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The
real Ibbo Mandaza
.....why his fall was inevitable, by man who edited
Mirror
By
Wallace Chuma
THE
first time I met Ibbo Mandaza was during a mid-winter morning in 1999.
I was a features writer with the Daily News, and had called on Ibbo
to explain the failure of the Chitepo Ideological College, which he
had been tipped to head in the late 1980s. I instantly liked him. He
was articulate, and throughout the hour-long interview offered a refreshing
perspective on the constraints, opportunities and follies of the post
colonial state in Zimbabwe.
He identified the lack of a coherent “ideological compass” as one of Zanu PF’s major shortcomings.
The second time I met Ibbo was in his office again, about two years later. This time around he was less of an independent academic and critic, and more of a taskmaster. He had offered me a job as ‘news editor’ of the Zimbabwe Mirror, but with an editor’s job description, and reporting directly to him as editor-in-chief.
Besides revamping the paper’s news coverage, Mandaza assigned me specifically to “fire the useless bastards” at 109 Coventry Road, Workington, then home to the Mirror. I promised to act on improving news coverage, but objected to instant firing of staff (including the gentleman I replaced, who later left the organisation on his own in search of the proverbial greener pastures).
The newsroom was not as hopeless as Ibbo had made me believe. The paper had a vibrant team of young and capable but wretchedly paid journalists, some of whom spent a considerable amount of their time sending their CVs out. Besides the low salaries, I soon found that the journalists were also confused by the newspaper’s incoherent editorial policy.
When I addressed my first editorial meeting, during the first week of February, 2001, I invited Ibbo down to chair it. He took the opportunity to outline the paper’s editorial policy, which he defined as “nationalist” and “non-partisan”. He urged the journalists to report objectively, and frame events and issues from the point of view of their impact on what he roughly called the “national interest”.
In the bifurcated terrain of Zimbabwean politics, an editorial policy predicated on the “national interest” was pretty difficult to sustain, especially for a commercial publication. Matters were not helped by the fact that the “national interest” itself was a highly contested issue, between the two main political formations, Zanu PF and the MDC. The contest also sucked in different factions of capital (which had varied allegiances) and civil society.
I agreed with Mandaza’s belief in critical-analytical journalism which transcended the polarisation of the mainstream media in the country. I agreed with him that the Zimbabwe story could not just be told in simplistic Zanu PF/MDC, enemy/friend, patriot/traitor binaries. But I soon realised I was naïve if I thought Mandaza meant what he said.
The discovery did not take long. Two weeks into my job, I wrote an editorial piece arguing that Jonathan Moyo was an albatross on the Zanu PF neck, and not the asset the party thought he was. The piece took issue with Moyo’s well documented Stalinist media policies and his blatant disdain for media freedom and freedom of _expression. Mandaza called to congratulate me on the piece on a Friday morning. Early in the next week, after he had spoken to Moyo during the weekend, he called again to complain about the same piece, saying we should avoid making unnecessary criticism of some Zanu PF officials. He also called a colleague and editor of Sapem magazine (who was now working closely with me since the demise to the magazine) and told him to monitor me closely to avoid the paper from being turned into another Daily News.
On numerous other occasions, Ibbo would betray his dual and often confusing character. He would urge us to follow certain stories, and just when our reporters thought they’d got the real stuff, he would simply call to instruct me to change the focus, speak to so-and-so, or to drop the story altogether. This disillusioned the editorial team.
It did not take me long to notice that Ibbo’s loyalties were with Zanu PF; in fact, a particular faction within that party. There was nothing wrong with that at all. It was public knowledge, and obviously his right as a citizen. However, Ibbo’s problem was that he tried to sustain an intricate (and mutually exclusive) balancing act between his personal party loyalties and the editorial direction of the paper, and at the same time sending the opposite signals to his editorial staff. The result was a series of embarrassing incidents of confrontation between himself and senior editorial staff, and a seemingly incoherent editorial policy. A reporter would have no idea when his story on Zanu PF would not be dismissed as an MDC-inspired propaganda piece, or when his critique of MDC would not be dismissed as a baseless piece meant to appease some hostile factions in Zanu PF.
For the rest of 2001, Mandaza reluctantly tolerated some diversity in the Mirror. I think it was because the period was some kind of interregnum during which both the major political formations had demobilised in order to strategise for the fierce Presidential elections ahead. But from the first week of 2002, Mandaza became shrill in his editorial interference and paranoia. He thought the paper was not supporting Zanu PF enough, and convinced himself the entire newsroom had been ‘infiltrated’ by MDC supporters. His daily phone calls to me became abusive and annoying. He began to bring half baked conspiracy theories as story leads, and order me to deploy our senior journalists to pursue them. In 90% of the cases, we found out there was no story.
