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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.
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Friday, July 16, 2010
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