A CALL FROM JOSHUA NKOMO

BY BILL SAIDI

ON the telephone, Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo was calmness personified.

“Saidi, shall we speak in Ndebele, Shona, Chewa or English?” After a few minutes of hesitation, I plunked for English.

It wasn’t a tirade. But the message was unmistakably chilling. Why was I was publishing all those stories about the president’s romance with Grace Marufu? How could I do that to my president?

After a moment of stunned silence, I stammered something to the effect that I wasn’t sure exactly what the Vice-President meant. Then he spelt it out: the stories on the romance were scandalous. We should stop publishing them.

I was prudent enough not to ask him what right he had to warn a privately-owned newspaper not to publish this or that story. This was not The Herald. My instinct told me that the publisher, Elias Rusike, would have been effusive in apologizing for the story. He and Trevor Ncube and a reporter of The Financial Gazette had been detained for publishing another story dealing with the much-publicised romance.

The last story we had published was not pleasant – not for the president or Grace Marufu.

The relatives of Ms Marufu’s former husband had complained bitterly that his son with her was now resident at State House. They said he was not “a Mugabe child”. They wanted him to be returned to his father’s people.

Joshua Nkomo told me that unless I stopped publishing these scandalous stories, he would come to my office and give me a lesson or two in good manners.

Out of some crazy notion of displaying calmness under adversity, I replied that that would be absolutely dramatic: such an important person coming to the office of a humble editor to berate him!

I suspect the Vice-President of the Republic of Zimbabwe saw the funny side of it. He concluded by asking me the same question: “How can you do this to your president?” I promised I would heed his advice. I was aware that, one way or the other, my days as editor of The Sunday Gazette were numbered.

I was the last editor of the paper, part of the short-lived stable of Modus Publications, then owned by Elias Rusike. I joined the group after resigning from Zimpapers in 1990. Rusike had left earlier, in the wake of Willowgate, the high profile scandal which had rocked the political echelon like nothing else since independence. Geoff Nyarota, The Chronicle editor who had unearthed this scandal, was already at Modus, as editor of their standard-bearer, The Financial Gazette.

It was a turbulent time for me at Modus.

I had known Joshua Nkomo since 1957. He had been elected president of the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress at their inaugural conference in Harare’s Mai Musodzi hall. I was at the meeting as a cub reporter of The Africans daily News.

My aunt, Mrs Prisca Mazvangu Dauti, a formidable Harare township activist in her own right, had once told me she had sheltered Nkomo and Robert Mugabe from the police at the peak of the non-violent phase of the struggle. She was then a member of Zapu, formed the banning of the National Democratic Party (NDP).after

Her funeral in the late 1980s at Warren Hills cemetery was attended by many members of the new Zanu PF. Speakers extolled her commitment to the struggle since the early days.

Shortly after independence, I met Nkomo face to face. His first remark to me was: “WenaSaidi wena!”

We had been in Zambia together. There was often a not-so-subtle struggle for newspaper coverage between Zapu and Zanu. At The Times of Zambia, I had assumed a key position as deputy editor-in-chief.

This was the largest-selling paper in the country. The Zimbabwe struggle was a major story in Zambia. President Kenneth Kaunda was so involved in it some people thought he had virtually staked his entire political career on its success.

There was a period during which the two men at the helm of this government-owned newspaper had very close links to Zimbabwe – I and Naphy Nyalugwe. He too had been raised in Southern Rhodesia, one of his parents being from what was then Northern Rhodesia.

In the 1950-60s, he too worked at African Newspapers in Salisbury, as I did. He was attached to The African Eagle, which was specifically aimed at Africans in Northern Rhodesia. It served the same purpose as the Bwalo la Nyasaland, of which I was once acting editor: it was aimed at the Africans in that country.

Nyalugwe became editor-in-chief of Times Newspapers after a short stint by John Musukuma, an “all Zambian” citizen in 1978. I had been reinstated as deputy editor-in-chief in 1977, after my dismissal by Kaunda in 1975. I was to leave the job to return to an independent Zimbabwe in 1980. Nyalugwe held a lavish farewell party for me in Ndola. He died of a brain tumour a few years later.

When he took over, one of the first things he asked me was: “What language shall we use – Shona, English or Chewa?” We chose English. Shona would have caused an explosion in all the newsrooms. To be sure, there were a number of Zimbabweans at Times Newspapers. But to allow them to conduct conversation entirely in Shona would have been to tempting Fate: xenophobia would have reared its ugly head once more.

A nasty incident occurred during Naphys’ editorship. An editorial in the paper was critical of Zapu’s commitment to the struggle. It specifically targeted Nkomo himself. The next day an incendiary devise was fired at the first floor of the building which housed the Lusaka offices of the newspaper. As deputy editor-in-chief, I was based in Ndola. Naphy’s office was in Lusaka, on the first floor of the building. It was gutted

There was never any public acknowledgment of an investigation of the atrocity or the arrest of the perpetrators, There had been no casualties as the “thing” was thrown at the building in the dead night, when there was nobody in the office.

· To return to the story of the romance, what finally clinched it for Rusike was my determination to publish the contents of a survey published by a woman’s magazine. The fact that the magazine was edited by Lupi Mushayakarara may have had a lot to do with everything. Lupi was a feminist of the first water. She had done so many things which many in The Establishment might have thought unusual or even unconventional in a straitlaced society. Her survey revealed that many women were unhappy about the whole thing.

· Underlying their distaste was, I think, the stories doing the rounds that Mugabe and Ms Marufu had started their romance while Sally Mugabe lay dying of kidney disease.

· That must be what drove me over the precipice, in a manner of speaking. This was a Zimbabwean women’s magazine dealing with an issue which had touched many Zimbabwean women. I felt there was a legitimat6e reason for publishing the results of the survey without comment.

· But Rusike would not hear of it. I had crosse4d the line, in his book. I would be fired. He would apply to the Ministry of Labour for me to be fired. I said I would challenge him to the Supreme Court, literally. He made a mistake: he told me even if I did I would not get very far. The Minister, Shamuyarira, would not allow it. I would be crucified all round. That stiffened my spine of resistance. I would spill a lot of beans he might be unwilling to be spilled. “Such as?” he asked. I was playing my cards close to my chest.

· In the end, we came to an agreement in which nobody lost face. I have always respected Rusike for that accommodation. But it did not stop me from writing to Shamuyarira to inform him that Rusike had hinted he would not support me “because he doesn’t like you anyway”.

· That letter provoked a rather lengthy reply from Shamuyarira. I was fairly upset by his reply. I wrote my own lengthy rebuttal of some of his assertions. I suspect he decided we should call a truce before things got really ugly.