Bill Saidi Memoirs

OLD FRIENDS COME CALLING

2010-09-13T01:58:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-30T05:35:00.001-07:00

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

2010-08-30T05:35:00.000-07:00

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.

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.

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.

INTEGRITY, HONESTY AND JOURNALISM

2010-08-23T07:30:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-17T01:43:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-11T00:19:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-03T02:10:00.000-07:00

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.

ZIMPAPERS: TEN YEARS OF TURBULENCE

2010-07-28T01:47:00.000-07:00

By Bill Saidi
ZIMPAPERS is the only newspaper company for which I have worked for ten years at a stretch, in 53 years of journalism. The next record must go to Times Newspapers in Zambia, where I worked for nine years, At Zimpapers, I missed a great opportunity to meet the great (?) Kim Il Sung, leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in 1980.
Shortly after I had started working on The Herald, as the Assistant to the Editor, I was selected to be among journalists to accompany the Prime Minister, Robert Mugabe, on his very first State visit to a country whose support in the struggle had been invaluable.
Incidentally, the title of Assistant to the Editor was a “first” for me. At Times Newspaper in Zambia, I once held the title of Assistant Editor. In this new capacity at Zimpapers, I performed exactly the same functions as I did at Times I was excited. In 1978, as a senior editor at Times Newspapers in Zambia, I had been selected to visit India, where a conference on the Juche Idea – Kim Il Sung’s creation – was being held: the ostensible purpose was to discuss or “critique” the philosophy. I found the proceedings exceedingly boring. But I have always enjoyed a visit to India.
A meeting with the man himself would probably have had the equivalent, epic proportions of meeting The Great Helmsman himself, or Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
I had spent 17 years in Zambia. In that time, as a journalist, I had been bombarded from all sides by literature on all such ideologies, apart from Kaunda’s own Humanism, Nyerere’s African Socialism, Senghor’s Negritude and Nkrumah’s own.
For me, all were probably as legitimate as democracy as ideologies worth pursuing. But I always reduced myself to “a poor black man trying to make a living”. None of them, thus far, had translated themselves into something tangible which I could pursue with the genuine hope of improving my status - political or material.
Over the years, I had developed a distinctly cynical attitude towards all politics. My greatest regret was that there was little I could do to eliminate politicians from the running of any country. Who would replace them – priests? They had their own peculiar problems, including paedophilia.
Alas, some Great Unknown intervened: I won’t try to go so far as to say it was Fate. But Zimpapers were told that my name would not be included among the journalists accompanying Mugabe to the DPRK. After a few inquiries, I established that there was a generally negative attitude towards me.
I doubted that the PM himself would have been involved in striking down my name. After a moment of reflection, I decided it was perfectly predictable: I had never been as what you would call a”darling” of the ruling coalition government. In Zambia, I had clashed with both, each one claiming I was not performing my “national duty:” of supporting them in the struggle, as demanded of any Zimbabwean – journalist or not.
In New Delhi, I was most fortunate to meet two politicians, for the first time. Sikwili Moyo of Zapu and Dzingai Mutumbuka (Zanu) attended on their parties’ behalf. We maintained contact back home after independence. Sikwili who was older than me died a few years after returning home. I was touched by his death. He had displayed, throughout the years I knew him, a commitment to the country which I had always admired.
Dzingai, much younger than me, ended up in the Cabinet. He showed, quite often, a brusqueness which I suspect eventually led to his being caught up in the tsunami that was the Willowgate scandal. We kept in touch, briefly, when he ended up working fir the WHO in Nairobi.
Even as far as 1978, I had gleaned from talking to the two of them, that the schism between the two parties was bound to degenerate into something much uglier – which it did shortly after independence.
I came away from the Juche conference, as unenlighte4ned about this philosophy as I had been before.
What I appreciated the most was that it entailed self-reliance – hardly an original concept. It reminded me of Kenneth Kaunda’s Humanism, whose lynchpin was the capacity to help others – again, hardly a brand-new concept; Still, I was disappointed not to go to Pyongyang. During my stay in Zambia, I had visited the UK, the USA, Canada, India, Jamaica, the Soviet Union, the Philippines, West Germany, Tanzania, Egypt, Kenya, Malawi, Ethiopia and Pakistan. Was this failure to visit the DPRK to mark the beginning of the end of my globe-trotting?
At one time, Herald House had so many Zimbabweans from the Zambian episode, a few of us must have been tempted to speak to each other in Nyanja when we met in the corridors: Farayi Munyuki, Stephen Mpofu, Tim Chigodo and Tonic Sakaike – we had all met, for the first timer in Zambia.
We had not always displayed the camaraderie almost natural when people from the same country meet in a foreign land. In one or two cases, there was coldness, bitterness which ran through the relationships which you could cut with a knife or a badza.
As journalists, we had all benefited from our stay in Zambia. Particularly after independence, we benefited from the new government’s keenness to enhance our skills in the profession to match those of the rest of the continent. None of us would ever have been offered such opportunities in Southern Rhodesia.
There was, of course, always the resentment among the Zambians that we were taking jobs that rightly belonged to them – even if some of them were not as qualified or as experienced as we were. I was targeted as a columnist. At first, the “Saidi” with which I signed off Lusaka After Dark in The Central African Mail was assumed to be a nom-de-plume. But it soon became clear that there was a real person behind the name, a man who, though with a name that was distinctly Malawian or even Zambian, was in reality, a Rhodesian.
Incidentally, the title of Assistant to the Editor was a “first” for me. In Zambia, I had been appointed Assistant Editor, before being elevated to Deputy Editor, then Deputy Editor-in-Chief. In these capacities, my functions included – at one time or another – supervising the newsgathering operations, the subbing of the copy at an early stage and writing editorials.
I discovered much to my chagrin, that the Assistant to the Editor performed exactly the same functions. For a while, I toyed with the idea of protesting at my title: it gave the distinct impression of some kind of secretarial function, such as secretary to the Editor or personal assistant to the Editor. In the end, however I curbed myinitial rebellious reaction. After all, I was the first black man to occupy this position – so my friends told me. There as no need to ruffle feathers so early. What I was advised to do, instead, was to test the establishment’s sincerity: my position was not widow-dressing – or was it?
An old friend, the late John Cecil Matowe, who worked in the technical department, floated the idea that I apply for a car loan. That, according to him, had never happened before. So, I was turned into a guinea pig. But since it was in a very good cause, I was not entirely averse to such a short period of humiliation - going cap in hand to the “master”. This must have appeared, to some of the black staff, to be a distasteful affirmation of the old “master and servant” reality of the racist regime.
But victory seemed certain: the new dispensation must surely entail, certainly on the part of the whites who had chosen to remain the country after April 18, 1980, a definite shift in the degree to which the Africans could feel life had really changed for them – in reality.
I suspect that when my application reached George Capon’s desk, his reaction was predictable in the circumstances. He knew the huge perks I had enjoyed at Times Newspapers: a company car, a company house, an expense account and a personal secretary.
Soon, the loan application had been approved. Matowe said he predicted other senior black employees would be emboldened to apply for similar loans. As far as I can remember, there was nothing like a “flood” of such applications.
I suspect that both Robin Drew and George Capon had accurately read and interpreted the writing on the wall: their time was up. I had long suspected that I could have been their “token” as far as displaying their willingness to conform to the new dispensation was concerned. I had tried, in my own subtle way, to indicate to them that what had followed independence elsewhere among the African countries would not be avoided in the new Zimbabwe.
The government would take over the publishing company – lock, stock and barrel and there was precious little they could do about it. Once Farayi Munyuki had walked into my office at Herald House one day to announce that “we are taking over”, I knew the jig was up – in a manner of speaking.
Frankly, I have always wondered why most of the African countries which became independent in the 1960s were virtually obsessed with running and owning all the media outlets in their countries. I know that Nkrumah pioneered the obsession. I still wonder why – unless it was, as some of us suspected a few years later - to end, once and for all, the dream of real independence, for which thousands had died.
In Zambia, journalists were being sold on the idea that unless there was a one-party state of government, there would always be disunity in the nation. This would, in turn, almost halt development per se. Instead of concentrating all their energies on economic development, people would, instead, be preoccupied with politics.
The argument extended to the promotion of a free press. The people had to be “regimented” into an acceptance of the need for unity, which could only be achieved in a one-party system of government – with no dissent allowed. So, after 1981, my whole concept of a free media as a vehicle for the free, relatively unfettered exchange of ideas - radical, extremist and even quite often subversive – was shaken to its roots.
The freedom for which thousands had died did not, apparently, include the freedom to oppose or challenge the ruling authority.
Many Zimbabweans, among them people who fought the racist regime to the end – until victory was achieved – may still argue in favour of a controlled media, even in the 21st century. I spent ten years at Zimpapers. There were ten turbulent years. If any of the compatriots who were with me during those years, still believe we helped to build Zimbabwe, I ask them to answer this question: would we be where we are now if we had had a free media as far back as 1981?
Frankly, my answer would be an emphatic NO.

COMBATING RACISM AND…. THAT OTHER THING….

