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.

 

  

 

 

 

 

THE JOURNALIST AS CANNON FODDER

By Bill Saidi
TO portray a typical African village, there was this little grass-thatched hut. Then there was a black woman, good-looking and healthy. She was not bare-breasted, as you would expect in such portrayals by white people. But what she wore was scant enough to leave little to the imagination. Her skin was a sparkling brown.
Then there was the child, also brown-skinned and healthy. He completed the tableau of a typical, average African village home in Southern Rhodesia – circa 1949.
All this was on display at the Salisbury Agricultural Show in Salisbury in 1949.
I was the kid. I forgot to mention the man, the father in the village – but he was so unforgettably portrayed I have had no vivid reminder of his appearance over the years. It was just me and “my mother” that I remember. She was one of the most striking girls I had ever seen anywhere. I was 12.
We were all from what was then called the Salisbury African School (West). It is now called Chitsere. Every time I pass near it today, I am reminded of my portrayal of this typical village kid. For years, I have felt very “used” by the white people. My mother, my stepfather and I lived in The Old Bricks. I often slept in the kitchen.
Most of the residents in this very first African “location” in Southern Rhodesia were poor. We were poor. But there were even poorer people: huge families crammed in these semi-detached houses in this real ghetto. People in the villages were even poorer. My mother and I would, once in a while, take a bus to the village to visit relatives. They would celebrate when we brought them bread, sugar, sweets, jam and buns.
Years later, when I had somehow distinguished myself as a newspaper reporter of some repute, I was asked by the editor of The African Daily News to do a “family” profile of Dusty King and Dorothy Masuka. Dusty was Freddie Gotora, perhaps one of the best African footballers in Salisbury at the time. He played for Civil Service FC, for many years the champions of the Salisbury and District Football Association’s league. He was also an automatic choice for The Yellow Peril, the Salisbury first XI.
Gotora had lost one of his forearms playing soccer for my old school, the Salisbury African School (West) in 1945 – I think. He remains an icon among the old folk of Harare Township, now, of course, glorified in the unexciting name of Mbare.
Dorothy Masuka was, as she is today, one of the most successful entertainers in the country, even at that time. As far as I knew, they were not married. But they worked for a bicycle company in Charter Road, Sable Cycle or something. The idea was to present them as the ideal young married couple. The purpose, I suspect, was somehow linked to the company’s promotion of its sales.
Years later, I felt used again. So, there was a reason I was picked to do this fake portrayal of marital bliss. I have held no grudge against the two stars. I interviewed them as man and wife in a typical happy scenario in their home in the Beatrice Cottages – former prisoner if war camp for captured Italians in World War II... It was called “kuMatariana” by all of us in Harare Township.
Much later, after I had relocated to Lusaka and started working for Times Newspapers I felt very used again. Both The Times of Zambia and The Sunday Times of Zambia, on which I worked, were effectively owned and controlled by the government of President Kenneth Kaunda. In 1971, I was hauled into his office at State House in Lusaka. The idea was to spell out to me and anyone else on the papers what was r4equried of us: don’t criticise the government, including the president – or else. For the life of me I cannot pinpoint what particular impulse prompted me to defy all these orders from the beginning.
But here is an example: the president’s speech at the customary opening of a new semester at the University of Zambia was almost always “routine”. You could almost write it blindfolded, altering only the month or the year or the number of students enrolled. In the 1970s, as deputy editor-in-chief, I decided we ought to give the speech a bit of “zing”, the sparkle of a real story.
Towards the end of it, Kaunda made remarks highly critical of the running of the institution. It read like pretty strong stuff, the stuff of which lead stories are made. I asked the Chief Sub-Editor to rewrite it so it had “teeth”.
I did no more than stick to the principle of the “inverted pyramid”. The next day, the Special Assistant to the President, Mark Chona, rang me from Lusaka (we were based in Ndola, where the paper was printed). Why had I changed the president’s speech? I explained, as calmly as I could, that we thought the point of the speech which we highlighted was a new element to the situation at the university. He was fairly fuming, I could gather from his pregnant pause on the line. In future, he said in a cold, fiercely formal tone, I was to publish the president’s speeches as they were presented. Before I could respond with something cryptic like “but that is not journalism”, he had hung up.
It was Mark Chona again who, a year or two later, sent an emissary from Lusaka to Ndola with a letter from President Kaunda, in which I was advised of my dismissal from my job – obviously over another gaffe. I figured then that he must have decided it was payback time. I had not heeded his earlier warning.
The timing of my dismissal seemed, - to me, anyway - replete with the sort of grim vengefulness of someone determined to score a point. On the Saturday of that week, I drove from Ndola with my uncle, Canisius Mhango, and his daughter, Emma. Along the way, my Lancia Fulvia, knocked down a stray cow. It overturned. Fortunately, none of us was hurt. But the car was a virtual write-off. We eventually traveled to Lusaka, where I was on duty as duty editor of The Sunday Times of |Zambia. I returned to Ndola the next day.