Nevertheless, Ibbo would insist we run with the conspiracies, in the process making fools of ourselves. A good example is the Mirror issue of March 8th, 2002—a day before the presidential election—which led with the alarmist headline “British plot Mugabe assassination”. All the sources quoted in the story, from then security minister Nicholas Goche to Dennis Nkosi, director-general of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) in South Africa—not to mention the British embassy—dismissed the allegations as absurd. Yet Ibbo insisted we run the story based on the denials. There were numerous other conspiracy stories the paper carried as the electoral contest heated up. The idea was to ensure the Mirror contributed to a Zanu PF victory at the polls, period.
| "Ibbo would insist we run with the conspiracies, in the process making fools of ourselves. A good example is the Mirror issue a day before the presidential election which led with the alarmist headline 'British plot Mugabe assassination'" |
| WALLACE CHUMA |
Mandaza’s fatal kiss with state security agents and Zanu PF should be understood in context, although I am not convinced there was no way he could have avoided it and remain commercially afloat. The whole things had less to do with the ideology of nationalism and the “national interest” than newspaper economics. The Mirror was founded on weak financial footing, and never made a profit. The paper was also not modelled and managed as a commercial publication. By 2001, the paper relied heavily on the “benevolence” of CBZ Kaguvi Branch for operations and salaries. When all the printers turned the paper away on account of unpaid debts, CBZ Kaguvi Street would chip in. In desperate situations, Natprint would be directed “from above” to print the paper. Natprint is owned by Zimpapers, which is 51% owned by the state.
At some point towards the end of 2001, the paper almost broke even, but the little “surplus” was immediately liquidated and redeployed towards Ibbo’s other business concerns. This was another problem. The publisher and editor in chief of the Mirror owned a commercial farm, a dysfunctional trailer-making and hiring company, and a struggling mineral water bottling concern. These businesses were supposed to finance each other, and yet none of them (with the possible exception of the farm) was making a profit.
Ibbo enjoyed the dual, if contradictory, identity of being an indigenous solid capitalist and an independent intellectual and academic running an independent research think-tank. I’m sure this carried tremendous prestige. And yet Ibbo’s lifestyle and assumed identity could not be sustained by his struggling business “empire”. Things became even more difficult when Sapes Trust, his research think tank and occasional source of forex, became cash-strapped as a result of donor fatigue.
I must admit the story of the CIO takeover was news to me when I read it in the Zimbabwe Independent. But, I had always wondered why the paper remained on the streets when the company was technically insolvent. I was even more surprised when Ibbo announced plans to launch a daily. I argued consistently against the Daily Mirror because we were failing to improve the quality of the current weekly. Further, a research study we had commissioned had found that a daily newspaper from our stable would not last long on the market. It did not make sense to me that we launch a daily paper with the same old resources, antiquated PCs, a small team of unhappy and poorly paid journalists, a weak product on the market and a poor distribution network. The fact that the editorial team of the current weekly would also work for the daily made no sense to me at all. And then I left in a huff.
When I read about the way Ibbo had been brutally ejected out of the Mirror by the CIO, I felt for him, in the spirit of ubuntu. But I also remembered the brutality with which he offloaded those among his staff who questioned his occasionally strange decisions. In mid 2002, he phoned the editor of his monthly magazine, Sapem on his cellphone, told him he was a dog, and forced him to resign. A well known professor who once worked for him at Sapes Trust went to work one morning (after a heated disagreement with Ibbo on the previous day), only to find his office locks changed and a security guard waiting to forcibly escorted him out of the premises. When I left the Mirror myself, I had less than 10 minutes in which to clear my office and bundle my belongings into my car and drive away from the premises as soon as possible. When I returned to the Mirror in April 2004 to do some research, I was told Ibbo had just thrown out his general manager in the same brutal way, threatening to “go physical” if he resisted leaving quietly. So when I read about Ibbo’s brutal treatment by the notorious See Ten, I was reminded of what we MaKaranga say: “Nhasi hamba yasangana nouneshanhu” (The tortoise has finally met his match).
Mandaza’s sad story should be a lesson for Zimbabweans, especially media entrepreneurs. Cronysim and patronage with either capital or the state is unsustainable. It cannot form the basis for a successful media operation. Neither does it contribute to the cause of democracy. I think Mandaza could have avoided the fatal embrace of state agents by running the Mirror both as a commercial publication and a critical-analytical source of “news behind the news”.
I have no doubts the Mirror (at least the Sunday Mirror) has a significant niche market, and has the potential to be one of the most objective newspapers in the country. In a context where the mainstream private commercial press tends to assume a simplistic anti-Zanu PF editorial perspective, and the public press irredeemably partisan, the Mirror can provide an important arena for informed analysis of processes rather than just events. The paper could capitalise on a non-partisan, analytical, pan-African editorial line and become commercially viable in Zimbabwe. Mandaza should have known that the CIO or whoever bankrolled the paper was not a perennial knight in shinning armour. It was naïve in the extreme for Mandaza to believe that his handlers would postpone the final onslaught indefinitely.
Wallace Chuma
is a lecturer at the University of Cape Town. He is a former News Editor
of the Zimbabwe Mirror. He can be contacted at wchuma@humanities.uct.ac.za
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