2010-07-23T03:05:00.000-07:00

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By Bill Saidi
MOST journalists who launched their careers during the colonial period – as I did - gave priority coverage to one topic: racism. It was the basis of colonialism. The British and their surrogates in Southern Rhodesia could deny this until they were blue in the face. But it is a fact: colonialism was steeped in racism.
The war of liberation may not have rotated on racism. But somewhere in the background was the notion that freedom and democracy would be achieved by the majority only after racism had been wiped out – and that is the way it turned out.
Even after the imposition of the federation – with its much-ballyhooed policy of Partnership, the whites would not budge. In fact, her whites of Southern Rhodesia were the most obdurate. Their grand plan was to carve out an apartheid-style white supremacist system in their country.
The African journalist faced racism on a daily basis: he could be a talented reporter, one who could write a sizzling paragraph over which some of the whites would drool with envy, but his pay was a pittance compared with that of the whites at The Rhodesia Herald, the Sunday Mail or the Bulawayo Chronicle.
Personally, I was paid so little the only time I could afford a radio on my salary was when I left Southern Rhodesia to work in then Northern Rhodesia. After a year working for The Central African Mail, I could afford a shortwave radio and a radiogram. The bonus was I was able to buy my first record – Startime With The Dark Sisters. These ladies had made an indelible mark on me = their music had dominated the “Mahobho” scene in Harare township. To be able to listen to 12 tracks of theirs without having to buy beer or even dance made me feel like a king
I was fortunate that my parents had a radio and a gramophone – otherwise the only personal possession I could boast of was my bicycle. Even then, I had to buy it on credit.
The racism in Southern Rhodesia was palpable. As a boy, walking with my mother along the platform at Salisbury railway station, I was whacked in the face by a white man driving a trolley. There was no warning of the approaching vehicle or eve a shout from the white driver to me – such as “Get out of the way, you kaffir piccanniny!”
It was just the heavy WHAM in the face.
Before entering journalism, I worked in a fairly prominent position for a private company: I was the managing director’s assistant or clerk or typist – I was by his side all the time. My office, no more than alcove, was right next to his.
One day, while I pounded away on my typewriter, a white woman came into the shop. She saw me. I heard clearly, as she shouted in a voice dripping with hatred: “What’s that monkey doing there?”
Incidentally, decades later, after the racists had been vanquished and had slunk back into their lair, an African, as black as I am and as proud a Zimbabwean as I am, called me a monkey. It was in the presence of another Zimbabwean who didn’t even rebuke the foul-mouthed gentleman. Racism had been replaced by this other “thing”: xenophobia.
My experience with racism extends to an attempt to seek a job on a white newspaper. I had chalked up four years at African Newspapers. Admittedly, I had risen far enough to be an acting editor. But I gad packed a lot of experience under my belt. So, I applied for a job at The Evening Standard. Frankly, I did not reckon with the monster that was racism when I applied for the job. This paper was so different from The Rhodesia Herald, the standard bear of the Argus Group company in Southern Rhodesia. Rhys Meier was the editor and he had consented to interview me for the job. I was bubbling with enthusiasm – and hope. I had no testimonials or certificates: I thought they might at least giver me a chance to show my mettle with a probation period or something. In the end, I had no idea what decided Rhys Meier not to offer me the job. But for me it had to be that monster again – racism. There was no journalism school then, least of all for Africans. I
assumed they would have a training programme of sorts – as African Newspapers had. It was essentially “on the job” training: it had its faults, but I felt I was adequately equipped to work on any newspaper. I was disappointed not to get a job at The Standard. For a while, I was down in the dumps. I ended up working out of journalism, unhappily – until I received the call from Lusaka to join The Central African Mail.
In 1980, when I joined Zimpapers as assistant to the editor, Robin Drew, I had been around the block many times – in a manner of speaking. Even The Herald had carried the story of my dismissal from Times Newspapers by President Kaunda. But they had not carried the story of my reinstatement, which many people seem to ignore when they relate my “problem with Kaunda”.
In 1980, in September, to be exact, I was installed in an office at Herald House – all by myself, as I had in Ndola and Lusaka. Some people said I was the first African in the editorial department to be allocated an office of their own. It made me walk tall; I didn’t have a secretary of my own, as I had in Zambia. But Drew’s secretary did all my correspondence – such as it was.
George Capon and Robin Drew treated me with remarkable deference. We had first met in London at a meeting of the Commonwealth Press Union (CPU); I attended as chairman of the Zambian chapter. At a previous meeting, I had joined Derek Ingram and Bethel Njoku in campaigning vigorously for the Rhodesian delegation to be kicked out of the conference. They had no legitimacy, we said. I believe they remembered me from that confrontation.
Back in Salisbury in 1980, Capon maintained a remarkably level-headed attitude towards me. Even Robin Drew treated me with the utmost respect and dignity. Both men knew that as an editor on The Times of Zambia I had been part of a team which vilified the regime of Ian Smith and the media which supported it. None of us were impressed with the “blank spaces” to which the papers had resorted in protest against the censorship of their news by the regime. We still saw them as lackeys of the regime for they never openly called for majority rule throughout the 15 years of UDI.
I was impressed when Robin Drew asked me to write my first editorial comment for The Herald. He didn’t change a word of it. I had been circumspect in deciding what tone to take in the editorial. The white editorial hierarchy led by Drew, had adopted a certain stance towards the new dispensation. But they were not about to abandon everything. They still wished for a “civilized transition”, one in which the sentiments of the whites who had decided to remain in the country would be taken account of.
My first editorial didn’t raise any hackles with the white editorial hierarchy. But I like to believe they saw how, in the immediate future, the editorial thrust would had to take thorough account of the reality that white supremacy had died, never to be revived again.
Before The African Daily |News came on the scene in 1956, there was hardly any coverage of the “African story” in Southern Rhodesia. Up to that time, there were only two weekly newspapers, both owned by African Newspapers, The Bantu Mirror (in Bulawayo) and The African Weekly (Salisbury), aimed specifically at an urban African readership.
In Harare township, my cousins and I were among children who sold the weekly paper. Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would one day write for a newspaper which people would rush to buy. Until I left African Newspapers in 1961, I had no idea that the company was funded by the government. I understood, in retrospect, why we front-paged every story of Garfield Todd’s election campaign in 1958. Five years into federation, the whites rejected his pro-African advancement policies for a rigid racist policy which eventually culminated in the war of liberation in which an estimated 50 000, mostly Africans, died.
The Paver brothers, who nominally owned African Newspapers, were not what we called “bleeding heart liberals”. But they must have appreciated that none of us on the editorial staff harboured any hopes that they and their kith and kin would continue to “lord it”
over us. With Ghana’s independence in 1957, they too must have seen that the bell was tolling for white supremacy.
Posted by Bill Saidi at 2:29 AM 0 comments
Friday, July 16, 2010

THE DAILY NEWS: Media madness to die for

2010-07-19T05:37:00.000-07:00

By Bill Saidi
IT was almost a dream come true, for me, when Modus launched The Sunday Gazette magazine, with me as editor. In the five years that I worked for Elias Rusike’s newly-acquired possession 1990-1995, this venture was more spectacular and exhilarating than anything else I had done before.
I had put together a dummy and showed it to the chairman of the board, the late Eric Kahari. His comment, after looking through it, was: “It’s so good – can you top this?”
I had written every word myself. It was a labour of love. Later, I realised I had not put so much energy into one project as I had done with this dummy – except what I have always rated as my two most cherished novels – Day of the Baboons and The Brothers of Chatima Road.
The magazine did well: its contents appealed to many readers who were inclined towards literature and the arts in general. But Elias Rusike had his eye – quite naturally, I suppose – on the balance sheet. Before he pulled the plug on it, I had received a warm, congratulatory letter from Terence Ranger, still then a luminary at the University of Zimbabwe. He praised it as something he had looked forward to for some time.
I was not exactly shattered when we had to shut up shop. But I know I had a great time editing that magazine and the two men who helped me, Farai Nyandoro and Praise Zenenga, went on to bigger things. I like to believe they were spurred by what we had done on the magazine.
Yet it paled into insignificance, when placed side by side with the fine madness that was The Daily News adventure in 1999. I entered that adventure in the minor role of Assistant Editor. The initial pay was scandalous: by then I had chalked up 22 years in journalism, 17 of them in Zambia, where I had finished up as deputy editor-in-chief of Times Newspapers, that country’s largest publishing group.

Apart from winning joint first prize in a 1966 short story contest in Zambia, I had published three novels, two in Zambia and one in Zimbabwe. This was the much-praised The Brothers of Chatima Road. One reviewer had bubbled with such admiration for it; he had proposed it for a secondary school textbook.
Yet here I was, in a skyscraper off Samora Machel Avenue, about to start work as the Assistant Editor of The Daily News. Geoff Nyarota was Editor-in-Chief and Davison Maruziva, who had been his deputy at The Chronicle, was his deputy here again. Both had much less experience than I had. In their favour, perhaps, were spells of formal training. Nyarota had spent time at Zimbabwe Newspapers, and Maruziva had done it, of all places, in the UK.
Yet they knew and I knew that there was, as in all other fields of human endeavour in this world, no substitute for experience. As we launched into the nitty-gritty of the adventure, they let nature take its course: they deferred, decently, to my superior hands-on expertise.
Not much has been made, even now, of the fact that Nyarota had initially offered me the job of editor-in-chief. In 1996, while I worked for Andy Moyse’s Horizon magazine, he had come to me with his proposition: he was about to launch a new publication. Would I be interested? Could we discuss it over lunch at The Pavillion at Meikles? It would be all on him, he said.
Now, not to put too fine a point to it, Nyarota and I had an ups-and-downs relationship since first meeting at Herald House in 1980. He had then just come to the editorial department of The Herald. Previously, he and a few others, including Tonic Sakaike, had worked on a pretty ill-disguised “African” companion of The Herald.
But by 1980, a new dispensation had been ushered even into the staid and rather racist cloisters of the new company. In an independent Zimbabwe: not even the smugly “superior” people at the Argus Group in South Africa, could pretend that Harold Macmillan’s “wind of change” had left Herald House untouched. The Herald was about to be hit by a whirlwind of such force some of the staff would not know what hit them.
Meanwhile, there was a curious development which caused me, personally, some moments of deep reflection and anxiety. Almost at the same time, Nyarota and Abby Rusike resigned from The Herald, both of them to join the government media.
I was the new Assistant to the Editor, Robin Drew. In ranking, I was above them. In Zambia, I had been above Rusike at Times Newspapers. He was business editor and I was, by then deputy editor-in-chief. We had had an altercation over a story which I had eventually turned down for use in the paper. It was on the grounds the man interviewed had what I knew to be a “shady record”.
Rusike was visibly angry with me. Shortly afterwards, as Zimbabve emerged into nationhood, he resigned and left for Salisbury. I followed later, to become Robin Drew’s assistant.
But even with the salary unfit for a cadet reporter, I reveled in the Daily News adventure. I was asked to write a piece for the inaugural issue, which I did with gusto, as it was of my memories of work on The African Daily News. For some strange reason, the concluding paragraphs of the piece were lost. I initially suspected sabotage.
Later, I decided to put it down to the excitement of a new adventure: there were people on the staff who were clearly overwhelmed by the enormity of the task before us: launching an independent daily newspaper to fight for the market with the government-owned, well-established Herald.
For me the teething problems of the newspaper were nothing to be upset about. I had been in at the beginning of a number of new ventures. Rarely was anything smooth sailing at the start. Eventually, The Daily News found its stability. Whatever else people said later about his editorship, Geoff Nyarota carved a niche for himself in the annals of newspaper publishing with The Daily News.
There was, to be sure, a period during which the management seemed to hang in limbo. There were changes at the top. But editorially, the newspaper prospered well beyond our wildest dreams. People seemed to have been waiting for the paper for years. Soon, it eclipsed The Herald in circulation. To say that this alarmed The Establishment is an understatement. I wrote a regular column, Bill Saidi On Wednesday. There were occasions when some people thought the editorial comment in the paper reflected the views expressed in my column. Initially, Nyarota, Maruziva and I alternated in writing the editorials. Our styles were different, but since they eventually passed through me there was an attempt to regularise their presentation.
Nonetheless, I was not duly alarmed when a caller asked me: “Are you a Zimbabwean?” I said I was. Was he? I asked. There was no response to that question.
There had never been, in the history of publishing in the country since independence, a newspaper that had caused so much controversy as The Daily News. For me, the reasons were clear: the newspaper pulled no punches. It was thoroughly irreverent of The Establishment. As far as I know, it never used abusive or insolent language in discussing politics, particularly in highlighting the failures of the government and the governing party.
But what it was doing had never been done before so openly. I suspect this is what set The Establishment fuming. The accusation was that it was undermining the authority of the government, that it was subversive in some of its comments.
For me, The Daily News adventure was something to die for or to kill for. I wouldn’t exchange it for anything on earth. It ushered into Zimbabwe a thoroughly new kind of journalism, one in which there was not a trace of fear or hesitation. In years to come, people will speak of the period during which this paper ruled the media roost with such exclamations as “Wow!” or “By Jove, they did it!”
Others might ponder quietly: “How did they get away with it for so long?”

