HOW FEAR CAN KILL FREEDOM

By Bill Saidi

IN conversation at the Quill Club in 1980 with – among others – Justin Nyoka, I once used the word “profundity”. Justin expressed admiration for my use of such “jawbreakers”.

I have always wondered: was he pulling my leg, or was he genuinely impressed.

Justin Nyoka always had a great sense of humour, which could be quirky. This was one reason for his popularity at many gatherings of scribes in Harare and elsewhere.

Justin was well-read. Unlike many in the fraternity, he loved the langauge for its own sake, for its own beauty. The language I refer to here is English. Justin was very down-to-earth and was humble, without deepening this humility to the extent of perhaps, as someone once opined, trying to conceal his basic streak of conceit.

Although Justin ended his life working for the government, most of us suspected that he was such a free soul he would have preferred a life among his kind of people – journalists. He himself was a great raconteur. His wide travels had provided him with a large portfolio of scintillating anecdotes from here to Timbuctoo – maybe even farther.

To me, he was the quintessential journalist: his ear was glued to the ground, yet he was liberal enough in his outlook towards people and life in general, he didn’t hold any firm and unshakeable convictions on most of what we would call “the human condition”. I always suspected he was a reluctant civil servant – in the end.

I first heard of Justin before meeting him in the flesh in Lusaka in the late 1970s. I was then deputy editor-in-chief of Times Newspapers. Justin Nyoka was a correspondent of Times Newspapers, The Times of Zambia and The Sunday Times of Zambia. Most of Justin’s coverage was of what the United African National Council was getting up to.

The UANC, led by Abel Muzorewa, operated freely in Rhodesia. Neither of the nationalist movements who had set up liberation movements in Zambia, Zapu and Zanu, enjoyed no such privilege. There was then a tenuous relationship between the two organisations and the UANC, How Justin ended up in Zanu is probably too convoluted a story to go into here. I thought ti should mention him because he loved journalism – the cut and thrust of debate in that great forum of the printed word.

We have come a long way since Justin’s time. I met him in the flesh for the first timer in Lusakas, when he had come to collect his fee. After independence, and we were both involved, once again, in the media, we never discussed that relationship. But we remained close. It is healthy for all of us in the fraternity, whichever side we are on, to remain close – not to the extent of exchanging valuable corporate secrets or explosive ‘inside’ tidbits. We should cultivate the sort of familiarity that ensures we recognise how great it is to build the nation. This is to know that there is no formula that could set us apart – a formula of THEM vs US., two camps fighting like dogs over a piece of discarded meat. We are all on one side – perhaps not the side of the angels, but The Good Side – the side that wishes the country well, that would not betray the country for anything, the side that would not conceal any dark secrets from the people, or anything that is going on everywhere in their country, including its darkest, ugliest side.

Speaking only of Africa, I find we are in something of a quandary. What do you really understand by a free media, or even freedom of expression as understood in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, specifically Article 19?  My interpretation is that all citizens ar e entitled to express their views freely – any time, any where, without let or hindrance.

Clearly, under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, this was a myth. AIPPA marked a period in Zimbabwe when there was a naked attempt to muzzle the free press. The proponents tried to defend this evil, draconian law creating an imaginary “enemy of the state”, a bogey, phanthom whose evil design was the destruction of the country through the propagation of so-called “falsehoods. I’d rather not go into the seamier consequences of this law – for example the locking of four journalist s of The Daily News in 200l and the eventual closure of the same paper in 2003. It’s enough to say we hope, like the people victimized by The Holocaust, may this madness never be visited on the good people of a free Zimbabwe ever again.

Today, there is a new daily paper to compete with The Herald, NewsDay. So far, it has had a good run. Its owners have not had any of their titles banned. But a bullet in an envelope was delivered to the editor of one of its titles, The Standard, by a soldier in uniform. I was the acting editor at the time, he editor having gone on leave soon after the paper had gone to bed. I am agreat optimistic : I don’t believe the message was intended for me, personally. But I am reasonable enough to conclude that this fact suggests I should not be grateful in any way. I am still in this business. So far there has been no epoch-making change in the government attitude towards journalists who will not compromise their principles. I was one of the senior journalists as The Daily News inched its way towards its eventual Armageddon. I have said before that my time at this dynamic news organization called Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe Limited was utterly  breathtaking.

I ended up as the Assistant editor, although I had been offered the job of editor-in-chief. I turned it down on the logical grounded with me at the helm. Geoff Nyarota accepted my explanation. But other events intervened. We had szettled for me being the paper’s deputy editor-in-chief. But in the end, I settled on the Assistant Editor’s job, reluctantly. Davison Maruziva, who had worked under Geoff at The Chronicle took over what was to have been my job. Isaac Zulu, also from Zimpapers, joined us at the same time as Maruzivza. There was talk of them having been hired as “package”. I never saw anything in writing to that effect.

I joined ANZ in 1998. I was 61 years old and a grandfather. Part of my job included writing a weekly column called Bill Saidi on Wednesday. I enjoyed it tremendously, as I have enjoyed writing a column for most of the newspapers I have worked on.

These included The Herald, for which, under the editorship of Farayi Munyuki I write a a weekly column under the nom-de-plume of Comrade Muromo.  

The Daily News was an utterly new enterprise in journalism in Zimbabwe. Nothing was sacred. Most of us at the top had worked for the government media. We knew exactly what they would not publish under orders.

The Daily News would inevitably get up the government’s nose. There had been so bold an exposure of government bungling as there was in this new paper. After the formation of the Movement for Democratic Change, the stakes were raised even higher agaiasnzt Zanu PF. This party was not a direcdt6 offzxhoot of the ruling party, as Edtgzsr Tekere’s Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM) had been. This party had come out of a coalition of trade unions, intellectuals and a vibrant student movement. I suppose in the government’s frightened perspective all it needed was a radical and fearless daily newspaper to complete its profile as the most potent opposition nightmare for the governing party since independence.

We all relished the challenge. I was aware, from the beginning, of the presence of people whose spine was not made of the kind of stuff to withstand an open challenge from the government. Soon, Geoff spoke of an attempt by a shadowy group to take over ANZ. There was money trouble, it was true: the foreign element of the ownership seemed to be getting cold feet. For instance, thee was a problem with the salary. I was fortunawte that I had come from Horizon magazine, owned gby Andrew Moyse. I had bezen given a substantial severance payment.

