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.