THIS JOB CAN KILL YOU TOO

2010-07-19T05:34:00.000-07:00

By Bill Saidi
MOST journalists are acutely aware of the perils endemic in a story that walks into the newsroom, screaming its head off about being The Big Story of the day.
A story for which the reporter does not have to sweat has all the danger signals of being either a non-story, or a story likely to explode into the reporter’s or the editor’s face – sooner or later.
Most reporters learn, through being in the trenches for long, that a good story must, first of all, wear the badge of “public interest” on its lapel. If it doesn’t, then it needs to be probed thoroughly before a reporter is assigned to it.
Once it passes that rigorous test, the next thing is to assess its source. This has to be a fairly reliable source. The source may not want to be identified no further than being “reliable”.
The reporter must ascertain that the reason for this anonymity is genuine and justified. If it cannot be proved to the satisfaction of both the reporter and the editor, then it should be announced that “all bets are off”.
The source must be identified or there will be no story. This is necessary, in the first place, for the paper’s credibility. Then, of course, there is the question of defamation. The editor could always take the decision on the probability that the source would have no legitimate reason to “tell a long story” to the paper.
But there should be no hesitation either way: the cost to the newspaper could be enormous. Quite often, it could involve the lost of a life or lives. This might be far-fetched on the face of it. But a good editor knows enough about the job to realize there is this adage: If in doubt, don’t.
The mention of death, though brief, has to be taken seriously. Of course, journalists have been killed for more grievous errors of omission or commission than relying too much on an unreliable “reliable source”.
A recent conference of African journalists in Harare was told the 13 of their number had been killed on the continent – mostly in Somalia. It’s hardly likely that these journalists were in the “crossfire” of the civil war that has raged in that country since the overthrow of the dictator Mohammed Siad Barre as president.
In most cases, they were deliberately targeted. They were suspected of siding with one side of the conflict against the other – or for reporting that one side was losing the war when that same side believed they were scoring success after success.
In Zimbabwe, the most well-publicised death of a photo-journalist, at the hands of persons unknown, was that of Edward Chikomba. He formerly worked for the state TV. He had become a freelance photojournalist after being retrenched.
So far, there have been no arrests in connection with his death.
Journalists been arrested and locked up for doing their job. Under the notorious Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, journalists have been picked up and locked up by the police.
Before that law came into effect, the same measures could be taken against journalists under the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act. This law was passed by the settler regime to deal with rising African agitation against the colonial administration.
In 2001, I was one of the four journalists from The Daily News, locked up at the Harare central police station over a story relating to the alleged looting of farm property by the police or some other such law enforcement agency. With me in the lockup were the editor, Geoffrey Nyarota, the news editor, John Gambanga and the senior reporter, Sam Munyavi. Only he is still out of the country, the rest of us being around and trying hard to do what we were trained todo–be journalists again.
My time in the cells – about ten hours, reminded me, rather horribly, that you could get killed in this job – or die of other causes.
In 2001, I was 64 years old. I have suffered from Type 2 diabetes since I was 34 years old. Nyarota is diabetic too. We shared his medication. If we had been locked up for longer, there is no telling how we would have fared underf the harsh conditions in the crowded cells.
The faint-hearted cadet reporter, entering journalism from the idealistic standpoint of trying to “make a difference”, might find the real-life conditions of the job so frightening, they might decided there and then to quit – join the priesthood or become a teacher or go farming.
To stick it out –as some of us have – takes a commitment to what has been called a thankless job for society. The genuine journalists are driven by the adventure of making a difference. Each story is graded on its potency for making a difference to people’s lives – however insignificant. If people conclude that the news they read or watch or listen to makes a difference to their lives, they develop an attachment to the purveyors of such news.
In my mind, as I sat in my underpants in the cells at Harare central police station in 2001, ran the question: Am I assumed to have committed a crime against society – or was I about to commit such a crime?
Fortunately for the four of us, the wheels
of justice prevailed eventually. Our lawyers managed to convince a judge that we were being held illegally. We were released. The threat was that we would still be charged with a crime arising from a story
we had published – which had “caused alarm and despondency..
All four of us must have reflected, at some point, we were fortunate not to have been killed. As far as I know, all of us have not changed our minds about journalism as a result of that frightening experience. That is as it should be. If others before us had not stiffened their resolve after similar challenges, where would journalism be today?

PI’d from a capacity to expose

2010-07-16T01:43:00.001-07:00

By Bill Saidi

JOURNALISTS, particularly in Africa, can be viewed as “dangerous to national interests” for any number of reasons, some of them as weird as being accused of wearing hip-hugging shorts. Journalists have been killed all over the world, including many in Africa. In summary, the reason for this is their ability to a expose – crime, corruption, scandal, lies and massacres.
The exact definition of these “interests” can vary from country to country, from leader to leader. But, almost always, it hinges on their published perceptions of a country, the leaders, their rivals for power and even their peccadilloes.
So, it is nothing unusual for a journalist to be barred from entering a country. The government is under no obligation to disclose its reasons – at least, not that I know of.
In 1974, I was declared a Prohibited Immigrant from Malawi. My Zambian passport described me, accurately, as a journalist. By then, I had already used it to travel to Kenya, the United Kingdom, the United States, West Germany, the Soviet Union – and Malawi. Every trip was premised on my function as a journalist, or – in the case of the Soviet Union - as a short story writer. .
In 1973, I had had my winning short story published in a journal of the Soviet Writers’ Union. I had been accepted as a member of the Afro-Asian Writers’ Union on the strength of that story, whose title in Russian or Kirilitsa was A Man’s Heart. The officials in Malawi had no idea that a man with the distinctly Malawian surname of “Saidi” had scored something of a “first” in this huge foreign country, one of the world’s two superpowers, then.
My short story had been selected because it had won joint first prize in a nationwide short story competition in Zambia, only three years after I had arrived there from Southern Rhodesia.
I was shocked when, at Chileka airport in Blantyre. I was very politely asked to stand aside before being “processed” to enter the country. After a few tense moments – for me - I was handed a form to sign. I read the small print in real terror, after glancing with alarm at the large print – PROHIBITED IMMIGRANT.
At the back of my mind was a thought which, I believed, my father might have viewed with either disgust or idle curiosity. That would depend on his understanding – wherever he was then - of present-day politics in his country - nay, his continent. Agonelepi Saidi had died in 1951, when I was 14 years old. I was in Standard Five at the Salisbury African West school in Harare township. It’s Chitsere today.
My mother had broken the news to me when we were at St Peter’s in Chihota, outside Salisbury, where her mother’s people lived. Incidentally, these people traced their origins from Chaminuka, the great Shona prophet. Personally, I had listened to my grandmother speak, with nostalgia, of her time in Chitungwiza, the legendary headquarters of this prophet. I could have played up this ancestral connection, to the hilt, to boost my own image. My grandmother’s totem was Rwizi, which would immediately suggest an ancestral origin going back to Chaminuka.
All I can say now to all those who have spoken disparagingly of my alien” origins, is: “Eat your heart out!”
I cried. I cried because I had not known the man as intimately as sons get to knows their fathers. I was told, by my mother, that I had met Mr Saidi, a tailor by profession, once. Our meeting was in the Old Bricks, where I grew up. Throughout my adult life I have tried to build a picture of him in my mind, all in vain.
My mother told me he left the country after our meeting in the Old Bricks. She told me he had asked me to write a letter to his people in Nyasaland – that he was coming home.
My mother says I did write the letter. I was in Standard One at the time. I have only a vague recollection of the incident. But it always brings a glow to my heart. Although he never married my mother, he must have harboured some kind of love for the result of their intimacy, enough for him to seek my help in communicating with his people.
But here I was now, in 1974, being told by the government of Hastings Kamuzu Banda, the president of the republic, that I was being legally thrown out of my father’s country. At first, I was aghast. Then I landed on the terra firma of African politics. Nobody cared a fig about such coincidences.
There was dirty politics at work here. The previous year, I had visited Malawi without a hitch. My mission, which I believe I accomplished with some brilliance, was to send money to my mother in Salisbury. Since almost all ties with Rhodesia had been severed by the Zambian government after UDI, there was no easy way to send money to her – except through Malawi. My research on this had been thorough. I sent her a total of eighty Kwacha – a lot of money at the time – from Blantyre and Lilongwe.
That trip had turned out to be something entirely different from what I had planned and the reasons were as entirely political, as was my subsequent deportation from that country.
I boarded the plane to Chileka at Lusaka airport. I was officially on leave from my job in the Lusaka head office of the group. Also at the airport were Vernon Mwaanga and Alexander Chikwanda. Mwaanga was editor-in-chief of Times Newspapers. His friend, Chikwanda, was a minister in the government of President Kaunda. They were fairly young and had been seriously described as “the young turks” of the UNIP leadership. I knew them from way back, before independence in 1964.
Then they introduced to the man they had come to see off at the airport – Aleke Banda. Like me, he too had been born in Southern Rhodesia, but his people were originally from Malawi. Aleke was now big in the government of his namesake. In fact, he was something of a luminary, having taken care of things while Banda and the other stalwarts of the struggle, including Yatuta and Dunduzu Chisiza and Henry Chipembere, were in prison. We knew of each other by reputation.
After the introductions, we boarded the plane, Aleke in first class. What happened upon my arrival was so spectacular, for me, I was initially alarmed. The VIP treatment was a complete surprise. I was assigned a government vehicle from the airport to Mount Soche hotel in Blantyre. From there until I left the country, I was treated like a guest of the government of Malawi. Everything was laid on, including an escort. What they had worked out was an itinerary which included all the tourist attractions of this beautiful country, including Lake Malawi, As a journalist, I have always learnt to treat such political generosity with suspicion. I knew, almost instinctively, that Aleke Banda had a lot to do with it. What would be the payoff? They would expect something from me. Aleke had to be as consummate a politician as all those others I had known in the past, including Vernon Mwaanga and Alex Chikwanda: their breed did not lavish generosity on non-politicians – particularly journalists - for nothing.
My escort was something of a surprise. Harvey Mlanga was now the editor of The Malawi News, the party newspaper. We had known each other for years, back in Salisbury. He was a much-respected journalist, not a party hack, or someone routinely assigned to sing praises to the ruling party and the government. I knew then that I was being accorded this royal treatment for a specific reason – although, for the life of me, at the time, I had no idea what it could be.
Harvey and I toured Malawi like old friends. He was older than me, but we had known me for such a long time, we both knew what we believed was the duty of the journalist – to be honest with themselves and not to “sell out” the profession for any reason. We also accepted that there was this vague thing called “national duty”, over which you could excuse working for a party or a government newspaper. So, we walked about where we would draw the line – it was as vague as it could be: only when you believed it was utterly immoral and a repudiation of all you stood for as a journalist.
At the end of my tour, Aleke Banda held a reception for me. We both spoke glowingly of what had been done. I was, to be honest, still in something of a haze. But I did sent money to my mother.
Back in Zambia, I thought I had done myself proud. In 1974, after I had been promoted to deputy editor-in-chief and moved to Ndola, I took the plane to Chileka again. I had missed something after my return. An article had been published in The Times of Zambia, which I had not seen before its publication – as I might have done, in my capacity as a senior editor.
I only realized how its contents had been explosive after my return from Malawi: it was a praise song for Aleke Banda, predicting he would succeed Kamuzu Banda as president of the republic. There was no byline.
Evidently, there was fury in Kamuzu Banda’s camp. He had not sanctioned the grooming of Aleke Banda as his successor. Who was trying to promote the idea? Who, from The Times of Zambia, which had published the sensational article, had recently been feted by the same Aleke Banda? Bill Saidi, of course.
To this day, I still don’t know who wrote that piece, for which I paid the price, with deportation. I visited Malawi only after Kamuzu Banda had been defeated by Bakhili Muluzi in the 1990s. My name, I was glad to discover, had been removed from the list of Prohibited Immigrants.
I have a feeling that Agonelepi Saidi, wherever he might be, will be shaking his head in amusement. “that's life, my boy,” he might have said. “It's not a picnic.” Certainly, for a journalist, there is no time for that picnic. They can give you the impression of affording you something like a picnic. But always beware of the payoff.

THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF JOURNALISM

2010-07-15T00:48:00.001-07:00

BY Bill Saidi
AT 21years of age, I was locked up in a police cell for the first time in my life. It all happened in 1958. The cause of my incarceration was journalism – indirectly, I suppose. But the chances are if I had not been a reporter on The African Daily News, riding a company motorcycle, I would never have ended up in the original Harare police station.
That place is now officially called Mbare police station. My journey to the police cell had been long and painful, in the end. But it had begun with the promise of achievement such as young people dream of at 21 years of age. I had been a reporter for a year or so. My major assignment at the time was the coverage of R.S. Garfield-Todd’s election campaign in Salisbury.
I had travelled to most of the venues of his meetings on the motorcycle. I could drive a motorcycle, even without a licence, because I had learnt to do so with my friend, Cecil John Matowe’s Norton Roadholder, a 600 cc monster on which I had also had an accident. So, T`he African Daily News, a 150 cc “baby”, was child’s play by comparison.
The election had ended. Garfield Todd had lost, in spite of The African Daily News’s spirited front page coverage of his speeches. This assignment should have been done by Albert Dumbutshena, the paper’s chief reporter and my mentor. Since he was indisposed, it fell to me to do the job. It was an enormous challenge for a 21-year-old cadet reporter who had only recently graduated to a junior reporter. The senior editors, including Nathan Shamuyarira, had placed so much faith in my ability to carry out this arduous task I felt honoured. I had picked up some gems of advice from the veteran. We all called him “Dumbs” or Sapa, after the South African Press Association. Another senior reporter named Moses Mwale was AP – for Associated Press. Many of the foreign copy we used was from Sapa-AP. Dumbutshena and Mwale were recognised as the “stars” of the newsroom, hence their nicknames.
I probably would have joined this distinguished league if I had not had the accident on the motorcycle. The cause of it was a moment of pure madness on my part. A great friend of mine, Willie Sondayi, ran a barbershop at Matapi hostels in what is now called Mbare, but was then Harare towmship.
We had been to school together, After school, we had formed a singing group, The Stargazers. We never went on stage.. But forming the group and doing rigorous rehearsals was great fun while it lasted. Willie was well-read. Every day, he would buy a copy of The Herald and The Sunday Mail. He knew a lot, as a result of the Suez Canal crisis – much more than I did, although I was the journalist. .her and been firm friends after school. With him at the time was another friend. The proposal was made that we celebrate the end of my assignment with a boozer-up at t a nightclub in the city. In our enthusiasm, we ignored the obvious and essential statistic relating to the motorcycle manufacturer's idea of how people could ride on it at a time.
But as I said, there was madness in the air. We had the accident before we had reached town. The three of us fell in a heap when, I believe, we hit a cyclist. He wasn’t seriously hurt. But when the police got to the scene and discovered how the accident had occurred, there was no escape for me.
Needless to say, by the time the police had succeeded in hauling me to the station, I had sobered up – more or less.
I might have had a nightmare or two while trying to sleep in the unfriendly circumstances of the cell. I don’t remember conversation with any of my fellow occupant s. They seemed as disinterested in me as I was disinterest in them. All I was praying for was for this waking nightmare to end.
It ended the next morning. I was all alone again, the company nowhere to be seen. The magistrate – a stern-faced white person – was unsparing. He fairly laid it on the line for me: here I was, supposedly a responsible citizen setting an example for probity and uprightness. But the truth? I was a drunk and drunken driver, to boot. I deserved the maximum, he said: Thirty Pounds fine.
The company paid the fine. I was lectured, but not fired – for which I was eternally grateful. Since then, over the years, I have pondered over the company’s code of…something. They knew I had no licence. They knew this was illegal. Had I been thrown to the wolves? Moreover, to cap it all, they demanded their money back. I chafed at the unfairness of it all. Bit Providence was on my side. They threw other challenges at me. What was clear top me was this: someone UP THERE (among the senior editor or in the back of the Beyond) had absolute faith in my capacity to endure all vicissitudes and still emerge unscathed.
I was appointed, during my four years at African Newspapers, assistant sports editor, during which I wrote a column, Generally Speaking. I covered soccer at the Number One Ground (before they turned it into Rufaro Stadium). My great lesson was to research everything, to sharpen my understanding of the English idiom, to read and read as much as I could – magazines, novels, classics and thrillers.
So, I had a great time as acting editor of The Bwalo la Nyasaland, The African Parade – during which I received an unexpected raise from the managing director himself.
|At some point, I wrote a short story for OUR AFRICA, a Catholic magazine published in South Africa Other short stories were published in our magazine, Parade. For one such short story, I received the invaluable expert advice of the late Angeline Mhlanga (nee Makwavarara). We worked on the magazine together, under the editorship of Kingsley Dinga Dube... .
There were a few challenges, but none insurmountable..It's exhilarating to discover you are in your element: I loved to be on the magazine. This love affair did not go unnoticed. It taught me a salutary lessons: once you invest love and dedication into your work, people are bound to notice it. It will be some time before I forget meeting the managing director, Mr Cedric Paver, on the stairs leading to the newsroom upstairs. He mentioned a piece I had done for the magazine. It had impressed him, he said. As if in an afterthought, he asked how much I was getting. I disclosed, almost in a whisper, the paltry rewards of my precious labour. He wasn't visibly aghast at the disclosure, but his reply spoke volumes “You'll go up to thirty pounds immediately,” he announced, with something like triumph in his voice. This amounted to a wage boost of seven pounds and ten shillings. I didn't exactly do a wild dance of joy. But Paver could see how excited and grateful I was.
At that time, during federation and its fake policy of “partnership” between black and white, it was tempting to see black people downgrading each other. For me, praise from a white chief executive was rare. But praise from a black editor, except Kelvin Mlenga, was even rarer.at African Newspapers. I enjoyed my time as acting editor of Parade, until I assigned myself to investigate the running of SA “house of ill repute” in home turn of Highfield.
The story had been broken by - who else? – Moses Mwale, the “UP” in the African The Daily News newsroom. My intention was daring:- to actually prove beyond any reasonable doubt that there was a former Johannesburg beauty queen offering her services to all who could afford them.
To this day, I have no idea how I intended to play the game – go for broke, as they say, or chicken out with apologies at the last moment. I had made sure I was well-prepared, sartorially, for the great occasion. I had passed through the famous Highfield Cocktail Bar at Machipisa.shopping centre. I had taken one or two to help build my self-confidence.
In the lounge, with its soft lights and lazy music, I sat down alone – until she came in: She was tall ands slim, dressed in an off-the-shoulder dress allowing me to study and admire her shoulders and deep cavity between her breasts. She sat down and lay back in my easy-chair, ready to engage her in conversations old as the hills.
I have always suspected The Madame was startled by the sound of my voice – whichever part of the house she was listening from. Our conversation had not developed into the languid, lazy but dreamy routine which always precedes the initiation of…something in these scenarios. She was screaming, obviously upon recognising me, and appreciating that I had recognised her – she worked in our canteen at African Newspapers.
I made a dash for the door. She made her own dash – for some place where her bodyguard or bouncer was to be located for emergencies. He emerged. I had only a flitting glance of him, a short,muscular man with determination writ large on his face..I was young, relatively strong, even with a few beers under my belly. I ran and he pursued me. His marksmanship as almost uncanny. He thew a rock at me and hit me smack on the back of the head. I went down, but got up immediately. He gave up the chase, convinced I had been neutralised..... . ..

THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF JOURNALISM

2010-07-15T00:48:00.000-07:00

A LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

2010-06-30T02:36:00.001-07:00

A LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

ON the 5th of November, in 1975, I received the following letter, dated 4th November:

“Dear Mr Saidi:

“I have been following very closely your work as a journalist. I have been particularly concerned about your misconceptions regarding our approach to nation-building in this country. As you yourself know, I have given you every opportunity to reform. Regrettably, I have found no improvements in your performance: on the contrary, evidence clearly demonstrates a deterioration. Consequently, your performance continues to be inconsistent with the philosophy and spirit of the paper which must be the mouthpiece of the Party and of which you are a leader,

I am, therefore, left with no option but to fire you with immediate effect. I wish you luck in your future endeavours in any field of your choice.

Yours sincerely,. (signature) President.

“Mr William Saidi, Times of Zambia , Ndola .”

The letter was handed to me personally by asn emissary who had been flown from Lusaka for this specific purpose. I read it as he waited for my reaction – or something. I held myself together, refusing to show alarm or shock to the man sitting in my office, waiting for an explosion of either tears or four-letter words. He would report all that in great detail to the president. I felt an irreverent sense of superiority. These people feared me to the extent they would fly an emissary all the way from Lusaka to Ndola just to deliver as letter to me. I knew the man who had brought the letter because his first name was similar to one of my own – Sylvester. Quietly, I put down the letter and thanked him. If I had commented on the contents, he might have had to take out his notebook to write it all down. I wasn’t sure I would be able to speak coherently or decently.

I was stunned, if not flabbergasted. The president of the Republic of Zambia , Kenneth Kaunda, had featured nowhere in my employment by Times Newspapers Limited. This company was owned by Lonrho Zambia Limited. As far as I was aware, the chairman of |Lonrho in the country was Tom Mtine. He and I had a sound working relationship.

Shortly after my appointment as deputy editor-in-chief of Times Newspapers Limited in 1974, he had handed out some advice to me: Don’t fraternise with your juniors. Now that you are at the top, you must keep a distance from them, socially. The specific reference was to Chao Daka, now the chief reporter of the newspaper in Kitwe and a personal friend. We had worked together from our days at The Central African Mail.

Our friendship continued, even after he left The Mail, now owned by the government, to join the then privately-owned Times of Zambia as a reporter. Chao Daka’s real name was Adyele Ngulube. His original home was in the Eastern Province, near the border with |Malawi. Chao said he had changed his name during the struggle for independence in Northern Rhodesia. I believed he was referring to his membership of a youth group which engaged in violence against the colonial regime. I assumed that Chao (which sounded distinctly Chinese,) Daka was his “Chimurenga name, in the context of that country’s struggle.

At one time, I was news editor of the newspaper. I interacted with all the bureaus’ chief reporter, but there was special bond with Chao. Our sense of humour, our mistrust of authority and our general view of what constituted news were almost the same. But I took Mtine’s advice. Gradually, I reduced personal contact with Chao. I was glad to notice that he had a thorough appreciation of my predicament. The last time I saw him was in Zimbabwe in the late 1980s, where he had come to attend a conference. He died shortly afterwards. I shall always remember him with fondness. Tom Mtine was a man of great charm and humility. You wouldn’t believe, on meeting him for the first time, that he was a tycoon, had a personal fortune which was rated among the biggest in the land. Yet he was so down-to-earth, so unassuming, the superstitious among his enemies was that it was his talisman: his personal charm.

The Times Newspapers offices were not far from Mtine’s offices in the centre of the city of Ndola. It was a short drive. I had telephoned him after the presidential emissary had left. He knew all about it, he said. His office, which I had never visited until now, was incredibly cluttered. There were piles and piles of files. But I was quite satisfied that Mtine knew where everything was: he was that kind of person – he knew where everything was. The only thing he didn’t know was this: why had Kaunda fired me so emphatically, so ceremoniously, as if I had committed the ultimate sin against his “commandments”?

I told Mtine my theory: a story about the struggle in Zimbabwe. He was inviting the nationalists to Lusaka to meet with him. He had told us (the media) that we were not to touch the story – until he had said so. We did that, almost to the letter. By now, we all knew what hell awaited any editor who crossed Kaunda’s path. Four years earlier, I had done that – inadvertently. His reaction was so abrupt and furious, for a moment I thought I would be deported out of the country – even if, by now, I had become a citizen of Zambia. We were ordered to State House to explain ourselves: Tom Mtine, Mike Pierson, the deputy editor in chief and myself, then writer of a column called The Sunday Times of Zambia Special. That meeting, attended also by Kaunda’s special assistant, Mark Chona, had all the elements of an explosive encounter between the most powerful man in the country – and a few minnows, except for Tom Mtine, who remained calm and collected throughout Kaunda’s tirade. My column had not touched on Zimbabwe, an issue so sensitive to the president that there was never any guarantee he would react rationally.

Still, he had the bit between his teeth: “Are you a spy for Smith?” he asked me. The voice was so filled with contempt I imagined whatever I had done or written must have resulted in some catastrophe for the country or for someone dear to the president. My denial was emphatic, so emotional, in fact, that I suspect Kaunda realized someone must have fed him information so untrue that there had to be an ulterior motive.

We left that meeting feeling chastised. True, we had been forgiven for whatever political infraction we had committed in our columns. But he seemed ready to giver us the benefit of the doubt.