Later, Geoff said he had identified the hitherto “shadowy group” as being linked to a branch of the government whose name he would not mention. But we all knew he was speaking off. It was a relief. Yet it also raised fresh fears of the extent to which the government would go to shut up the newspaper. I was personally under no illusions about the ultimate objective of the government towards ANZ and its “pesky” daily paper. It soon outstripped The Herald I circulation. After the referendum and the 2000 parliamentary elections, our circulation just soared above that of the government flagship. Our formula was simple enough: we would cover every story that The Herald would not conceivably find worth covering. We knew the editors worked under orders from the Ministry of Information.

The temporary financial problem had been solved by an injection of funds from Strive Masiyiwa, a well-known crusader for the freedom of the media. I had always had aZ soft spot for Masiyiwa. At Horizon, for which I worked from 1995 until I went to ANZ in 1998, had done a fascinating cover story of his fight to get Econet Wireless going. He was portrayed as hero, which he really was in terms of fighting for the rights of the private citizen to fulfill his potential – whatever it was. I had not been personally involved in negotiations. But he knew I was there and knew something of my own crusade for the downtrodden.

The crunch for ANZ came with the change of the top management. Masiyiwa seemed dissatisfied, to the extent he brought in his own man right to the top – Samuel Nkomo. I was unaware of the dynamics until I heard there were attempts to ease me out of the Assistant Editor’s job. Geoff brought it into the open when we had a one-on-one meeting: I was past the retirement age of 65, he said. They wanted to retire me. I asked him what he wanted. After all, he had invited me to join him in this scheme. He knew how old I was. He tried to make the retirement benefits so attractive I might find them irresistible. But I resisted. I said I would accept the proposal to retire me – unless it was being suggested I was somehow incompetent or senile.

Coincidentally, Sam Nkomo had objected to the proposal to retire me. He told me so himself. Clearly, he and Geoff had got off on the wrong foot and the feud ended with Geoff leaving the company. Geoff had brought in as a news as editor, John Gambanga. After he left, Sam Nkomo made Gambanga editor. I was amazed: Gambanga had worked under me at The Herald. There was no way he could have acquired enough experience in the intervening period to become my editor. I told Sam this in no uncertain terms. I was appointed Associate Editor. But it would not work. Leo Hatugari and I were far more experienced than Gambanga and ait showed. In fact, on a conference talk, strive Masiyiwas asked Nkomo why Gambanga wouild rate his appointment as an editor. Where had he worked before? Masiyiwa asked. The Manica Post, dcame t he reply. Masiyiwa’s next question was: Is Bill Saidi still there? Yes, said Nkomo. That’s all right then.

This arrangement lasted only until Francis Mdlongwa came on the came on the scene as editor-in-chief. Gambanga lost the editor’s job, as Mdlongwa appointed someone he had brought with him from the Financial Gazette editor. I was appointed editor of the new Daily News on Sunday. Sam Nkomo had appointed Barnabas as editor of the paper. He became my Associate Editor.

This was the team at ANZ when the government shut it down. The story if the drama at Oldf Muitual House has been told many times. For me, the most unfogettabnle scene is of a beefy plainclothes detective haranguing Sam Nkomo. Nkomo stood his ground, until it looked as if the man would attack the smaller man physically.

 Anyway, it was all over: the great experiment that was The Daily News had been crushed by what some people described as a frightened government. There were people I talked in the aftermath of the shutdown. They condemned the shutdown as an excessive reaction to criticism. If the new government evinces the same fear of criticism, then  we are not yet out of the woods.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HOW FEAR CAN KILL FREEDOM

By Bill Saidi

IN conversation at the Quill Club in 1980 with – among others – Justin Nyoka, I once used the word “profundity”. Justin expressed admiration for my use of such “jawbreakers”.

I have always wondered: was he pulling my leg, or was he genuinely impressed.

Justin Nyoka always had a great sense of humour, which could be quirky. This was one reason for his popularity at many gatherings of scribes in Harare and elsewhere.

Justin was well-read. Unlike many in the fraternity, he loved the langauge for its own sake, for its own beauty. The language I refer to here is English. Justin was very down-to-earth and was humble, without deepening this humility to the extent of perhaps, as someone once opined, trying to conceal his basic streak of conceit.

Although Justin ended his life working for the government, most of us suspected that he was such a free soul he would have preferred a life among his kind of people – journalists. He himself was a great raconteur. His wide travels had provided him with a large portfolio of scintillating anecdotes from here to Timbuctoo – maybe even farther.

To me, he was the quintessential journalist: his ear was glued to the ground, yet he was liberal enough in his outlook towards people and life in general, he didn’t hold any firm and unshakeable convictions on most of what we would call “the human condition”. I always suspected he was a reluctant civil servant – in the end.

I first heard of Justin before meeting him in the flesh in Lusaka in the late 1970s. I was then deputy editor-in-chief of Times Newspapers. Justin Nyoka was a correspondent of Times Newspapers, The Times of Zambia and The Sunday Times of Zambia. Most of Justin’s coverage was of what the United African National Council was getting up to.

The UANC, led by Abel Muzorewa, operated freely in Rhodesia. Neither of the nationalist movements who had set up liberation movements in Zambia, Zapu and Zanu, enjoyed no such privilege. There was then a tenuous relationship between the two organisations and the UANC, How Justin ended up in Zanu is probably too convoluted a story to go into here. I thought ti should mention him because he loved journalism – the cut and thrust of debate in that great forum of the printed word.

We have come a long way since Justin’s time. I met him in the flesh for the first timer in Lusakas, when he had come to collect his fee. After independence, and we were both involved, once again, in the media, we never discussed that relationship. But we remained close. It is healthy for all of us in the fraternity, whichever side we are on, to remain close – not to the extent of exchanging valuable corporate secrets or explosive ‘inside’ tidbits. We should cultivate the sort of familiarity that ensures we recognise how great it is to build the nation. This is to know that there is no formula that could set us apart – a formula of THEM vs US., two camps fighting like dogs over a piece of discarded meat. We are all on one side – perhaps not the side of the angels, but The Good Side – the side that wishes the country well, that would not betray the country for anything, the side that would not conceal any dark secrets from the people, or anything that is going on everywhere in their country, including its darkest, ugliest side.

