GEOFFREY NYAROTA
Last week I took a decision to visit the village, something I had not done for a long time since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and the attendant lockdown.
We departed on Friday, with the intention of spending two nights.
After a peaceful Saturday I had an early night.
Half-way through the night I suddenly woke up, disturbed by the fierce barking of the dogs.
Long after this canine commotion had subsided I failed to go back to sleep.
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Then I did what I usually do when I am sleepless.
I set my laptop up next to a candle on the coffee table in the lounge.
After creating and dismissing two I finally settled for the headline above with a view to commiserating the plight of the journalists in Zimbabwe, and other journalists in the region I believe.
According to the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, every individual is entitled to the right to freedom of opinion and expression; including freedom to hold opinions without interference, as well as to seek, receive, and communicate information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.
What is of paramount importance to the profession of journalism is the liberty to seek, receive, or disseminate information and ideas through any media without let or hindrance.
While press freedom was enshrined in the constitution of Zimbabwe from independence in 1980, our founding father, president Robert Gabriel Mugabe, displayed a certain weakness in his demeanour, an obsession with control of the media.
It was a shortcoming, which resulted in much suffering among those journalists who had an obsession of their own with proficient or ethical practice of journalism.
Zimbabwe’s younger generations will not be aware of how such journalists were routinely targeted for recrimination, harassment, arrest and even dismissal from employment.
Then they underwent periods of suffering and, on two occasions, they lived and died in abject poverty.
That was the fate of two of Zimbabwe’s most outstanding journalists, Willie Dzawanda Musarurwa and William “Bill” Saidi, (MTSRIEP).
I also went through a period of persecution through six arrests, humiliation and deprivation, going back to Willowgate in 1988 and 89, and especially later, when Jonathan Moyo was Information minister.
The tradition of persecuting journalists who display the temerity to expose poor governance or corruption has continued well into President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Second Republic.
Freelance investigative journalist, Hopewell Rugoho-Chin’ono has been similarly arrested and incarcerated more than once after he joined in, in exposing cases of corruption in the Health ministry at the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
I finally started to nod off at around 2am.
On my return to Harare, something occurred early in the week that sent me back to the laptop and I continued with my article.
Even Zimbabwe’s opposition politicians have shown their true colours when it comes to intolerance of critical journalism.
In the brief period that Morgan Richard Tsvangirai was our prime minister during the Government of National Unity while I was editor of The Zimbabwe Times online newspaper, while based in the United States, I had run-ins with him.
This was aggravated by one particular incident when an image of him went viral on social media as he walked down the red carpet with Arikana Chihombori, a US-based enterprising Zimbabwean medical doctor, at the inauguration of Jacob Zuma in Pretoria.
What revived my keen interest in this article this week, was a tweet by Tsvangirai’s former aide those days, the much respected and erudite, Alex T Magaisa of Oxford University.
He came out guns blazing on Twitter.
He accused writers who criticise Nelson Chamisa’s currently much-troubled MDC Alliance opposition party, and do so without dispensing similar treatment on other opposition players.
He singled out Douglas Mwonzora who has “even announced a shadow cabinet” and Lovemore Madhuku whom he linked to Polad.
“The MDC-A is not perfect,” Magaisa reminded the party’s supposed critics, “but it’s not Zimbabwe’s problem.
“Some folks have never put a penny to support the opposition, nothing, but they expect miracles to happen.
“Zero investment in the project, but long and clever tongues.”
Speaking personally, I daresay that whatever I invested in the MDC during the time when I was actively involved in its affairs was sufficient of a mandate for me to criticise any shortcomings on its part to my heart’s content, whenever I feel like doing so.
Otherwise I am quite happy to top up, if that will buy me essential freedom of respective speech.
Some people, especially the hundreds who are politically non-aligned, castigate the MDC-A in the genuine hope that they can help the party to become a picture-perfect political outfit, well ahead of the elections that will hopefully usher them into office.
Having been led up a garden path by Zanu PF over decades, many Zimbabweans are now wary of being led astray again, especially knowingly and with their eyes wide open.
Surely it is not too much to ask of learned gentleman such as Chamisa, Tendai Laxton Biti and Job “Wiwa” Sikhala that they demonstrate both their capacity and their good faith.
In any case, those who pour millions into the coffers of our opposition political parties for their welfare or sustenance, the donor community, never say a word in protest when those funds are splurged on luxury SUVs, while the donors ride on ancient bicycles back in their own countries.