In 1971, there had been an upheaval of sorts at the Times. The man Kaunda had appointed to replace the Englishman and former Kaunda friend, Richard Hall – my editor at the Central African Mail – was Dunstan Kamana, his former media assistant and a friend of mine. Dunstan had run the newspapers as real newspapers are run – not as conduits for Kaunda’s propaganda. Mike Pierson was a great journalist, an Englishman who loved Africa, as Hall did. Dunstan, once in the saddle, realized his own reputation as a journalist would be under scrutiny: The Times of Zambia and its sister Sunday edition, were to be as professionally produced as they had been before he came on the scene. Little did he interfere with the editorial content, particularly the editorial comment. This was absolutely unrelated to editorials written in The Zambia Mail, now under complete government control.

Kamana was fired and Kaunda appointed Vernon Mwaanga to replace him. Mwaanga was recalled from the United Nations, where he was the country’s permanent representative. It was a climb-down and in his autobiography, Mwaanga writes of how he had been taken completely by surprise. Kamana was to be reassigned to a job at the head of as parastastal: he was not going to take it lying down, and he said so plainly enough. Later, he was appointed ambassador to the Soviet Union. In 1973, I went to Moscow for a meeting of the Afro-Asian Writers’ Union. I visited his home in a classy area of the Soviet capital, but only his wife was present. He had apparently gone off on some diplomatic mission out of the country.

In 1975, it was my turn. But like Kamana, I wasn’t going to take this lying down. In retrospect, I believe what spurred me to fight the dismissal was the confidence which Tom Mtine displayed in my story. I told him I had written a letter to Kaunda after he had publicly condemned the story in which his plans to invite the Zimbabwean leaders to Lusaka had been published. He asked if I had a copy of that letter. A day later, after he had read it, he told me he would show it to the president.

Later, a few days later, he invited me to his office – from the company house which I still occupied

as deputy editor-in-chief. The president had eventually found the letter I had written. Effectively, I was in the clear. I had been fired for the wrong reason. But, said Mtine, it would “unpresidential” for Kaunda to rescind that decision so soon after I had been fired.

Still, the episode convinced me that the African journalist was truly an endangered species a s Frank Barton said in his book. But my relations with Kaunda did not improve. Years later, after my return to Zimbabwe, I had President Robert Mugabe asking me at a meeting with other editors: “What did you do to Kaunda?

My reply was long and detailed. I have no idea of its effect on the president – to this day.

NEARLY-KILLED IN COMBAT

2010-06-29T00:10:00.000-07:00

By Bill Saidi

MY closest encounter with death while on duty occurred in 1968. I was 31 years old, had been a journalist since 1957. I most likely owed my survival to my youth and a fairly steady and healthy style of living. Like all of us in this game of trial and danger, I took a tipple once in a while. But only occasionally did I actually go paralytic.

I was on freelance assignment for The Times of Zambia. There was an imminent referendum in the country. Independence had been achieved in 1964. Now, President Kenneth Kaunda desired to seal his victory with the conversion of the political system into a one-party one.

I was lying in hospital in the little town of Fort Jameson in the Eastern province on the border with Malawi, a country then ruled by one party, the Malawi Congress Party, under the leadership of one man, Hastings Kamuzu Banda, the president-for-life.

Kaunda, it now seemed certain, had similar designs on his country.

Two or three days earlier, I had been battered and left for dead outside a bar in a busy part of the town. My assignment was to sound out the population on the prospects of a Yes vote in the referendum. Perhaps it had been a mistake to choose a crowded bar as my first port of call. But at that hour, the shops and the markets were closed; there were no crowds waiting to board buses to the suburbs or townships from the town. The only crowded locations were the watering holes.

Fort Jameson was then a lively town, well-laid out by the colonialists, who had named it after one of their early pioneers. The people were enthusiastic about independence and were keen to participate in the referendum.

Until independence, they had had little of any substance whatsoever to say in the running of their country. Now, they were being asked what they thought of turning it into aw one-party country.

The atmosphere in the bar which I had selected at random was lively and enthusiastic. I sat next to two men who seemed to me enlightened enough to engage in a lively debate on the issues.

For me, Zambia’s independence had been a historic affair. This copper-rich former member of the ill-fated federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland had a Parliament dominated by Kaunda’s UNIP, with the small African National Congress of Harry Nkumbula a small opposition. It dominated the populous Southern Province of the country.

But Kaunda’s determination to gain complete political control of the country seemed to follow the path chosen by other newly-independent African states, Ghana, Guinea, Tanzania, and Malawi among them.

Like many other journalists in southern Africa, I was skeptical of the one-party doctrine, first introduced by Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana. By 1968, he had been out of power for two years – the first victim of a military coup on the continent. My encounter in the bar was, unfortunately, with two diehard supporters of the ruling party, UNIP. As I lay in my hospital bed, I realized what had triggered the attack was my Nyanja accent: it was so distinctly alien, the two must have concluded fairly early that I was a foreigner –as indeed I was. When they asked me that direct question, I was ingenuous enough to reply in the affirmative. I was immediately dragged outside, where I was pummeled into unconsciousness.

After I had come to, the nurses told me I had been unconscious for two days. They said I had sustained a fairly serious head wound, apart form other diverse injuries all over my body. I was lucky to be alive, they said.

It occurred to me I had not succeeded in obtaining, from the two men in the bar, their views on the referendum. But then there was this intrusion: how could I even contemplate such a dumb question when my very life had been in the balance just a few hours before?

I lay there for another day. The Times of Zambia had been informed and the editor, Dunstan Kamana, had been apprised of my plight. Dunstan was a friend, apart from being a colleague in the profession. He and I visited the UK together in 1964. We had formed a firm friendship. When, in 1967, I had been fired from The Zambia Mail – after the take-over of The Central African Mail by the Kaunda government in 1966 – I turned to him for help.

He was positive about the job, except of one thing. By then, there was an unwritten decree that no aliens would be employed in such key government institutions as the media. Dunstan would have employed me right away, if it hadn’t been for this canker – I was a Rhodesian, the citizen of a country which, since UDI in 1965, had lost the diplomatic recognition of many other countries in the world – including Zambia..

In fact, to make the journey to the UK in 1964, I could not obtain a passport from the Salisbury regime, even if, by then, they still enjoyed diplomatic relation with many countries. The hitch, it occurred, was that I was registered in that country as an alien. The solution was rather unique: my father was from Nyasaland, although he had died there in 1951. Even if I was born there, I could not be a citizen of Southern Rhodesia. Still, I was able to claim the citizenship of the country still then known as Nyasaland, a British protectorate. So, I journeyed to the UK with the passport of a British subject.

I returned to Lusaka from Fort Jameson feeling completely recovered, which I probably shouldn’t have. I now had a second child with the wife whose first child we had shipped to be looked after by my mother in Mufakose, Salisbury. But I had no job.

Dunstan again came to the rescue: I wrote a weekly column, Around And About With Tippy Banda, for The Times of Zambia.

Any likelihood of a job had to wait until I had obtained citizenship, which was like wishing on a star – in many ways. But Dunstan was undaunted, neither was I. Clearly, I had something to offer journalism. At The Central African Mail, I had written a regular column which captured the imagination of many readers. My topics, though mostly social satire, would once in a while excite a different kind of readers: a politician, for instance.

For one column I focused in a politician who had somehow come a cropper. One man decided the character in the column resembled him in too many ways to be mistaken for anyone else.

I was in a bar in the centre of Lusaka when he spotted me. He approached me with malice aforethought. I realized then that he was not intending to begin a conversation with me. He had clenched his fists. But I was quicker than he was: as he grabbed the sleeve of my blazer, I slipped out of it and ran for my life. I lost a beautiful blazer…no more than that.

The Fort Jameson battering had an aftermath that was to affect my life for all time

PUBLISHERS: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

2010-06-29T00:06:00.000-07:00

By Bill Saidi

IN 1993, on a visit to the city of Tucson, Arizona, in the United States, we foreign editors met an editor and a publisher who had agreed to disagree. They would part company, amicably, because one of them would not support the other’s favoured presidential candidate.

The editor would leave his job, he told us, happy that he had not compromised his principles. The publisher had told him to support a particular presidential candidate. His reply was an unequivocal NO WAY!

How heroic, how courageous, I thought. I was reminded of my two mentors and heroes – Richard Hall and Kelvin Mlenga.

It’s a brave editor, anywhere in the developing world, who would defy the publisher or the owner of the company, so openly – and not get the boot. In my experience I have been told to go and start my own paper, if I didn’t want to take orders from above.

To a proposal, made by some of his colleagues in the Zambian Cabinet, that I take over as editor-in-chief of Times Newspapers, an influential cabinet minister responded with the categorical declaration: “Saidi doesn’t like to take orders.”ow he

In the United Kingdom, there will always be the example of Harold Evans. He quit as editor of The Sunday Times, rather than serve under Rupert Murdoch, the new owner of the publishing company.

The Australian-born media mogul has garnered a reputation for dictatorial tendencies towards his editors. Most of the real professionals quit. Murdoch’s emperor-style rule has led to editors speaking of him in highly inflammatory, if not derogatory language. Some must see him as the ugliest example of a publisher.

There are many such examples in Africa too, In Zimbabwe; there is the government, the owner of the largest media conglomerate in the country. It must represent, collectively, the ugliest face of publishers in the country.

Editors have been fired right, left and centre. The reasons are usually the same – not toeing the line.

There are many such publishers all over Africa, in which most governments are de facto publishers. Only in South Africa, has the government deliberately kept away from running any newspapers. They have enough clout in the SABC, they must believe. But this is counterweighed by TV and radio stations owned entirely by the private sector.

So far, not even the lunatic fringe of the African National Congress and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) - which must include the likes of Julius Malema - has convinced the government it ought to muscle in on the independent newspaper owners.

Ghana, which pioneered the African one-party, one-leader, one-newspaper system, has long shed the image of this monolithic, monstrous behemoth running everything in one country. But many leaders still find it extremely attractive, paying only lip service to real democracy.

Zimbabwe, apart from the government, in its role as publisher being one hell of an ugly example, has a number of publishers who must quality for the sobriquet “ugly as sin”. There are privately-owned companies whose publishers might – pound for pound – be even uglier specimens than the government.

At The Standard newspaper in Harare, journalists have preserved on their notice board a declaration by publisher Trevor Ncube: it says those among them not satisfied with the pay could leave.

When I joined the paper in 2006, at the invitation of the then editor, Davison Maruziva, I asked the staff why they hadn’t quit. They said, almost in unison, there was nowhere else to go – which Ncube probably knew. So, they have been stuck with him ever since.

Thirty of us editors from overseas were visiting the US during a presidential year. This was a presidential election year, which coincided with the ongoing demise of Communism in Europe. The Berlin Wall had collapsed. On the surface, democracy had triumphed in all of Europe. Of course, we now know that the picture was far more complex than just the replacement of the hammer and sickle by another one, signifying complete pluralism.

The US government had invited editors, including myself, to visit the country for a month. Not only were we to view, up close and personal, US democracy at work during the presidential elections. We were also to visit as many big and small newspapers as they could squeeze us into, right across the vastness of this country. There were editors from Africa, Europe, Asia, Australasia and Latin America. I was the only one from Zimbabwe.

By then, I was working for Modus Publications. It was in the glorious capacity of editorial director of The Sunday Times. Previously owned by Herbert Munangatire, it had been bought by Elias Rusike’s Modus Publications. At that time, Rusike was riding high. But it wouldn’t be long before he realised he had taken on more than he could chew.

Munangatire’s editor was a former editor of The Manica Post, Tim Chigodo. I was appointed editorial director by Rusike, the former chief executive of Zimpapers, owners of that weekly. Chigodo and I had worked together at The Times of Zambia in the 1970s. He was my subordinate then and was still so back home. There was little doubt that he did not enjoy working under me.