Speaking only of Africa, I find we are in something of a quandary. What do you really understand by a free media, or even freedom of expression as understood in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, specifically Article 19?  My interpretation is that all citizens ar e entitled to express their views freely – any time, any where, without let or hindrance.

Clearly, under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, this was a myth. AIPPA marked a period in Zimbabwe when there was a naked attempt to muzzle the free press. The proponents tried to defend this evil, draconian law creating an imaginary “enemy of the state”, a bogey, phanthom whose evil design was the destruction of the country through the propagation of so-called “falsehoods. I’d rather not go into the seamier consequences of this law – for example the locking of four journalist s of The Daily News in 200l and the eventual closure of the same paper in 2003. It’s enough to say we hope, like the people victimized by The Holocaust, may this madness never be visited on the good people of a free Zimbabwe ever again.

Today, there is a new daily paper to compete with The Herald, NewsDay. So far, it has had a good run. Its owners have not had any of their titles banned. But a bullet in an envelope was delivered to the editor of one of its titles, The Standard, by a soldier in uniform. I was the acting editor at the time, he editor having gone on leave soon after the paper had gone to bed. I am agreat optimistic : I don’t believe the message was intended for me, personally. But I am reasonable enough to conclude that this fact suggests I should not be grateful in any way. I am still in this business. So far there has been no epoch-making change in the government attitude towards journalists who will not compromise their principles. I was one of the senior journalists as The Daily News inched its way towards its eventual Armageddon. I have said before that my time at this dynamic news organization called Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe Limited was utterly  breathtaking.

I ended up as the Assistant editor, although I had been offered the job of editor-in-chief. I turned it down on the logical grounded with me at the helm. Geoff Nyarota accepted my explanation. But other events intervened. We had szettled for me being the paper’s deputy editor-in-chief. But in the end, I settled on the Assistant Editor’s job, reluctantly. Davison Maruziva, who had worked under Geoff at The Chronicle took over what was to have been my job. Isaac Zulu, also from Zimpapers, joined us at the same time as Maruzivza. There was talk of them having been hired as “package”. I never saw anything in writing to that effect.

I joined ANZ in 1998. I was 61 years old and a grandfather. Part of my job included writing a weekly column called Bill Saidi on Wednesday. I enjoyed it tremendously, as I have enjoyed writing a column for most of the newspapers I have worked on.

These included The Herald, for which, under the editorship of Farayi Munyuki I write a a weekly column under the nom-de-plume of Comrade Muromo.  

The Daily News was an utterly new enterprise in journalism in Zimbabwe. Nothing was sacred. Most of us at the top had worked for the government media. We knew exactly what they would not publish under orders.

The Daily News would inevitably get up the government’s nose. There had been so bold an exposure of government bungling as there was in this new paper. After the formation of the Movement for Democratic Change, the stakes were raised even higher agaiasnzt Zanu PF. This party was not a direcdt6 offzxhoot of the ruling party, as Edtgzsr Tekere’s Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM) had been. This party had come out of a coalition of trade unions, intellectuals and a vibrant student movement. I suppose in the government’s frightened perspective all it needed was a radical and fearless daily newspaper to complete its profile as the most potent opposition nightmare for the governing party since independence.

We all relished the challenge. I was aware, from the beginning, of the presence of people whose spine was not made of the kind of stuff to withstand an open challenge from the government. Soon, Geoff spoke of an attempt by a shadowy group to take over ANZ. There was money trouble, it was true: the foreign element of the ownership seemed to be getting cold feet. For instance, thee was a problem with the salary. I was fortunawte that I had come from Horizon magazine, owned gby ASndrew Moyse. I had bezen given a substantial severance payment.

Later, Geoff said he had identified the hitherto “shadowy group” as being linked to a branch of the government whose name he would not mention. But we all knew he was speaking off. It was a relief. Yet it also raised fresh fears of the extent to which the government would go to shut up the newspaper. I was personally under no illusions about the ultimate objective of the government towards ANZ and its “pesky” daily paper. It soon outstripped The Herald I circulation. After the referendum and the 2000 parliamentary elections, our circulation just soared above that of the government flagship. Our formula was simple enough: we would cover every story that The Herald would not conceivably find worth covering. We knew the editors worked under orders from the Ministry of Information.

The temporary financial problem had been solved by an injection of funds from Strive Masiyiwa, a well-known crusader for the freedom of the media. I had always had aZ soft spot for Masiyiwa. At Horizon, for which I worked from 1995 until I went to ANZ in 1998, had done a fascinating cover story of his fight to get Econet Wireless going. He was portrayed as hero, which he really was in terms of fighting for the rights of the private citizen to fulfill his potential – whatever it was. I had not been personally involved in negotiations. But he knew I was there and knew something of my own crusade for the downtrodden.

The crunch for ANZ came with the change of the top management. Masiyiwa seemed dissatisfied, to the extent he brought in his own man right to the top – Samuel Nkomo. I was unaware of the dynamics until I heard there were attempts to ease me out of the Assistant Editor’s job. Geoff brought it into the open when we had a one-on-one meeting: I was past the retirement age of 65, he said. They wanted to retire me. I asked him what he wanted. After all, he had invited me to join him in this scheme. He knew how old I was. He tried to make the retirement benefits so attractive I might find them irresistible. But I resisted. I said I would accept the proposal to retire me – unless it was being suggested I was somehow incompetent or senile.

Coincidentally, Sam Nkomo had objected to the proposal to retire me. He told me so himself. Clearly, he and Geoff had got off on the wrong foot and the feud ended with Geoff leaving the company. Geoff had brought in as a news as editor, John Gambanga. After he left, Sam Nkomo made Gambanga editor. I was amazed: Gambanga had worked under me at The Herald. There was no way he could have acquired enough experience in the intervening period to become my editor. I told Sam this in no uncertain terms. I was appointed Associate Editor. But it would not work. Leo Hatugari and I were far more experienced than Gambanga and ait showed. In fact, on a conference talk, strive Masiyiwas asked Nkomo why Gambanga wouild rate his appointment as an editor. Where had he worked before? Masiyiwa asked. The Manica Post, dcame t he reply. Masiyiwa’s next question was: Is Bill Saidi still there? Yes, said Nkomo. That’s all right then.

