had passed through the famous Highfield Cocktail Bar at Machipisa.shopping centre. I had taken one or two to help build my self-confidence.
In the lounge, with its soft lights and lazy music, I sat down alone – until she came in: She was tall ands slim, dressed in an off-the-shoulder dress allowing me to study and admire her shoulders and deep cavity between her breasts. She sat down and lay back in my easy-chair, ready to engage her in conversations old as the hills.
I have always suspected The Madame was startled by the sound of my voice – whichever part of the house she was listening from. Our conversation had not developed into the languid, lazy but dreamy routine which always precedes the initiation of…something in these scenarios. She was screaming, obviously upon recognising me, and appreciating that I had recognised her – she worked in our canteen at African Newspapers.
I made a dash for the door. She made her own dash – for some place where her bodyguard or bouncer was to be located for emergencies. He emerged. I had only a flitting glance of him, a short,muscular man with determination writ large on his face..I was young, relatively strong, even with a few beers under my belly. I ran and he pursued me. His marksmanship as almost uncanny. He thew a rock at me and hit me smack on the back of the head. I went down, but got up immediately. He gave up the chase, convinced I had been neutralised..... . ..
AT 21years of age, I was locked up in a police cell for the first time in my life. It all happened in 1958. The cause of my incarceration was journalism – indirectly, I suppose. But the chances are if I had not been a reporter on The African Daily News, riding a company motorcycle, I would never have ended up in the original Harare police station.
That place is now officially called Mbare police station. My journey to the police cell had been long and painful, in the end. But it had begun with the promise of achievement such as young people dream of at 21 years of age. I had been a reporter for a year or so. My major assignment at the time was the coverage of R.S. Garfield-Todd’s election campaign in Salisbury.
I had travelled to most of the venues of his meetings on the motorcycle. I could drive a motorcycle, even without a licence, because I had learnt to do so with my friend, Cecil John Matowe’s Norton Roadholder, a 600 cc monster on which I had also had an accident. So, T`he African Daily News, a 150 cc “baby”, was child’s play by comparison.
The election had ended. Garfield Todd had lost, in spite of The African Daily News’s spirited front page coverage of his speeches. This assignment should have been done by Albert Dumbutshena, the paper’s chief reporter and my mentor. Since he was indisposed, it fell to me to do the job. It was an enormous challenge for a 21-year-old cadet reporter who had only recently graduated to a junior reporter. The senior editors, including Nathan Shamuyarira, had placed so much faith in my ability to carry out this arduous task I felt honoured. I had picked up some gems of advice from the veteran. We all called him “Dumbs” or Sapa, after the South African Press Association. Another senior reporter named Moses Mwale was AP – for Associated Press. Many of the foreign copy we used was from Sapa-AP. Dumbutshena and Mwale were recognised as the “stars” of the newsroom, hence their nicknames.
I probably would have joined this distinguished league if I had not had the accident on the motorcycle. The cause of it was a moment of pure madness on my part. A great friend of mine, Willie Sondayi, ran a barbershop at Matapi hostels in what is now called Mbare, but was then Harare towmship.
We had been to school together, After school, we had formed a singing group, The Stargazers. We never went on stage.. But forming the group and doing rigorous rehearsals was great fun while it lasted. Willie was well-read. Every day, he would buy a copy of The Herald and The Sunday Mail. He knew a lot, as a result of the Suez Canal crisis – much more than I did, although I was the journalist. .her and been firm friends after school. With him at the time was another friend. The proposal was made that we celebrate the end of my assignment with a boozer-up at t a nightclub in the city. In our enthusiasm, we ignored the obvious and essential statistic relating to the motorcycle manufacturer's idea of how people could ride on it at a time.
But as I said, there was madness in the air. We had the accident before we had reached town. The three of us fell in a heap when, I believe, we hit a cyclist. He wasn’t seriously hurt. But when the police got to the scene and discovered how the accident had occurred, there was no escape for me.
Needless to say, by the time the police had succeeded in hauling me to the station, I had sobered up – more or less.
I might have had a nightmare or two while trying to sleep in the unfriendly circumstances of the cell. I don’t remember conversation with any of my fellow occupant s. They seemed as disinterested in me as I was disinterest in them. All I was praying for was for this waking nightmare to end.