I was effectively in charge of the whole shebang.

Then there was Munangatire himself. We had known each other since 1957 when I joined The African Daily News as a cadet reporter. He was something senior at The African Weekly.. He was a good reporter, by all accounts and, from my own point of view, a good journalist, I always admired his grasp of the English idiom. But once I decided to instill my own imprint on the editorial content of the paper, there was upheaval. Munangatire was heard to complain:”What is Saidi doing to my newspaper?”

Fortunately, he never said this to my face, or we probably would have had a right royal row. At African Newspapers, Munangatire had a nickname – Mhupu. The Shona translation is someone of a flamboyant nature, which he was.

I have always set great store for the authority and autonomy of the editor. Some critics have told me this is old-fashioned. A sort of “team” must have a decisive influence on the paper, they say. There ought to be consensus. I have always subscribed to that dictum too. But I have always drawn the line where “the soul” of the paper is concerned. The editor has values and tenets to which he must strongly subscribe, some times religiously. All these must be reflected in the paper – or else the readers might find the paper’s thrust a little wishy-wash – neither one thing nor the other.

Rusike once raised this matter with me, at some point during my various editorships with Modus. There was little need to speculate on the source of this grouse, as far as The Sunday Times was concerned. I responded vigorously in defence of the autonomy of the editor. I did not protest in any undignified, extremist language, but I did hint, though, that an editor who was not assertive in defence of their editorial autonomy was no better than a puppet or a dummy.

Dick Hall and Kelvin Mlenga, both strong-filled editors, had taught me that cardinal lesson.

In Zimbabwe, the matter had been raised by none other than Willie Musarurwa himself. He had been appointed editor of The Sunday Mail, presumably on the strength of his liberation war credentials. He had remained with Zapu after George Nyandoro and James Chikerema had either been expelled or had quit – I was never briefed, independently, on the reasons for that split, which occurred in the 1970s. The party was then based in Zambia.

But xenophobia has been mentioned in the corridors of party power.

In 1980, Musarurwa stood for election on a Zapu ticket, but lost. Zapu had won impressively in Matabeleland in the elections leading to independence, but not in Mashonaland.

But before he was subsequently removed in 1985 - rather unceremoniously - as editor of the government Sunday paper, Musaruwa had spoken publicly and strongly on the autonomy of an editor, even one on a government newspaper. His view was so strong he had suggested, in an open address, a law which would bar the Minister of Information (or anyone else in the government) from firing the editor of a government newspaper.

His dismissal must have come as the biggest shock of his professional life. I met him a number of times after that. He looked subdued, but not entirely daunted or deflated. He seemed to accept his fate stoically. He continued to write powerfully as a columnist for Modus Publications, after Geoff Nyarota had joined that company.

I shall always remember Willie as someone who had this incredible capacity to laugh at any situation which others thought was deadly serious.

We arrived in Lusaka around the same time in 1963 – he, to work for Zapu and me for The Central African Mail. He had the car and I didn’t. But he always seemed hard-up for cash. One day, after picking me from Matero, the ramshackle township in Lusaka, he knocked down a chicken as he drove us towards the city. The chicken died on the spot. The owners made a big fuss. They demanded compensation in cash. This was particularly after they discovered we did not speak good Nyanja. He just had to pay – or Willie, as the driver, had to pay. He turned to me and said he didn’t have any money. I was aghast: the Zapu representative in Northern Rhodesia had no money? He said quite simply the party was not a bank or a business.

So, I had to pay for the chicken. Willie found this extremely funny. The journalist had bailed out the politician – how many times did that happen? I wondered aloud...

But, before we both returned home, we were3 to have a particularly unpleasant confrontation in Lusaka. It probably determined our future relationship, even as editors in the same stable.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS BEFORE UHURU

2010-06-17T03:36:00.000-07:00

By Bill Saidi

EVERY time I try to regale people with my first meeting with Queen Elizabeth II, a blanket of scepticism, or downright resentment descends on the scene. It’s almost impregnable, until I swear on the graves of a number of my ancestors – to be telling th naked truth.

Others characterise me as this inveterate name-dropper: I never met the Queen, they say. They allege I mention this fictitious confab to boost my ego and promote my phony reputation as a globe-trotter.

Yet I did meet the Queen – first, in 1947, as Princess Elizabeth. To call it "a meeting" is probably to overplay the incident. I was ten, sweating in my school khakis at the old airport in Belvedere. How would any of us children from the primary school at the Methodist church in Magaba have said No to the King of the British Empire?

We were at the airport to meet the royal family – King George VI, the Queen and two princesses. As British subjects, how could we protest – at our age? The hour was evil – after lunchtime, when we would normally be at home.

The walk to the airport was short. But we were hungry, which made it longer. A bit of bitterness crept in.

More than 45 years later, at one of the many CHOGM jamborees I have attended around the world, I told the Queen about our epic meeting in Salisbury. She asked how old I was then: Ten, I said. She was 21 and a princess...We talked briefly – I can’t remember exactly what about. But she sounded apologetic.

CHOGM is the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. Zimbabwe hasn’t attended since 2004 when we quit the so-called Club..

At one CHOGM in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1975, I met James Callaghan, then the British foreign secretary. I was introduced to him as an editor at The Times of Zambia. It was once described by rightwing British politicians as "rabidly anti-British". Callaghan, without saying a word, wagged his forefinger in my face. Simultaneously, he made clucking sounds of disparage with his tongue.

The climax of all these summits, for me, was a meeting with Margaret Thatcher in 1979. She had won power for the Tories over Callaghan’s Labour Party. She was in Lusaka for the CHOGM which would hammer out the outline of what became the Lancaster House Agreement. Some have acclaimed it as Lord Carrington’s greatest diplomatic coup.

I shook hands with Mrs Thatcher. I was introduced to her as the chairman of the local chapter of the Commonwealth Press Union – which I really was at the time..

Mrs Thatcher, now reportedly in ill-health, was then a formidable personality. She had these piercing eyes which seemed to bore into yours until they seemed to dissect your brain cells, piece by piece.

Another personality I met at this summit was an old friend, Edgar Tekere. He was a key member of the Zanu delegation. We had become friends while living in Mufakose in the politically turbulent early 1960s. He was then a burgeoning politician. I was a journalist on the rise.

In Lusaka, we asked each other about life, to which we both responded with the most inane cliché possible – "just fine".

In 1980, we would reunite in independent Zimbabwe - he as a cabinet minister, me still as a journalist.

Other notables I reunited with after independence included Enos Chikowore. Before he went to the United Kingdom, he had been a Highfield landlord. A close relative of mine had been one of his lodgers. We talked heavy politics. He was a sort of heavy noise in the NDP. I was a journalist on The African Daily News. In 1980, we met at a reception at a five-star hotel in Salisbury. We still talked heavy politics, but included the social scene as well. Years later, his daughter became my secretary at The Herald.

They both died a few years later. I was shocked. We had kept in touch. I knew how much independence had meant to him, after all the work he had put in.

George Silundika died even earlier. There was a famous NDP march from Cyril Jennings Hall in Highfield to the Harare police station – when Harare was Harare, not Mbare. We talked heavy politics. I was still at The African Daily News, covering the march. He was a heavyweight in the party. We walked together. Years ago he had been at school at Empandeni in Plumtree. Years later, I was among the students who inaugurated the Catholic mission’s first secondary school. Silundika and I kept in touch, even after he became a cabinet minister in 1980.

After his much-too-early death, I wondered – perhaps for the umpteenth time – why there was death after life. Quite often, I still wonder and leave the matter in abeyance, exhausted.

The two men whose death shook me to the core were George Nyandoro and James Chikerema. I knew them from 1957. They were practically my elder brothers.

They didn’t make it into the cabinet in 1980. I think they ought to have. But, like my ruminations on the mysteries of death, I leave the subject alone, desperate for solace elsewhere.

RETURN TO HERALD HOUSE|…19 YEARS LATER

2010-06-14T06:31:00.002-07:00

By Bill Saidi

ONE DAY in May in Harare in 2009, I bumped into Timothy Stamps. We were both surprised. We had last met in 2001. It was high up in the Swiss Alps, in a place called Cran Montana .

The surprise was generated by the venue of this latest meeting – the George Silundika Avenue entrance of Herald |House. This is the head office of Zimbabwe Newspapers (1980) Limited, the state-owned newspaper conglomerate.

Most of the surprise was on the doctor’s part, not mine. After all, why would a regular columnist on a newspaper – even a State newspaper – not call at the head office of the publishing company?

He could be dropping off copy for the week, or collecting his dues for the month.

Stamps then wrote a regular medical column for the paper’s weekend edition. I too wrote a regular column for the same newspaper, more than 20 years ago. I wrote as Comrade Muromo. Farai Munyuki was editor then, having taken over from Robin Drew. Veteran readers of the media in general will remember me mentioning, on a few occasions, how Stanlake Samkange had mentioned to Willie Musarurwa that some people familiar with his style of writing believed he, Samkange, was Comrade Muromo.

Musarurwa knew I wrote the column. He had always admired and encouraged me. He told me all this in confidence one day, since we worked together at Zimpapers. We had worked together at African Newspapers in the 1950-60s.

We had jointly interviewed Chief Munhuwepai Mangwende aty his palace in Murehwa, when it was spelt Mrewa.

I mention the incident on Samkange again because it seemed, at the time, to place me in very comfortable, rarefied literary company.

After our handshake with Stamps, I mentioned Cran |Montana. His next question was: “So, what are you doing here ?” He could hardly disguise his surprise.

I mumbled something in which the word “work” seemed to register with a mighty thump with Stamps. “You have come back home then?” he asked. There was a note of triumph in his voice.

I once interviewed Stamps in his surgery in Harare, when he was a city councilor. This was before he entered Parliament on a Zanu PF ticket. I was then working for Zimpapers, which I joined in 1980 as assistant to the editor, the late Robin Drew

In Switzerland in 2001, I represented, indirectly, The Daily News. I was a regular columnist since its launch in 1999. The invitation was directed to me personally, which raised a few hackles with some people in the editopriqal hierarchy. Stamps represented the government, on which I was bound to comment. The subject of the conference was Democracy around the world..

Stamps and I did our part, speaking to any willing audiences on how we saw the development of democracy in our country was being pursued. The 2000 parliamentary elections had sparked much debate around the world. For the first time, a feisty opposition party had won more seats than any other opposition since independence in 1980,

Today, that opposition is in a government with Zanu PF. I am on a contract with The Herald whose publishing company, Zimpapers, I left in a huge huff in 1990.

Zimbabwe is undergoing change – no question of that.

Of course, this time I might get fired, which would be part of a pattern for me.

In 52 years in journalism, this is one of only three newspaper groups from which I have resigned: I have not been fired. I have been from four, two in Zimbabwe and two in Zambia .

A slight explanation: although I was fired from Times Newspapers in 1975 in Zambia , I was reinstated as deputy editor-in-chief. in 1977. None of my dismissals were related to a felony, such as embezzlement of company funds, an assault with GBH on the person of the chairman or the chief executive officer, or the editor - or for fondling the private secretary,

All of it revolved around journalism, with the employer and I not agreeing totally on what we believed was the essence of this noble (?) profession.

I was fired from The Standard in 2008 – on the e-mail. I had attended a conference on Zimbabwe at St Antony College at Oxford University. That too had raised a few hackles..

I was invited to join The Standard in 2006, when I was 69 years old, as deputy editor. Initially, the editor, Davison Maruziva, had invited me to chair the judges’ panel for their inaugural Cover to Cover short story writing competition.. Later, I was offered the job. My association with the company went back to the mid-1990s when I contributed regularly to their weekly column, Cutting Edge. Trevor Ncube was then editor and Iden Wetherell his deputy. Now, Ncube is chairman of the company and Iden, the group projects editor.