This arrangement lasted only until Francis Mdlongwa came on the came on the scene as editor-in-chief. Gambanga lost the editor’s job, as Mdlongwa appointed someone he had brought with him from the Financial Gazette editor. I was appointed editor of the new Daily News on Sunday. Sam Nkomo had appointed Barnabas as editor of the paper. He became my Associate Editor.

This was the team at ANZ when the government shut it down. The story if the drama at Oldf Muitual House has been told many times. For me, the most unfogettabnle scene is of a beefy plainclothes detective haranguing Sam Nkomo. Nkomo stood his ground, until it looked as if the man would attack the smaller man physically.

 Anyway, it was all over: the great experiment that was The Daily News had been crushed by what some people described as a frightened government. There were people I talked in the aftermath of the shutdown. They condemned the shutdown as an excessive reaction to criticism. If the new government evinces the same fear of criticism, then  we are not yet out of the woods.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTEGRITY, HONESTY AND JOURNALISM

BY Bill Saidi
ONE of the most challenging assignments for me at The African Daily News in Salisbury in the late 1950s was this: introduce to and guide a white researcher/journalist through the gambling world of Harare township.
To this day, I have no idea who of the senior editors identified me as the candidate for this rather dangerous assignment. Gambling dens were, even then, illegal. They were likely to be raided by the police, the gamblers carted off to the police station. They were likely to pay a fine or, if they couldn’t, spend a night or two in the cells.
In other words, my own freedom could be endangered.
The freedom of the foreigner did not bear any contemplation. And what about the integrity of the newspaper? Wouldn’t there be headlines around the world – assuming the researcher-journalist was someone famous from a country like the United States?
Fortunately for me, these alarming moments of speculation occurred only later. The excitement of the assignment overwhelmed me totally. It was the fact of being picked to do the job that totally possessed me. For one thing, the editors had faith in me. They knew I would deliver. For another thing, they also knew I was raised in the ghetto and would know how to escape any challenging situations.
It was true I was raised entirely in the ghetto. I had resided in The Old Bricks, Jo’burg Lines, New Location and National. Mind you, I was not born in the ghetto. I was born at St David’s Mission in Chief Nyandoro’s area near what is now Marondera. I have absolutely no memory of this place. My first memories of life are in The Old Bricks, which was launched in 1938 – one year after I was born.
But I knew a number of relatives who gambled. Most people in the Old Bricks had devised surefire ways of supplementing their incomes. Whatever they worked at did not pay enough for them to survive on – without additional income. If they worked at a job where something could be stolen, they did steal. Those who worked in butcheries were the most fortunate: there was never an absence of relish in the home.
To me, it seemd the philosophy was that the employer invariably underpaid you in the belief that you would steal from him, anyway. The races didn’t trust each other. The Africans, in general, were aware they were being exploited. To level the playing field, they knew they had to steal from the employer. Once in a while, they stole too much ad the employer was bound to call in the police – both sides knew there was a limit to what could be stolen.
Meanwhile, I accomplished by assignment with some aplomb – otherwise why did the white person leave me with a gift? It was not money, but a carton containing liquid capsules. Not once, as he handed me the gift, did he bother to disclose to me what the capsules were for – diarrhea, epilepsy, diabetes, overweight or a problem with the libido.
I kept the capsules carefully hidden among my treasured possessions. In 1963, before I left for Northern Rhodesia, I discovered them among my possessions. I took them with me - perhaps someone there would help me identify them.
Unfortunately, I never found anyone in whom I could confide enough to ask to identify them. I eventually threw them away. I’ve always wondered if they might have changed my life if I knew what they were.
Later, I thought I had been naive. I should have been curious enough to find out what this person had given me as a gift for helping him with his assignment.
I think the basic problem for me was I would never expect reward for doing what I believed was my duty, my job. I have always realized that many people took advantage of this side of my character: some would call it a flaw.
I would hesitate to call it just good, old-fashioned honesty or integrity. Rising through the ranks in the profession, I learnt something about integrity or just honesty and credibility. People have to trust you, to believe in you, to confide in you in the absolute belief that you would not betray them – even if offered the Taj Mahal as a prize, for instance.
I have, incidentally, been to the Taj Mahal three times. Each time I have been on assignment. On neither of the assignments was I the beneficiary of a “gift”. I have also visited New York and gone up the Empire State Building – one time as a tourist, but another time to see officials of a Human rights group.
Journalism is loaded with perks for the person who is not squeamish about accepting such “gifts”, even if there is no obvious graft involved.
But I have been criticised for not bending the rules in any way: when I was the editor of a magazine, I was urged by the chief executive officer to personally campaign for advertising for the publication. But I said the group had an advertising department – wasn’t that their function? Yes, he said, but the editor had to take part: if the advertising revenue did not rise, his job would be on the line.
It was a challenging time for me and it was utterly immoral, from my point of view. Eventually, the magazine was shut down. I am not sure if that was the price of my integrity.
What has always frightened me in such situations is, if you go for it the first time, what would they ask you to do the next time - in the name of either saving your job or improving the advertising content of the publication?
What if an advertiser asked you to put an advert on the cover of the magazine – for a fee that would make the chief executive’s mouth water with you-know-what?
Some of these questions can be quite unnecessary if the company is facing bankruptcy. The board would just fire the editor if he didn’t go along. An editor with any spunk would probably resign. His grounds would be that there is no telling what they would ask him to do next – turn the entire cover to an advertiser?
Some journalists would say that for the sake of maintaining their credibility with the readers they would risk a little loss. But then others would say “to hell with credibility, if it’s going to lose us money”.
Advertisers know how much power they can wield with a publisher. At Zimpapers, I once did a feature on advertising. I mentioned that some agencies preferred Coloured models because there were not enough qualified black models to go around. Wasn’t it unfair, as the Coloured population was so small, compared with the black community? I had gathered this from interviews with a few people in the advertising industry, including the black models.
But this particular agency insisted the suggestion would not apply to them. They insisted on some kind of apology, to which the editor assented.
I found it utterly disgusting.
I have also been nauseated by the whole concept of “advertorial” – dressing up a huge advertising campaign with editorial copy which is disguised as “independent” and “neutral” when it is nothing of the kind.
I visited one newspaper in Chicago which told a group of visiting foreign journalists how they had lost a huge advertising campaign because they would not allow the company to put its adverts on the front page of the newspaper.
The advertising department had been keen on the campaign and were upset when the editor said NO. The editor’s position was: where would you stop? For instance, if the same company demanded the entire front page, how would you say – particularly if they were offering….any amount you demanded?
It’s an entirely different and probably a difficult matter in most African countries. Most major newspapers are either owned by the government or the ruling party, or partly so. The final word on probably all matters rests with the government. As long as it is the government which appoints most key editorial staff, where is the autonomy?
In other countries, even the advertising executives can be subject to government vetting – are they members of the ruling party or the opposition?
The consolation could be that the success of the newspapers, as viable financial concerns, is only of incidental interest to the government. As long as the opposition gets no mileage from the newspaper, nothing else matters.
In reality, it is only in South Africa, that there is genuine plurality of the media on the continent. Mozambique, at one time, seemed to be launched on this same path. But after the death of
Carlos Cardoso, an enterprising journalist who had been probing corruption in the government, that reputation went for a loop.
There seems, in general, to be as great fear of integrity or honesty in journalism in Africa, even in Zimbabwe with its new “inclusiveness”.