On the following Monday, 5 November 1975, while trying to recover from the trauma of the accident, Mark Chona’s emissary turned up at my office with the letter of my dismissal. If this had been intended to deepen my shock and precipitate some sort of emotional catastrophe, it didn’t work. As I have said before, my reaction was one of anger. Had the president read my letter of explanation? If he had, was he saying it was of no consequence to the outcome of this “breach of discipline”?
I was reinstated in 1977. But the episode deepened to a new, frightening level, the extent to which journalists at such State-owned newspapers were expected to “toe the line”, or do their national duty by following to the letter the instructions of those at the top. They were not, in the end, your garden variety civil servants. But then, were they any better than any pen-pushing public servant doing his boss’s bidding without question? .
That question ought to put to rest, once and for all, the whole proposition that a government should be allowed to run newspapers of any sort. Publishing newspapers is a business based on the volume of advertising and circulation. Both targets are determined by the credibility of the so-called product – do enough people find its content is believable, that it has no particular to axe to grind , such as selling the government’s policies, regardless of the state of the economy or the number of opposition politicians jailed on spurious charges of subversion?
The suggestion that public funds ought to be squandered on loss-making government newspaper companies is a travesty of the concept of the taxpayers’ money being spent for the benefit of taxpayers. Newspapers owned by a government whose politicians are latent proponents of the one-party system of government represent, in essence, political skullduggery of the most subtle, but evil kind...
Most governments in Africa control most of newspapers, radio and television. Exceptions today include Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Kenya and little Swaziland...A few, such as Zimbabwe, have a few genuinely independent newspapers. But they operate in an atmosphere of such tension - with the government – they are forever on their guard. The governments have spelt out clearly what they expect from these papers. You can be sure this doesn’t constitute, in the end, “all the news that’s fit to print”, or “telling it like it is”.
There are people in those governments whose opposition to any idea of a free media is almost pathological. It has assumed, for them, the scale of a disease.
The rationale, in some quarters, is that the government in power needs to keep the people informed of their programmes. They do this through radio, television and newspapers, which they control. The control can be total: in other words, absolutely nothing negative can be allowed to gain any publicity. In Zimbabwe today, the only independent radio stations available to the people broadcast from outside the country. For some years the government has been trying to interfere with the broadcasts of the Voice of the People and Studio 7, which is part of the Voice of America, the US government’s external broadcasting service. Like the VOP, its entire staff is Zimbabwean. Most of them previously worked for the government broadcasting services.
Zimbabweans living in the communal areas used to be the State radio broadcasters’ captive listeners. But now with the easy availability of shortwave radios, many of them now tune to both VOP and Studio 7. Both broadcasters have correspondents within Zimbabwe, some clandestinely.
Proposed legislation “opening up the airwaves” has still not been transformed into law. The dilly dallying is Zanu PF’s way of demonstrating its reluctance to such “wild fancies” of unbridled media freedom.
What the Mugabe government has been anxious to drum into the journalists’ mind is that only if they are loyal and patriotic will they be allowed anything like free rein in their work. The message has been hammered home through the high-profile sacking of any “dissident” editors from their jobs in the State media.
Willie Musarurwa and his successor at The Sunday Mail. Henry Muradzikwa, were both given that treatment. Muradzikwa was luckier than his predecessor in one respect. After the Sunday Mail sacking, he was reassigned to head the government news agency, Ziana. From there he was promoted – to head the government broadcasting services, now styled Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings.
But after the 2008 elections in which Zanu PF was fairly creamed by the MDC formations, he was fired. He was not reassigned immediately to any government job.
As long as Zanu PF remains a part of any government, there is little chance there will be a properly constituted dispensation of a free media in the country. Zanu PF has become so used to using journalists as cannon fodder, it is difficult imagine the party at last declaring emphatically: “You are now free. Go and do your stuff!”
If, like the Malawi Congress Party in Malawi and the United National Independence Party (UNIP) in Zambia, this party loses any vestige of power completely in the next election, there is a real chance of the total freedom of the media in Zimbabwe.
If Zanu PF manages to retain even a toe inside the door of real freedom, it could take another 30 years before that party can finally give the journalists in the country the respect and dignity it has denied them since 1980.

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.