I joined Zimpapers at 43, before it was taken over by the government through the Zimbabwe Mass Media Trust. I know people who believed it was nothing short of a miracle that I was not fired immediately after the ink had dried on the deal between the government and the South African Argus Group.

But I did last ten years, operating in an office of my own all the time, in Harare and Bulawayo. I was probably the first African in the editorial department to have an office entirely to himself at Herald House.

It seemed inevitable that we would part company, sooner rather than later. In Zambia, I had interacted with both Zanu and Zapu, making implacable enemies, as well as permanent friends. These were politicians willing to accept that, as a Zimbabwean journalist, I was not an impediment to, or a cat’s paw, in their political ambitions – personal or national.

My dismissal from Times Newspapers by then President Kenneth Kaunda was over the coverage of a Zimbabwe political story. I was reinstated through the vigorous intervention of Tom Mtine, the chairman of Lonrho Zambia Ltd, then owners of the newspaper company. I was virtually exonerated, but got no apology or compensation for loss of income.

The irony is that one of the first meetings I ever covered as a cadet reporter for The African Daily News in Salisbury in 1957 was the inaugural conference of the Southern Rhodesia African National Congres, the precursor of all anti- colonialist groups.

Two luminaries of the movement, James Chikerema (deputy president) and George Nyandoro (secretary general) had become very familiar to me before the meeting in Mai Musodzi hall.

In fact, we remained close up to the time of their deaths, back in an independent Zimbabwe . They became like elder brothers to me, Some people thought it was slightly unhealthy for a journalist embracing wholeheartedly the doctrine of objectivity.

Others thought it placed me in a unique position, professionally. These men knew much, much more about the struggle than many other people did..

The point is my career as a journalist developed almost in tandem with the struggle. Moreover, I knew one of the heroic luminaries long before he was involved in the struggle. Edgar Tekere and I were friends from the early 1960s, years before he and Mugabe trekked to Mozambique in the 1970s.

It was inevitable that, having watched the genesis of the struggle in Mai Musodzi hall, I would be unlikely to be overawed by the players, or their stature.

Anyway, as a journalist it has always been my belief that if you stick to reporting on the truth, or commenting on what you know about intimately, nobody should accuse you of being deliberately obtuse or misleading.

Of course, politicians cannot be assumed to see things the way journalists do..

Under the guidance of such people as Lawrence Vambe, Nathan Shamuyarira, Phillip Mbofana and Kelvin Mlenga, I had cut my journalistic teeth at African Newspapers. I had been invited to join them after a short story of mine, The Downfall of Sandy had been published in The African Parade.

The history of journalism is anchored on unmasking what people in general have always suspected to be the tendency among politicians not to tell them the whole truth – or being obsessively economical with the whole truth.

One famous publisher once declared the function of the journalist was “to expose, expose and expose!”

The New York Times has the slogan All The News That’s Fit To Print. Most newspapers have their own slogans too: Without Fear or Favour, Telling It Like It Is, The Truth And Nothing But The Truth.

It used to be assumed that whatever was published in a newspaper was the truth: “It has to be true, because I read it the paper.”

Over the centuries, newspapers have emerged which treated the truth as lackadaisically as the politicians: hence the tough laws on libel and defamation.

Unfortunately, as with many political decisions, the powerful people have colluded to make even such laws punish the journalists, rather than the people who are invariably the subject of their stories – mostly the errant politicians and their friends and fellow travellers.

In Zimbabwe , there has been a long struggle by journalists for reform in the defamation and libel laws, which are weighed against the media.

That, however, was not the exact reason for my departure from Zimpapers in 1990, Towards the end of my ten years there, I wrote little for the papers. In fact, The Old Bricks Lives, my first novel in Zimbabwe - which I had titled To Die In The Old Bricks - published by Mambo Press in 1988, was written mostly while I “worked” for Zimpapers.

Part of The Brothers of Chatima Road, my second novel with College Press and one which bettered, in sales and royalties, my first one with them, Gwebede’s Wars, was written there too.

Elias Rusike and I first met in Lusaka in the 1960s, when he worked for the Zambia Broadcasting Corporation’s news department. I worked for The Central African Mail, a brash, anti-colonialist and anti-federation weekly, to which I had been invited from Salisbury by Kelvin Mlenga. We had worked together on The African Daily News.

Rusike was the first black chief executive of Zimpapers during my second year with the company. He arrived with heavy Zanu PF baggage, but tried to offload it for a more pragmatic, professional and independent publisher’s portfolio. It was a desperate struggle.

When he left in the wake of the Willowgate scandal, I was not surprised. He records all this in his little book, The Politics of the Mass Media, panned by some for not being more frank in cataloguing the inherent obstacles for a government to publish its own newspapers and expect readers to believe them to be honest and objective purveyors of the truth.

An illustration of this was my own dismissal as the editor of Rusike’s Sunday Gazette. Going into the seamy details might not be profitable for either of us, or even for the government. Suffice it to say, for me, the highlight was a personal telephone call to me from the then Vice-President of the republic, Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo.

Rusike and Geoff Nyarota are the two people with whom I have been most closely associated in newspapers during the last 29 years; Rusike allowed both of us to look at the manuscript of his book, as all three of us were at Modus.

Years later, when The Daily News, in which Geoff and I were involved, hit the streets, it knocked The Herald off its perch at the top of the circulation ladder in a few years.

The arguments for and against government newspapers are steeped in political rhetoric or ideologies, some of them of the doctrinaire Pravda or People’s Daily Marxist hue, others extolling the free enterprise spirit.

I quit The Herald in 1990, after both Rusike and Nyarota had left, for Modus Publications, which Rusike had taken over. My decision had as its prelude a one-sided conversation with Sam Gozo outside Herald House, in which he berated me for “the lies” he alleged we were peddling.

.Sam and I went back many years, to the 1960s, when he was at the University of Rhodesia and Nyasaland , and I was at African Newspapers. In Zambia , Sam worked for the mines while I worked for the newspapers – again. We returned home around the same time, Sam to work briefly for the government and me for the newspapers – again.

He paid little heed to my protests about not having written a word for the papers for quite a while. I was shocked to hear of his death after my return from an unintended furlough in the UK in 2008, during which I was fired from The Standard.

Working at Modus, with Geoff and Elias, ought to have provided me with a period of non-controversial journalistic challenges. There was soon tension – between Elias, on the one hand, and Geoff and I, on the other. We both left with little ceremony.

For me, working for Horizon (1995-98) magazine was an oasis. There were shorter hours, matched only by the pay – in size. But there was peace, in my life, at least.

Then, out of the blue, in 1996, Geoff asked me to be editor-in-chief of a paper he planned to launch. He was surprised when I begged off, preferring to be deputy editor-in-chief. Frankly, I was quite satisfied that if I was announced as the editor-in-chief, the future of that paper would be short.

As it turned out, I became Assistant Editor on the flagship title of the company, The Daily News, which lasted four years. By that time, both pioneering executives of the publishing company, Geoff and Wilf Mbanga were no longer at the helm,

Nothing can take away from ANZ, the publishing company, its pioneering role in the newspaper arena. Most of this credit belongs to Strive Masiyiwa who, in a manner of speaking, put his money where his mouth was: his commitment was to freedom, not only of expression, but of the individual’s right to fly as high as their wings could take them,

My own dream was of independent newspapers which would awaken the people to their responsibilities as custodians of their own independence. I am against government newspapers. I have worked there and I know it can be hell on earth – unless the publisher respects the editors’ right to independence..

They would not leave it to the politicians, on the pretext that they, as part of the liberation movements, had sole responsibility for charting the destiny of the country.

If you look, objectively, at what is happening today, you must conclude that real change in the political air.

People such as Tendai Biti, who never carried an AK-47 rifle in their lives, now speak fearlessly of a future Zimbabwe in which all the people have a political as well as an economic stake.

By Bill Saidi

09-06-2010

The African journalist “not endangered” any more?

2010-06-03T23:50:00.000-07:00

AT the height of its popularity in 2001, The Daily News carried a lead
story in which it reported that police vehicles were being used to transport farm
implements seized from white farms, presumably to destinations linked to Zanu
PF bigwigs.
The story quoted an eyewitness as saying police vehicles loaded
with the implements were seen leaving a recently seized white farm.
On the next day, the police descended on the premises of the
newspaper in Harare. I was the Duty Editor for that particular issue and was
asked if I had anything to do with the headline and the story. I said I did. I
was told by the interrogating officer that I was being held responsible for
publishing a story likely to cause “alarm and despondency” under the Law
and Order (Maintenance) Act. This law was first promulgated to deal with a rising tide of
African agitation against white rule in Southern Rhodesia in 1960.
The government of President Robert Mugabe had apparently
agonised very briefly over repealing what most of the members of his cabinet
used to view as one of the most repressive laws during colonialism. They had
not repealed it and, in fact, one of its victims, Emmerson Mnangagwa, had opined
at a meeting after independence, that he had found it “very handy”..
Four of us - myself, then the assistant editor of the paper,
the editor, Geoff Nyarota, the news editor, John Gambanga, and a senior
reporter, Sam Munyavi - were locked up in the police cells at Harare central
police station, charged under a section of this notorious anti-nationalist law. Fortunately, our lawyer found a judge, perhaps eight hours after our initial incarceration, who decided we could not be held overnight under those circumstances. By then, we had all been stripped of all our clothes, except our underclothes, ready to spend the night with rapists, thieves, murderers and a variety of hapless citizens found to be on the wrong side of
the law at that time - as we were.
The detaining officer, a sort of major domo in the law and order section, conceded grudgingly that three of us could be let out, but not Nyarota, For some odd reason, he was determined to
keep the editor locked up for a little while longer. Nyarota bade us goodbye,
with a stoicism that I had come to admire since getting to know him from 1980.
All of us learnt from our experience in the police cells some sober lessons about being a journalist in Africa: the government will treat you rough, very rough, but they are not invincible. In fact, you could have it in your power to humiliate them - as the judge in our case did.
All journalists in Africa and, indeed elsewhere in the world,
must always fight for their right to exist, to expose evil, to probe the nether
regions of power, the soul - if such a thing exists - of the power-hungry,
the dictator. Of course, the journalist must always be willing to applaud
where this is called for, but they must not be praise-singers, however
beautiful the tune might sound.
In 1980, when I returned to Zimbabwe from 17 years in exile in
Zambia, I was made aware for the first time of a book by Frank Barton, The
Press in Africa.
I knew Barton, having met him in Lusaka while I worked there. In
the book, he devoted a few pages to my encounter with President Kenneth Kaunda
in 1975.
Barton's book is an incisive, well-documented account of how
the press in Africa fared under colonialism, then after independence when,
according to Barton and the facts on the ground, it fared even worse - if
that was at all possible.
Barton dedicated his book to Africa's journalists, “an
endangered species”, he called us.
I like to think that, by now Barton has to concede that, far
from being endangered, we are still alive and kicking. It might even be more
appropriate to describe as an “endangered species” Africa's dictators,
although that might be premature and some kind of unforgivable wishful
thinking.
Barton’s account of the drama did not include the denouement of this
epic (to me) encounter with one of the most powerful men in the region at the
time.
Although I was fired from my job as deputy editor-in-chief of
Times Newspapers, I was reinstated more than a year later. I never
received a letter from the President.
The story would have made a riveting read, I think. In 1977,
more than a year after I had been dismissed, three of us sat in Kaunda's
office at State House in Lusaka: myself, the chairman of Lonrho Zambia Ltd, Tom
Mtine and the president.
There were no apologies: I was being reinstated in my job, the
president said. There would be a new editor-in-chief, John Musukuma. The
previous holder of that post, Milimo Punabantu - I would discover later - had
been “reassigned”, apparently to work in the president's office. As a reward?
Back in Zimbabwe, working for the privately-owned Modus
Publications, I was among a group of editors meeting President Robert Mugabe,
before the blood between the media and the head of state was polluted by this
common virus which afflicts such relationships: credibility.
After I had been introduced, Mugabe asked me: “What did you do
to Kaunda?”
One of the most frightening episodes in my half a century of
journalism was not the assault by an enraged Zambian politician outside a bar
in downtown Lusaka in 1965:
Nor having a forefinger wagged in my face by the British foreign
minister, James Callaghan, in Kingston, Jamaica in 1975, apparently for the
anti-British stance our newspaper in Zambia had taken against the UK's lack
of action in rebel Rhodesia;
Nor, before that, being locked up in the Zanu office in Lusaka
by the late Peter Mutandwa, a burly, bearded nationalist with an explosive
temper to boot, and being threatened with a beating for publishing a story
which he claimed showed Joshua Nkomo of the rival Zapu in favourable light;
Nor being stoned on the head by bouncer, in 1960, as I fled a
Highfield, Salisbury 'cat house' in which the main attraction was a
former South African beauty queen;
Nor being declared a prohibited immigrant in Malawi in 1974. This was
after the ruling party of Hastings Kamuzu Banda suspected that I had authored
an article in The Times of Zambia the previous year, in which it was actively speculated that
Aleke Banda was his heir apparent. I had visited Malawi and
had been feted, unexpectedly, by the same Aleke Banda, a cabinet minister in
Banda's government;;
Nor being knocked down in broad daylight, in the middle of
Manica Road, Salisbury, in 1980, by a vehicle belonging to the “licensed to
kill” security outfit of the new government, the Central Intelligence
Organisation (CIO);
Nor was it a thorough beating by unidentified political thugs
outside a bar in Fort Jameson, Zambia, which left me unconscious in hospital
for three days, in 1968;
Nor the sight of the mangled heap of metal that had been the
small printing press of The Daily News in 2001 in Harare;
Nor even the receipt of a bullet in an envelope, in 2006, with
the warning “Watch Your Step”, after we had published in The Standard in
Harare a cartoon of baboons laughing their heads off after reading the pay slip
of a soldier in the Zimbabwean army.
The moment of an emotional tsunami for me occurred as I sat
before the most powerful person in Zambia, in 1971, and being virtually
accused, by him, of being a spy in the pay of the most dangerous and despised
enemy among Africans in the region at the time, Ian Douglas Smith.
It was probably the first time in my life that I became aware of
the absolutely limitless influence of the journalist, particularly in Africa. I
began to appreciate why more journalists were killed in Africa, on average and
proportionately, than anywhere else in the world.
Even the mildest criticism of a leader was likely to prickle
their egos, or to force them to decide that your low opinion of them made you,
inevitably, an “enemy of the people”, that majority being represented by
them, as the leaders.
Perhaps I had read too many spy novels, including almost all the
James Bond adventures. In 1964, on my very first visit to the United Kingdom,
the author, Ian Fleming, gave me a book of his short stories “The Spy Who
Loved Me” in place of a one-on-one, face-to-face dialogue on writing, not
spy novels, but just writing.. His secretary, an old woman who looked nothing
like Moneypeny or any of the Bond girls in the novels and films, warned me it was a
”naughty book”. After reading it, I decided I had read naughtier works. Back in Lusaka 37 years ago, I sat in President Kenneth Kaunda's study in State House, with my fevered imagination conjuring up a scene of pure melodrama: myself, reduced to skin and bones, having been starved
for weeks, being strung up by the neck in some dark, dank, dingy cell: the
customary comeuppance for spies.