THE JOURNALIST AS A PARTY HACK

By Bill Saidi
IN the 17 years I worked as a journalist in Zambia, I spent only two and a half years working on a privately-owned newspaper, The Central African Mail. I was never forced to belong to any political party. The rest of the years I worked for newspapers owned, lock, stock and barrel, by the government, The Times of Zambia, a daily, and its Sunday sister, The Sunday Times of Zambia.
I was once “urged” to join and did join the ruling party, the United National Independence Party, UNIP. In 1975, when I was fired as deputy editor–in-chief of Times Newspapers, I was described as a ”leader” of the party. But I had fallen by the wayside, hence my dismissal. When I was reinstated in 1977, there was no mention of the restoration of my UNIP membership. For very good reasons, I didn’t myself pursue the matter at all.
I had never thought of myself as a “party hack”. The Oxford dictionary describes a hack as “a writer producing dull and unoriginal work” You can only imagine, with deep loathing, what a party hack gets up to.
On my return to an independent Zimbabwe, I worked for less than a year for what passed for an independent newspaper, The Herald. In 1980, when I joined them, they had shed the “Rhodesia” in the `title. This was perfectly understandable. After all, the country was no longer “Rhodesia”, an odious name associated with Cecil John Rhodes. This self-absorbed imperialist, capitalist adventurer had plundered the country’s wealth for the mother country, imperialist Britain. Rhodes’ beneficiaries had decided, when the chips were down for their retention of any power at all, to accept the strange name Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. Nobody in and out of the country believed there would be any permanence accruing to that name.
Both Bishop Muzorewa and Ian Smith, at the helm of this double-barrel-named country, must have known, by 1979, that Zimbabwe would win. They would both lose.
By 1981, the government of Robert Mugabe had taken over Zimbabwe Newspapers, the parent company. It was formerly called the Rhodesia Printing and Publishing Co. (Pvt) Limited. This was the Rhodesian stake of the huge South African conglomerate, The Argus Group. This company was founded in apartheid South Africa. It is not defamatory to say of them that they were fellow travellers of the apartheid regime from start to finish.
Yet, after the end of apartheid, there was no rush by the new rulers to “nationalize” the media. There is a dark spot on that front: the South African Broadcasting Corporation remains government-owned. It’s an anomaly which many critics believe may return to haunt the government of the ANC-Cosatu alliance. If the rationale is based on the ownership of such media by the governments of the USA, Britain, Germany, France and other Western governments, it doesn’t sit well with the claim of an entirely free media dispensation, as opposed to that during apartheid.
It’s no surprise that SABC has been the target of many barbs since 1994. The criticism is entirely justified. Can anyone believe SABC will always “tell it like is”, even if a story, based on the sacred facts, scandalises the government?
The same must apply to all the other state-owned radio and TV stations in Africa today. The first governments, it seemed to me at the start, wished to deliver an unmistakable message to the people: we are in charge because we won independence. We call the shots.
Some of them have countered criticism of their ownership of the airwaves by quoting the examples of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and The Voice of America
(VOA). Both are government-owned. The BBC is run under a charter, but that the government in power calls the shots is incontestable. The controls may be subtle, but there are there, as present as the nose on your face.
But in Africa, the control is so emphatic; nobody is in any doubt that the editor is under orders from the top. The editors may not be qualified as “party hacks”. But that could only be a matter of semantics:
In my first job in Northern Rhodesia at The Central African Mail, the takeover by the government was nakedly a change of the palace guard. Nothing would be published henceforth, unless it was manifestly supportive of the government.
Most African journalists since 1957 – the year of Ghana’s independence – have confronted this dilemma head-on: are they or they are not party hacks? Most of them ended up working for a government or a ruling party newspaper. I met many of them andf was under no illusions that they shared my discomfort; telling the truth and nothing but the truth was going to be problematical under those circumstances.
The new governments aped Ghana’s example. The ruling party or the government owned most of the newspapers. The State owned radio and television. In a one-party system of government, there was little room for genuine independent newspapers, radio or TV stations.
Kenya was an early exception. The Daily Nation was owned by the Agar Khan
In 1971, I met its then editor, Boaz Omori, on my very first visit to Kenya. He struck me as an honest, no-nonsense journalist. We had a long chat in his office. I was then on The Times of Zambia, the author of a regular weekly column. I had enormous respect for Boaz Omori. A few years later, he was dead. Friends in Nairobi, who I met elsewhere at conferences, suspected he had been “done in” by government agents. I was aghast at the implication. But as time passed, I realized this was not as outlandish as it sounded.
Since then, a number of African editors have died in circumstances which most people suspect could be described as “suspicious”.
Before I left Zambia in 1980, there had been a report, never actually confirmed by independent sources, that one senior UNIP politician was hunting for me with a rifle. Fortunately for me, it sounded totally hare-brained. It’s true I had been publicly denounced by President |Kaunda at a news conference at State House in Lusaka. He had asked the rhetorical question: “Why doesn’t he go back his country?”
All doubts about the government’s intention to “own” the journalists were removed when, at a briefing by an influential member of Kaunda’s cabinet, we had been urged to act as spies for the government. It was part of our task to safeguard the independence of the country. I am still to be convinced that the ownership of the media by the government is a legitimate attempt to safeguard the integrity and independence of the country – and not to destroy any opportunity for the opposition to receive a fair coverage of its activities.
In Zimbabwe, my moment of truth came when I was appointed editor of The Sunday News in Bulawayo. Before the government takeover of Zimpapers, an abortive attempt had been made by the old owners to have me installed as editor of The Sunday Mail. It flopped when Willie Musarurwa got the nod ahead of me. I suppose we should have been grateful for small mercies – at least I had been appointed editor of The Sunday Mail’s poor cousin, The Sunday News.
At the time, Tommy Sithole was editor of The Chronicle. We knew each other from a visit he had made to Ndola while I was deputy editor-in-chief of Times Newspapers. Sithole was then the sports editor of the Tanzanian government newspaper, The Daily News. At Zimpapers, he was senior to me – or so I figured, from the way he treated me. I doubt if he could ever dispute the sequence of events which occurred when I arrived in Bulawayo. At that time, there was little love lost betwween the two parties of the coalition government, Zanu and Zapu. Sithole suggested to me, seriously, that I ought to join Zanu, for my own good and for own safety. I am Shona-speaking. I could therefore be considered a member or, at the least, a sympathizer of Zanu. My guarantee of safety was to join the party. After much soul-searching, I did join the party and was elected secretary of a branch in Hillside, a middleclass suburb of Bulawayo.
Most of the branch members were domestic workers. Although my life was never in any sort of danger from Zapu, my membership of Zanu was frowned upon by many in the party who knew my background, particularly in Zambia. Most suspected I was a fifth columnist of some sort. What they couldn’t decide was whether or not I was enough of a threat to the party that I ought to be publicly flushed out and probably flogged in public for my temerity.
I relinquished by membership when I returned to Harare. I have no idea to this day whether my name is still on the membership register of the party in Bulawayo or in Harare. All I know is that I continued to be a journalist, entirely unencumbered by any loyalty to any political party – which probably explains my I have made no real headway in the fraternity – so far as the conventional meaning of “success” in the profession is concerned.