The philosophy of “timbodyawo” (Shona for it’s now our turn at the bountiful feeding trough) is not easily marketable.
Neither is that of, “kudira jecha” (Shona for if we cannot have this thing you can’t have it either.)
Now, to revert to more familiar territory, in Zimbabwe and elsewhere, I suppose, if a journalist appears visibly comfortable or exceptionally wealthy in the prevailing media circumstances, his condition is usually not the reward from his professional sweat or risk.
Three Zimbabwean journalists have become visibly comfortable in recent years.
One of them is Tommy Ganda Sithole, former editor of The Herald and current chairman of Zimbabwe Newspaper (1980) Ltd.
Then there is Edwin Simba Moyo, a former Ziana reporter, who has become one of Zimbabwe’s most successful farmers and entrepreneurs.
Finally there is earlier mentioned Rugoho-Chin’ono, the award-winning freelance investigative journalist and film producer, as well as goat breeder of note.
After years of service on the beat as a reporter at the national news agency, Ziana, Moyo, like many of his colleagues, left the country to seek greener pastures abroad.
He worked in Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and finally in the United States.
“Most of what has built me was picked up in New York when I worked with the Dow Jones promoting the Dow Jones Sam Sustainability Fund,” he says.
“That gave me access to people like George Soros and some Swiss bankers like Reto Ringger.
“From them I learned ideas of making money and how to manage funds.”
Moyo says he subsequently invested in export horticultural farming in Manicaland in 1996.
This was ahead of government’s land reform programme.
His own Kondozi Farm employed hundreds of workers while supplying United Kingdom supermarkets with produce.
The project collapsed when government pounced on the farm in 2004.
It was then allocated to ARDA before it was re-allocated to the Zimbabwe National Army.
Didymus Mutasa, then state minister for National Security, Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement in the President’s Office, finally gave the showpiece farm to the Christopher Mushohwe, then Information and Broadcasting Services minister in 2006.
Meanwhile, Moyo did not look back.
He relocated to Marondera in Mashonaland East where he has re-established himself as a successful farmer-cum-entrepreneur.
He specialises on tobacco, blueberry, strawberries, stone fruit, butternut and peas for the export market, as well as potatoes, maize and sugar beans for the local market.
He also runs a 600-strong herd of cattle, mainly Brahman, Beefmaster and Boran, with Bonsmara on trial.
The farms are solar-powered throughout.
Sithole was a long-serving editor of the Zimbabwe Newspapers flagship.
In 2020 he rose to the pinnacle of the organisation, now serving as company chairperson.
While he was editor of The Herald, he also served as chairperson of the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee.
When he left active journalism he joined the Olympics in Geneva. He was a man of substance on return.
Sithole is a man of a few words. Despite decades spent in the media he is media shy.
When the theory was put to him that it was unlikely that a newshound would make a fortune while working on the coalface of journalism in Zimbabwe, he was characteristically brief in his response.
“That would be correct,” he says.
Rugoho-Chin’ono, who plies his trade as a journalist in Harare, is regarded by some of his peers as a young journalist of above average means.
He promptly dismisses this view with virtual disdain.
He is, nevertheless, more forthcoming and more insightful in his response than his colleagues, Moyo and Sithole.
“The idea that I am wealthy is an exaggeration of the truth,” he says. “I live a comfortable life which is not lavish by any definition.”
Chin’ono said he earned all that he has through journalism and documentary film making.
“I have been Africa’s best journalist of the year twice,” he said, “and I run a successful Boer goat farming project.”
He did not respond, however, when asked about the monetary value of the Africa’s Best Journalist Award.
Neither did he respond when asked about the duration for which he had run his successful Boer goat farming project.
“The difference between myself and local journalists is that I have never worked for a local media house,” Rugoho-Chin’ono said.
“So what I earned while working with or for BBC, ITN, New York Times, CNN or eNCA would for obvious reasons, be much higher than a local journalist working for ZBC or (The) Herald.
“It is impossible for a local journalist to invest in anything because the economy is battered,” he said.
“We have been reduced by poverty so much that normal living as in Chisipite is now considered as lavish.
“That is why I fight for a better Zimbabwe for everyone so that what is wrongly perceived as lavish is seen as normal because that is what it is.”
(Geoffrey Nyarota is an award-winning investigative journalist and founding editor-in-chief of the original Daily News. He can be contacted on gnyarota@gmail.com)