ZIMPAPERS: TEN YEARS OF TURBULENCE

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.