WHEN THE ‘NATIVES’ BECAME AFRICANS

By Bill Saidi
BY the time I became a reporter on THE AFRICAN DAILY NEWS in Salisbury in 1957, we people were no longer addressed as ‘natives’ – we had become Africans. So, when I was assigned to the Market Square beat, I didn’t endure the humiliation of interviewing the director of ‘native administration’.
During my tenure in that assignment, there were two directors, Colonel George Hartley and Mr Briggs, his former deputy. Hartley was the portrait of the white Rhodesian soldier-administrator. His contempt for me would ooze, literally, as he sat in his chair, giving me information which I sought. He had the clean-cut, ramrod stiff presence of the military careerist. I was young, but not overly overawed by this man, tall, upright, with a moustache to match. There was never any casual repartee between us: it was always business - first and last. The man did not smile or laugh - neither did I.
I just got my story and got out of there.
Mr Briggs was something else entirely. When we first met, after he had taken over from Col Hartley – who had gone to bigger things, I think – we laughed.. I can’t remember the seed of this unusual eruption of joy between a white administrator and an African journalist, perhaps 20 years his junior. It was so refreshing to sit before Mr Briggs and hear him laugh at something I had said or asked.
I was under no illusions. I doubted that the atmosphere would be so official if we met elsewhere – such as in the middle of First Street. Would he stop me and chat away about trivia, risking the ire of his fellow whites, in a huddle with a black man in the middle of the day in a street in Salisbury? I doubted that.
I was always assailed by this utter wonder at the amazing capacity among the white Rhodesians to be so different in their attitude or treatment of Africans. I could never conceive of circumstances in which Mr Briggs would ever refer to me as “this monkey”. I had no occasion to observe him at a meeting with Charles Mzingeli, the one-time undisputed and outspoken leader of the African community of Harare township.
I doubted that Mr Briggs would address him dismissively as “Charles” or “Charlie”; He would stick to “Mr Mzingeli”. Col Hartley would be something else, of course. Long afterwards, he became a minister in the government formed by the Rhodesian Front after 1962. I sighed with relief – that was where he belonged. Like the rest of them, he deserved the fate that awaited him..
Fortunately for me, I grew up knowing the whites were not all the same – brutish, foul-mounted, racist and entirely convinced that the “natives” belonged with the baboons and monkeys in the trees. The first white person I ever saw was Mr Stodart, the superintendent of Harare township. I remember him striding along the township’s dusty streets, dressed in white shirt and white shorts and white stockings. He always smoked a cigarette in a long holder, one hand in his pocket. His demeanour was of an emperor surveying his realm. Around this time, there was the boys’ club at the Recreation Hall – later Mai Musodzi hall. There, we met Mr Davies, who was in charge. He was as different from Mr Stodart as anyone could be. His attitude was one of helpfulness. As far as I can recall, he never spoke a rude word to any of us at the club. We reciprocated his generosity – never deliberately disobeying him or being sassy, as some of us could be when offended by these people..
Before I was invited into journalism, |I worked for a transport company in the industrial areas of Salisbury. I was a clerk and the woman under whom I worked was an extraordinary person – for a European in those days of darkness, when you didn’t expect any regard of you from them. But we got on swimmingly. She treated me almost like a son. She was tall, a little thin and a chain-smoker. I worked right next to her. We spoke of everything, as equals. My English could be pompous, for I was under the mistaken impression that if you used jawbreakers your stock rose among the Europeans. On the other hand, it probably impressed them – in a positive way.
One day, out of the blue, she handed me the keys to her car and asked me to remove it from one point to another. Without thinking about it, I accepted the keys with alacrity and headed for the car without a word to her. It was only when I was alone in the driver’s seat that it hit me in the head like a pile driver: I’d never driven a car in my life.- this was like the moment of my destiny. Was a man or a mouse?
But I knew enough to recognise where you inserted the ignition key and what you did once it was in. I switched it on and heard the positive response of the engine. It was a small car, a Morris Minor, What next? I wondered. I knew enough to recogmise the gear shift, which I pushed, The car jerked forward as if propelled by a great force of Nature. It only stopped when it hit a bed of flowers. I sat there sweating, my heart pounding. Nervously, I climbed out. Neither of us said a word as I returned to my desk. I apologised and she nodded with understanding.
Our relationship, amazingly, resumed as if nothing untoward had happened. We neither of us spoke of the incident. When I had to leave for “greener pastures”, we parted on the friendliest of terms. Since then, I have maintained this open attitude towards people of other races: it’s unwise to lump them into one basket.
So, when I entered journalism and discovered I would be in the thick of a potential racial cauldron, I prepared myself not to panic. Of course, I wasn’t naive enough to believe everything and everyone would turn out with the tranquility of a calm sea. There could be stormy times ahead.
In 1957, which his the year in which I started work as a journalist, Lord Home, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, visited Salisbury. Federation was four years old. It was already in crisis, largely because the Africans of the three member-countries – Northern and Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland – had opposed it from the beginning. Even now, there were rumblings of dissatisfaction with the federal idea in all three countries. I knew this too, from listening to the news on the radio and from reading the newspapers, including The Rhodesia Herald. That unashamedly pro-European daily could hardly disguise the contempt with which most Africans held the federal concept. Its “partnership” slogan had already been pooh-poohed as a fraud. It was considered so largely because the racist whites of Southern Rhodesia seemed to hold sway in its every thrust.
Even before I became a journalist, I knew of Godfrey Huggins. He was not a good European, all the adults I met in my youth said. He was the first prime minister of the federation.
In the newsroom of The African Daily News, which accommodated all the other reporters, we received many visitors. Most of them were Africans. There were a few European visitors. They were mostly sports people. Frankly, I cannot remember any Europeans being regular visitors to the newsroom,. Certainly, I never had the honour of such a politician asking to see me in the newsroom.
Most of the regular visitors were African politicians. I refer to Africans because, at the time, there were Europeans and Africans – not blacks and whites. The distinction was so stark that there was no regular interaction between the races, For a time, I believed that we were the official newspaper of the nationalist movement. I had been present at the inaugural meeting of the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress. Before that meeting I had become acquainted with the key players in that party. Now, many of them were regular visitors to the newsroom of The African Daily News. Quite often, it was not because they had news for us. They came just to chat, to keep in touch, to sound us out on what was going on – everywhere. .
If they were going out of Salisbury on some mission, they called at the offices beforehand. They actually asked if a reporter could accompany them – and the paper obliged. George Nyandoro and I went together to a rural area where he was to address a meeting on the Land Husbandry Act. I think we established a very firm rapport during our visit to this area. Unfortunately, the meeting that had been arranged did not take place – after all. The district commissioner, formerly called the native commissioner, would not allow it. I believe my story highlighted the cancellation of the meeting as another example of how the Europeans would not allow the Africans to go everywhere in their own country – without the permission of the Europeans. This provided fertile grounds for defying them. The effect on me, as a reporter on the newspaper, was to fire my own enthusiasm of highlighting the iniquities of the European rulers.
In general, it sharpened my senses to the unfairness of the entire colonial system. It drove me, quite often, to the point of being hopelessly uncritical of the nationalists. What wrong could they commit when so many wrongs were being committed against them on a huge scale?
To a large extent, this would influence all of us, as journalists, when the time came to report objectively on the performance of the former nationalists when they took over the country as part of the government. What was even more tragic was that the members of the new government began to treat us as they had treated us during the struggle – part of their team.
When, for instance, I became acting editor of The Herald – according to a roster which he chief executive. Elias Rusike, had drawn up, the paper was publicly rebuked by the minister of information for being critical of the government, in an editorial. I was then the group features and supplements editor of Zimpapers. But whenever one of the editors went on leave, I would be acting editor for that period.
As result, I did stints as acting editor of The Herald, The Sunday Mail and The Manica Post. I have always suspected that the abolition of my post had its seeds in this arrangement. An inquiry was ordered into the work of my department. Rusike himself ordered the inquiry on the instigation – I bet - of the editors. It was recommended that the department be wound up. Fortunately, I was not declared redundant, which I still suspect, most of the editors had hoped would be eventual outcome.
This was just one of the reasons my time at Zimpapers was so replete with turbulence and tension, for the ten years I worked there.

