|
IN my desperate attempt to make an impression with my first issue as editor of The Standard, I asked my Facebook friends what they would want to read in the newspaper or how they thought we could make it more engaging.
An old friend of mine, Costa Manzini, was the first to respond. “Give it the zing-zing man,” he said.
It got me thinking: what is the zing-zing?
Let me digress a little and tell you a bit about Costa. He was once senior photographer at Modus Publications, publishers of the Financial Gazette and the now defunct Daily Gazette and Sunday Gazette.
I met Costa when I worked for the Fingaz in the early 1990s.
He should be world famous by now had it not been for our political circumstances. He is the guy who took the famous picture of the late Malawian dictator, Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, tripping and falling at the entrance to the then Sheraton Harare .
The photograph created a sensation the world over. It defined Banda’s tipping point: the point at which the world was shown graphically that the tyrannical ruler was, like everybody else, only mortal.
In Malawi, to understate it, the common people were getting increasingly fed up with Kamuzu’s rule; not only had he become senile but he was becoming increasingly more authoritarian. Malawians wanted him to go. His age was the subject of speculation with some claiming he had become a centenarian.
I remember many editors in Malawi at that time asking Costa to send them duplicates. Had he been American he would have won the Pulitzer. But as fate would have it Costa’s effort landed him in trouble.
Our government at that time was getting closer and closer to Blantyre so the photograph became an embarrassment to our own leadership; it had to be destroyed.
Indeed it was and poor Costa was asked to destroy all evidence of it. I remember a downcast Costa relating to me his ordeal through his ever-present wry smile.
After we reconnected recently on Facebook I asked him where he lived now. “I am living in a small town called Basildon, in Essex,” he replied.
Like all world-class newspapers, The Standard has always attempted to stick to the noble values of freedom, democracy and reason.
Indeed, ever since its inception 16 odd years ago it has fought against the curtailment of people’s freedoms, the violation of their democratic rights and has urged reason ahead of the emotive language with which the powers that be have harangued the Zimbabwean body politic over the past three decades.
Its lowest point must have been the arrest and torture of its founding editor, the late Mark Chavunduka and senior reporter Ray Choto. Although Mark was said to have died of natural causes years later, the experience must have been immensely traumatic. Ray now lives in exile in the US.
Zimbabwe is as we speak emerging from a crucible.
The past 10 years have shown how a promising country, one that is at the pinnacle of a continent, can easily, and quickly, tumble to the bottom of the heap due to a single individual’s refusal to see reason.
When countries from all continents were seeing the folly of commandist economic policies and the necessity of unbridled freedom of expression and association, our leadership were in fact tightening the screws on people’s liberties.
As many countries had seen the foolishness of lifetime dictatorships and were replacing their leaders with zestful young future-oriented managers, our geriatric leadership was digging us further into a hole.
We seem to be emerging from that scenario through the year-old government of national unity. Though still shaky, I hope I am not being overly optimistic in saying it is irreversible. We all remember how polarised our community has been over the past 10 years. The media too became sickeningly polarised.
But as we emerge from this Gahenna, newspapers have to reflect the new circumstance without being remiss on monitoring all hints at developments that might send us into another tailspin.
The Standard will continue to strengthen the ventilation of diverse opinions and promote a tolerance of different thinking without becoming an arena on which political-party propagandists or interest groups practise their boxing bouts.
Through The Standard we are giving our readers the platform on which they can reflect, discuss and analyse national issues without fear or favour.
But this need not imply that the newspaper becomes a university seminar room full of grey professors and bespectacled nerds. When a person is emerging from a bad movie, he needs relief. Equally when a nation is emerging from a cauldron it also takes relief to unwind the people and refocus.
Are Zimbabweans capable of laughing again? Are we all still capable of the kind of laughter Bridget Gavanga de-stresses us with from the radio in the morning as we drive to work?
It was the kind of laughter we revelled in the early 1980s, almost euphoric without being reckless. It was encapsulated in the signature song of the time, Mukadota and Katarina’s KwaHunyani.
Yes we can! We can have relief through comedy and entertainment. We can have relief through our sport and its ambassadors and also through the arts, particularly music, theatre and literature.
The Standard should be able to give us relief and pleasure through engaging writing; the kind of writing that invigorates and motivates the reader. This kind of writing should not come only from our newsroom but from our readers as well.
That way we will have given the newspaper the zing-zing.
BY NEVANJI MADANHIRE
The Standard Editor
 |
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form