It ended the next morning. I was all alone again, the company nowhere to be seen. The magistrate – a stern-faced white person – was unsparing. He fairly laid it on the line for me: here I was, supposedly a responsible citizen setting an example for probity and uprightness. But the truth? I was a drunk and drunken driver, to boot. I deserved the maximum, he said: Thirty Pounds fine.
The company paid the fine. I was lectured, but not fired – for which I was eternally grateful. Since then, over the years, I have pondered over the company’s code of…something. They knew I had no licence. They knew this was illegal. Had I been thrown to the wolves? Moreover, to cap it all, they demanded their money back. I chafed at the unfairness of it all. Bit Providence was on my side. They threw other challenges at me. What was clear top me was this: someone UP THERE (among the senior editor or in the back of the Beyond) had absolute faith in my capacity to endure all vicissitudes and still emerge unscathed.
I was appointed, during my four years at African Newspapers, assistant sports editor, during which I wrote a column, Generally Speaking. I covered soccer at the Number One Ground (before they turned it into Rufaro Stadium). My great lesson was to research everything, to sharpen my understanding of the English idiom, to read and read as much as I could – magazines, novels, classics and thrillers.
So, I had a great time as acting editor of The Bwalo la Nyasaland, The African Parade – during which I received an unexpected raise from the managing director himself.
|At some point, I wrote a short story for OUR AFRICA, a Catholic magazine published in South Africa Other short stories were published in our magazine, Parade. For one such short story, I received the invaluable expert advice of the late Angeline Mhlanga (nee Makwavarara). We worked on the magazine together, under the editorship of Kingsley Dinga Dube... .
There were a few challenges, but none insurmountable..It's exhilarating to discover you are in your element: I loved to be on the magazine. This love affair did not go unnoticed. It taught me a salutary lessons: once you invest love and dedication into your work, people are bound to notice it. It will be some time before I forget meeting the managing director, Mr Cedric Paver, on the stairs leading to the newsroom upstairs. He mentioned a piece I had done for the magazine. It had impressed him, he said. As if in an afterthought, he asked how much I was getting. I disclosed, almost in a whisper, the paltry rewards of my precious labour. He wasn't visibly aghast at the disclosure, but his reply spoke volumes “You'll go up to thirty pounds immediately,” he announced, with something like triumph in his voice. This amounted to a wage boost of seven pounds and ten shillings. I didn't exactly do a wild dance of joy. But Paver could see how excited and grateful I was.
At that time, during federation and its fake policy of “partnership” between black and white, it was tempting to see black people downgrading each other. For me, praise from a white chief executive was rare. But praise from a black editor, except Kelvin Mlenga, was even rarer.at African Newspapers. I enjoyed my time as acting editor of Parade, until I assigned myself to investigate the running of SA “house of ill repute” in home turn of Highfield.
The story had been broken by - who else? – Moses Mwale, the “UP” in the African The Daily News newsroom. My intention was daring:- to actually prove beyond any reasonable doubt that there was a former Johannesburg beauty queen offering her services to all who could afford them.
To this day, I have no idea how I intended to play the game – go for broke, as they say, or chicken out with apologies at the last moment. I had made sure I was well-prepared, sartorially, for the great occasion. I had passed through the famous Highfield Cocktail Bar at Machipisa.shopping centre. I had taken one or two to help build my self-confidence.
In the lounge, with its soft lights and lazy music, I sat down alone – until she came in: She was tall ands slim, dressed in an off-the-shoulder dress allowing me to study and admire her shoulders and deep cavity between her breasts. She sat down and lay back in my easy-chair, ready to engage her in conversations old as the hills.
I have always suspected The Madame was startled by the sound of my voice – whichever part of the house she was listening from. Our conversation had not developed into the languid, lazy but dreamy routine which always precedes the initiation of…something in these scenarios. She was screaming, obviously upon recognising me, and appreciating that I had recognised her – she worked in our canteen at African Newspapers.
I made a dash for the door. She made her own dash – for some place where her bodyguard or bouncer was to be located for emergencies. He emerged. I had only a flitting glance of him, a short,muscular man with determination writ large on his face..I was young, relatively strong, even with a few beers under my belly. I ran and he pursued me. His marksmanship as almost uncanny. He thew a rock at me and hit me smack on the back of the head. I went down, but got up immediately. He gave up the chase, convinced I had been neutralised..... . ..
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