With me on the defence bench was Tom Mtine, a distinguished Zambian entrepreneur, the chairman of Lonrho Zambia Ltd, which owned Times
Newspapers Limited. I worked on their two newspapers, The Times and The Sunday Times of Zambia, as assistant editor.
Also on our side was Mike Pierson, the deputy editor, whose distinguished career in Africa saw him ending up in South Africa, then in Cardiff, Wales.
The president had his team, including his special assistant, a
man called Mark Chona, younger brother of one of Kaunda's closest allies,
Mainza Chona, once Vice-President of the republic.
The presidential roasting I received was over an article I had
written for a regular weekly column, The Sunday Times Special. All I had done,
honestly, was to rehash what was generally known on the grapevine: Kaunda's
hush-hush plan to turn the country into a one-party state “ through a
well-orchestrated referendum.
It had nothing to do with the struggle in Zimbabwe, in which
Kaunda was heavily embroiled. He had offered both Zanu and Zapu facilities from
which to prosecute the liberation war. Kaunda knew, as most other people did,
that, in spite of my surname, I was born and bred in the country right next to his across the Zambezi river, and that, like him, my father was from what was once called Nyasaland.
His question, bristling with appropriate, unmistakable and
almost regal indignation was: “Are you a spy for Ian Smith?”
Unfortunately, along with my article, in this same issue of the
paper, was a rather naughty editorial comparing Kaunda's ham-fisted
policies with those of an African dictator recently overthrown in West Africa.
The editorial, concluded, sagely, that if he did not mend his
despotic ways, Kaunda himself might end up the same way.
Fortunately for him, Kaunda's political demise took another,
rather mundane form: he was beaten fair and square in an election, after 27
years of uninterrupted, unbridled, virtually one-party rule in Zambia. By then,
in 1991, I had returned to my country of birth, Zimbabwe. When I was born in
1937, the country was known as Southern Rhodesia, a self-governing British
colony, which I left, for the first time in my life, in 1963 to continue my
interrupted career in journalism and writing in general, which I have done for
the last 50 years, with what some people might call “mild to warm” success.
It was established, eventually, that I was born in 1937, on 8
May. My mother insisted on this when my step-grandfather, a man from Nyasaland
who had married my grandmother after she had given birth to two daughters, one
of them my mother, with her first husband, gave the year of birth as 1936. She
disputed this with rather disarming logic. She pointed out that she had carried
on her back the second child born to my grandmother with this man, in 1936,
while she was pregnant with me. There was no way that could have happened after
I was born.
Her father, my maternal grandfather, was a Zezuru man named
Mushure, who had a wanderlust which forced him to leave the country to pursue
his dream of fame and fortune in, inevitably, the then Union of South Africa.
As far as I know, he never returned to Southern Rhodesia, although my mother
has told me they heard intermittent rumours of him being cited in this or that
town, a sort of Scarlet Pimpernel in technicolour.
My mother was very young when I was born. One example of her age
relates to her account of my birth. She says she was at the river when I was
born. This was at St David's mission, in what was then called Marandellas
district, where the oldest of my maternal grandmother's two brothers, Paul
Ching'ozha, was an Anglican preacher.
I have often wondered about my choice of a career: I was illegitimate and my mother, although she denies it to this day, probably thought of drowning me at birth. Isn't this
the stuff of which novelists and journalists are made?
Kaunda would not have appreciated just how deeply the accusation
of my being a spy for Smith had wounded me.
At the beginning of my adventure into the world of journalism, I
almost believed my mission was to take an active part in the struggle against
colonialism. The African Daily News, on which I cut my journalistic teeth in
1957, in Salisbury, was unabashedly a campaigner for the political, economic
and social amelioration of the African people. It cannot be ignored in any
political and social history of Zimbabwe, although there have been attempts to
do just that by people who seem to believe the struggle itself started with
Zanu in 1974.
For me, even before an introduction to George Nyandoro, James
Chikerema and Paul Mushonga, there was Josiah Maluleke and Kufakunesu Mhizha,
two trade unionists who sought to familiarise me with the workers' struggle
for decency. I also met Charles Mzingeli, who constantly mangled the English
language so thoroughly there was a standing joke in the newsroom of him
pronouncing furiously that “some certainly people” were selling out to the
whites.
Years after independence, in my search to establish why there
was never any extensive mention of Mzinageli as a leading light of the
struggle, I asked my old editor, Nathan Shamuyarira, if Mzingeli was really
such a nonentity. He said, quite passionately, No. Mzingeli had lit the light
which had guided younger men like Nyandoro and Chikerema, when he led his
Reformed Industrial and Commercial Union (RICU). I spent hours being virtually
lectured by Mzingeli on how the African worker was being abused by the white
employer and why he needed to rise up and campaign for improved pay and
conditions.
Even years later, after I had established a lasting friendship
with Doris Lessing of The Grass Is Singing fame, she sent me a copy of her
autobiography, Under My Skin, in which she devotes space to her acquaintance
with Mzingeli, at a meeting of the Communist Party in Salisbury. For some
reason, Mzingeli was not sold on communism, into which Lessing and her comrades
tried to recruit him. If he had been converted, the struggle might have taken a
different, perhaps radical twist, with Tovarisch Mzingeli a confirmed
Marxist-Leninist, before even Mugabe had heard of the dictatorship of the
proletariat. .
My first journalism mentor was Albert Dumbutshena, the chief
reporter of The African Daily News, a man who made no apologies for his
bibulous propensities. I shall always remember one of the most memorable
questions he asked me, after we had arrived on his company motorcycle at a bar
at Matapi hostels in Harare township. “Mfana, unePondo here?” Young man, do
you have a pound?
Over the beer which I bought, he regaled me with fascinating
stories of his adventures in journalism. I was enthralled and before long I was
trying to emulate him, down to his love for the booze, which he said made him
seek out the truth without fear.
Dumbutshena invariably wrote the lead story for the paper, pounding away on his ancient Remington typewriter as if coaxing it to pick out
the appropriate nouns and rejecting the adjectives which might clutter up his
sentences.
Dumbutshena wrote well and was so reliable a reporter I believe
they tolerated his occasional bouts of incapacity through alcohol because when
he was sober, he always came through.
My mistake was not to allow for the difference in age and
experience between us. He was edging towards 40 and I was just 20. He had
blazed a trail, although quite often the alcohol overwhelmed him. My chance to
shine came when he took leave for a rather long period and I was appointed to
assume his mantle and use the motorcycle as well. Dumbutshena had taught me
many things, among them accuracy and speed, doggedness, and the cultivation of
reliable sources and during his absence I tried to put into practice everything
he had taught me. I too now wrote the lead story, as this was during the
elections in 1958, when Garfield Todd's liberal policies were being
challenged by the United Federal Party of Edgar Whitehead. I covered most of
Todd's meetings all over Salisbury, meeting him many times too.. Only once
was I assigned to cover a meeting of the Dominion Party, the forerunner of the
Rhodesian Front party in Hatfield. I think I also covered the UFP, but my main
assignment was Todd's United Rhodesia Party.
I learnt much of our politics at the time. The UFP won and
Whitehead became the new prime minister. A year later, there was upheaval in
Southern Rhodesia, Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia and there were states of
emergency in all three countries of the federation.
I learnt lessons during the emergency: all the nationalists,
including Nkomo, Nyandoro, Chikerema and many others were locked up and the
prospects of their release seemed, at first, remote. The accusations against
them were that they were trying to overthrow the white governments. As
journalists on The African Daily News, this incensed us and we quite openly
supported the nationalist struggle. Once in a while the paper
editorially railed against the more extremist conduct of the leaders.
Meanwhile, most nationalists flocked to the newspaper offices in
Sinoia Street, for tidbits on the political goings-on and some times to persuade
us to print their views, however extreme. I was once appointed acting editor of
The Bwalo la Nyasaland. Kamuzu Banda, whose campaign against the federation
pulsated with what amounted. to maniacal zeal was locked up in Southern
Rhodesia for his pains. An editorial I wrote at this time called on the
government to release him as he was fighting a good cause” - or words to that
effect.
The managing director called me to the office and scolded me for daring to support “this agitator”. It was the harbinger of more such admonitions from publishers, ev en after independence.

by Bill Saidi