How a column can change your life

By Bill Saidi
INDIRECTLY, I owe my career as a columnist to Tim Nyahunzvi. He and I go back to 1959, when we were both at African Newspapers in Salisbury. Until a few years ago, I had no idea that he had just come out of jail at that time.
There was a state of emergency in Southern Rhodesia at the time. Agitation against the colonial regime of Sir Edgar Whitehead had so intensified, the government reacted in the only way it knew how: with violence.
I have not probed too keenly into Tim’s “crime”, It would not surprise me if it involved some stone-throwing – they could throw you inside for that.
In 1963, Tim and I were reunited at The Central African Mail in Lusaka. Another Zimbabwean with whom I had worked back home was Vincent Mijoni. He was older than Tim and I and had made some kind mark in theatre in Bulawayo, where he was based.
I was production editor of the weekly newspaper. I am not particularly artistic, but laying out a newspaper had always fascinated me. After all, back in Salisbury, I had had to learn to put together a weekly newspaper, The Bwalo la Nyasaland and the African Parade.
I did this without the aid of any official company manual. My “manual” was old issues of the two publications. There was very little guidance from the senior staff. But I managed to “muddle through”, learning the ropes as I went along.
After a brief period of laying out the Lusaka paper, with the active guidance of the editor and his deputy, Richard Hall and Kelvin Mlenga, I was beginning to get “into the groove” when Tim suggested something – out of the blue: why didn’t consider writing a regular for the paper? He reminded me of Bits and Pieces of Harare, a column I had written for The African Parade. The Harare was Harare township. I knew it like the palm of my hand. I had lived there since it was opened in 1938 – a year after I was born.
I hadn’t realised, until then, that any body else had paid much attention to the column – apart from myself and the others working with me on the magazine. I was highly flattered. Tim had obviously enjoyed the column. What was more was that he had enough confidence in me as a writer to suggest I could try it here, in a foreign country on a newspaper, edited by two very professional journalists with so much experience at the job they would know a “dud” if someone tried to pass it off before their eyes as the “genuine article”?
Fortunately for me, I was always obsessed with writing and reading, even when I was in Standard One in 1947 at the Methodist Church school near the cemetery in Magaba in what is now Mbare. I remember being mentioned by my teacher in connection with a composition I had written – in English.
So, with the encouragement of Tim and the others I started writing Lusaka After Dark. Only later, did I realize I didn’t know the city of Lusaka as much as I knew my turf of Harare township or even Salisbury itself. But with guys like Tim, Kelvin and Richard Hall standing by me, I persevered. Soon, I was beginning to enjoy writing the column.
In fact, I realised I was hooked on writing the column every week when I began to look forward to sitting down on my typewriter to write it. Years later, back home, a reader of The Herald would write to me to say how much she enjoyed reading my column with its “elegant prose”. I thought it made me feel ten feet tall: I had “arrived” as a columnist – yet there was still more to come.
What I might call my “crowning glory” was to be invited to write a weekly column for The Sowetan of Johannesburg. By any standards, this was an honour I felt humbled to accept. I owed it all to Len Kalane, a former editor of that country’s City Press, a Sunday paper with a reputation for treading where angels fear to tread. – journalistically speaking
Len and I had first met in the United States in 1993.
We were in a group of 30 journalists from all over the world, but particularly from the developing world. We had been invited to the US to visit their newspapers. Len and I struck up a friendship as we were “neighbours”. We kept in touch later, on the email mostly. But it was at The Standard that he got in touch, seriously... He was evidently on the hierarchy of The Sowetan when he made me this exciting proposition: write a regular column for the paper and do other occasional features for them.
I was the deputy editor of The Standard and had a lot on my plate already. We agreed all I could spare time for was a regular weekly column. He called it The State We Are In. Then there was my work for The Standard: I also wrote a regular weekly column.
I sought permission from the editor, Davison Maruziva, to write a column for The Sowetan. There would be no conflict of interest, obviously... But Iden Wetherall, the Group Projects Editor, wasn’t too excited: he said it might take up a lot of time, thus eating into my work for The Standard. I am afraid I was defiant. It probably soured by relationship with Iden for all time. But it was truly exciting for me to appear in a foreign newspaper regularly and under my own name. I was billed as the top columnist of the newspaper. But the downside was the reaction from Zimbabwe, specifically the government.
