OLD FRIENDS COME CALLING

By Bill Saidi

MY very first year at Zimpapers was incident-filled. I was 43 years old, living with my second wife and five children, one of them hers from the past. Another was my former wife’s. During my second month in the country, Zimpapers had approved my application for a car loan. Everyone said I would be the first African to be accorded this privilege. In Zambia, I had been entitled to a company car, a company house, membership of the elite Ndola Club – paid for by the company - and an expense account.

I had resigned from Times Newspapers in circumstances which somehow bore the hallmark of my 17-year stay in that country: the president of the republic, Kenneth Kaunda, had, for the second time, taken extreme umbrage to something I had penned in The Times of Zambia. He took such umbrage he made a public display of his fury – at a press conference at State |House in Lusaka. 

I was denounced by name. I was in charge of the papers in the absence on leave of the editor-in-chief, Naphy Nyalugwe. I first heard of the conference on the State radio in the office of the editor-in-chief in Lusaka. I was in the capital on company business. Evidently, the President’s Office was unaware of my presence in the capital. I drove to the State House from the office, anxious to be present at such a momentous conference.

Meanwhile, I heard all of the conference proceedings on the car radio on my way to State House. By the time I arrived, it was all over. I sort of barged in. I was fortunate to enter as the President and his Special Assistant at the time, were walking out of the conference room. The Assistant then was Milimo Punabantu. He was a former editor-in-chief of Times Newspapers. He it was who had initiated the post of deputy editor-in-chief, specifically tailoring it for me. At that time, he had said to me he felt there was need for “an old hand” on the group’s editorial hierarchy. By then I had with Times Newspapers for more than ten years -.hence the new post of deputy editor-in-chief. 

I was to be based in what was considered the engine room of the group, the printing and production headquarters in Ndola. It was a heavy responsibility. In the final analysis, I would have the last word on what did and what did make it into the paper. Even the Chief Sub-editor would have to take account of my view of any story destined for the daylight of print.

But we had fallen out. In fact, he was editor-in-chief when I had my second brush with Kaunda in 1975. Punabantu didn’t raise a finger in my defence. I fought such a lonely battle; I was convinced Punabantu had been upset when I won back my job. Incidentally, he was replaced by John Musukuma, the former Central African Mail sports editor who had gravitated to public relations. Musukuma was junior to me at The Mail. But here was in 1977, about to lord it over me as editor=in=chief. It was a humiliating experience – and he, fortunately, appreciated it too.

 

But back to the press conference whose sole subject was me: Punabantu sat there with Kaunda as I was pilloried for an editorial I had written on how the law handled erring VIPs and erring ordinary people.

The president himself read the editorial aloud – I suspect on Punabantu’s advice - haltingly, pausing rather dramatically as if to highlight a grammatical faux pas. Listening to it all made me rather angry. But the denouement clinched it for me: “Why doesn’t he go back to his own country?”

He would not have done it more effectively if he had signed a deportation order against me – except that I was then a citizen of Zambia. But the writing was most blindingly on the wall. The jig was up for me. I don’t imagine many people have had this nightmarish experience. You are being publicly rejected by the head of a state. There is no subtlety here. The head of state is telling you to your face: Get out of my country – or else. The effect may not be similar to being thrown to the wolves. But the whole world will know about it. You are marked as one of the few journalists in the world to be kicked out of a “foreign country” strictly on the basis that you had stuck too much to the principles of your profession – stating an opinion you held strongly, perhaps too strongly to be stomached by the one person in the country who could make you pay the ultimate price for such courage – or foolhardiness.

Sadly, I prepared for my departure for Zimbabwe. Lonrho were not in a hurry to get rid of me – although I knew there were some at Times Newspapers who would have given an arm and a leg for me to be kicked out in a hurry. Naphy Nyalugwe was not one of them. He held a huge farewell party for me in Ndola. I suspect he must received a few brickbats for that. Just to add salt to the wound, his speech was peppered with such praise for me - I was a loyal deputy”, he said, Tom Mtine, though he did not attend the party, was the most magnanimous of the lot. I should take my time. There was absolutely no need to hurry. I didn’t need to give any notice until I had settled my future. In time, I had received a reply from Zimpapers: there would be a job for me. They would pay for everything – my flight and accommodation in Harare while I looked for a house of my own.

Meanwhile, I reflected on my 17 years in this alien country, to which I had been invited at a period in my life when everything looked distinctly dark and unpromising.

The truth, which I dared to confront now, was that Zambia had changed my life completely. Not only had I learnt to fight for my rights. I had also learnt to be a real man, independent-minded, unafraid to confront adversity head-on. My most challenging task was to defy the odds – not to accept defeat and to fight on and on. What it did was to transform my entire attitude of the world as a journalist. There is no high-minded philosophy at play here, no lofty declarations of a hitherto unknown truth. It is just that journalism can be more than just a job. It ought to be more than just a job, particularly in Africa. At that period, after 1957, with the whole continent awakening as if from a long slumber of subservience to the rest of the world, African leaders were mostly obsessed with total power.

The last segment of society they expected to challenge their absolute power was the media. I had come out of my skirmishes in Zambia relatively unscathed. But I did not fool myself. I was returning to the land of my birth, where the clouds of uncertainty were also visible on the horizon.

All the politicians who mattered knew of my background in Zambia.

Some of them, now in the new government, would be watching me. Others would not hesitate to remind their colleagues of my escapades in that country – which some may have witnessed at first hand. With some, I was on first-name terms. With others, there was a  frostiness between us which you could have cut with a knife.

For instance, a few weeks after my arrival, someone whispered that had they known of my flight schedule they would probably have “done something”. If I had decided to return home by road, they were certain that I would not have made it to what was then still Salisbury, my old stomping ground.

All this may have been idle speculation or the rumour-mongering of people who considered themselves “enemies” of everything they thought of as “enemies of the revolution”. I knew I would be in for a tough time. I had created a reputation – like it or not – that some people would be eager to exploit for their own nefarious ends. 

I was arriving in a country whose newspaper landscape was dominated by the Zimpapers stable. Moto was on the periphery as a magazine. The Zimpapers group had launched a newspaper specifically designed for its African readers. Geoff Nyarota and Tonic Sakaike and others worked on it. But they would soon be absorbed into the mainstream newspaper.

Sakaike had worked under me in Lusaka, at the Times. Soon, Stephen Mpofu and Tim Chigodo arrived. They too had worked under me in Zambia.

But the biggest surprise was yet to come: Farayi Munyuki was to come in as editor of The Herald. He too had worked under me at The Times.

This would be a great team to replace the whites who would be leaving shortly as the government strengthened its stranglehold on the major newspaper in the country. Suddenly, for me, it all looked promising. Most of the staff had worked on newspapers in a recently-independent country. They knew the challenges.

What they didn’t know – and what even I didn’t know – was that this one would be a tougher-going job than the one in Zambia. We would be together again, but the future would be bleaker than it had been for us in Zambia.

Home would be sweet home, but not for long – at least not for journalism in general.