I was in the United Kingdom in 2008 when Len e-mailed me to say my column had been dropped without warning from The Sowetan. I was flabbergasted and wrote to the young lady who dealt with the column on that paper. Incidentally, Doreen Zimbizi, a Zimbabwean, had worked for The Chronicle in Bulawayo when I was editor of The Sunday News in the early 1980s. It’s a small world: here we were, in the new millennium, working together on a South African newspaper.
I launched a vigorous campaign to find out why the column had been dropped without so much as a by-your-leave politeness from the editor to me. I concluded, from the rudeness with which the column had been treated, that something other than professional consideration had crept in.
There had been a change of editors, apparently. Len Kalane confessed he had no idea why the column had been dropped. But even he hinted there had been interference, however remote, from the government or Zanu PF or someone close to both. Later, Len himself left The Sowetan newspaper altogether. But I was convinced it had nothing to do with the affair of The State We Are In
The truth is I had enjoyed writing the column tremendously. It did interfere with my relations with the hierarchy of The Standard. When the opportunity arose for them to get rid of me they grasped it with all hands – I was fired when I was in the UK.
Obviously, I shall always remember writing for The Sowetan: that the column ran for a number of months meant – to me, at least – that, even outside Zimbabwean, people found what I wrote intriguing, worth giving space to. There is no honour bigger than that for a columnist – any columnist. I wasn’t a syndicated columnist, but having my byline in a foreign newspaper gave me a feeling that I had at last ARRIVED as a columnist.
I’ve had a lot of fun writing columns for different newspapers in Zambia and Zimbabwe. I have always suspected that in journalism, in general, you are a Zero if what you write or publish doesn’t make waves, doesn’t get people to sit up and notice, or provokes no more react ion than So what?” For a regular columnist, the challenge is enormous. Every week, you have to write something so riveting readers feel compelled to read what write you all the time. Unfortunately, not all of them will feel they have to write to you every time they read a particularly good piece by you. Geoff Nyarota, when we worked together at The Daily News, once told me something that I proved was true: don’t think because t hey are not writing to you, people are not reading your column. I wrote Bill Saidi on Wednesday for The Daily News until I was appointed editor of The Daily News On Sunday.
Being recognised as a columnist can have its drawbacks. Tim Nyahunzvi once told me that he met a receptionist at a hotel in Gweru who was crazy about my column – until she discovered how old I was. She told him she had always loved the column – until I indicated in one piece that I was not a young man. She sounded devastated, he said to me.
I came face to face with this dilemma at The Daily News. I was told from the switchboard that someone wanted to see mer. I asked who it was. A young lady, they said. This could be interesting, I thought. I was quite satisfied that whoever she was she might have something juicy to tell me – for a story.
After all, I was the Assistant Editor, apart from being a columnist as well. She came into my office. I stood up to welcome her. I could recognize immediately the shock on her face. It was as if she had made the blunder of her life. After we had sized each other up, she withdrew from me. She stood near a widow, looking out. I could imagine what was going through her mind: How do I get out of this without looking completely stupid? I decided I would let her stew in her own juice. I didn’t say anything. You could read the embarrassment on her face like a bout of smallpox.
“Thank you for seeing me,” she said, almost with a choke of humiliation in her voice. I thanked her profusely, mostly to put her at ease, even at that late hour.
A colleague told me his daughter wished to meet me. Why? I asked him, in genuine confusion. He would have told her about me – surely? I was a fairly mature man, a grandfather, in fact. He said she still wanted to meet me. They came together one day. “This is Mr Saidi,” he said to her, introducing me. “I am very pleased to meet you,” she said. “Same here,” I said gallantly. And that was it.
A column I wrote in Lusaka for The Sunday Times of Zambia in 1971 culminated with my first “encounter” with President Kenneth Kaunda, who asked me this unforgettable question: “Are you a spy for Ian Smith?”
But at The Standard, for which I also wrote a regular column, a flood of letters came from furious readers: I had commented on Christianity and the message that all good things waited for you in heaven, even if you life ion earth was full of misery. Some of them said I would be punished severely for this blasphemy.
I responded with the defiant reminder of a cover story of Time magazine years ago: IS GOD DEAD? That seemed to silence everybody.