Against the Grain: Memoirs of a Zimbabwean Newsman (review)

Against the Grain honors ordinary Zimbabweans advancing the best professional ethics, which is why we should assign the book in our classes. It is a story not often told about Africa, even though we know it happens daily.

The subtitle of this book communicates the modesty of Zimbabweans united in the struggle to overcome an authoritarian government. Recipient of nine international journalism awards, including the Golden Pen of Freedom and UNESCO's World Press Freedom Award, Geoffrey Nyarota could have told only his own story, but he did not. Calling his book "history from a personal perspective," he achieves this goal, for the book is about much more than one newsman; he analyzes the heroic efforts of many to sustain civil liberties. Recounting events in Zimbabwe, from the liberation war to his exile in 2003, through the lens of his own life, Nyarota shares his perceptions about the leaders he knows well.

Citing "courage as the greatest attribute of African journalism" (143), Nyarota also brings us into the newsrooms to learn about the men and women who investigated and probed to tell Zimbabwe's full stories in the Manica Post, Chronicle, Financial Gazette, and the Daily News. They worked to produce (not just to expect) the fruits of liberation: freedom of expression and especially, giving voice to the voiceless. Often they were paid late, or not at all. Frequently, they risked all.

As editor of the Bulawayo Chronicle, Nyarota exposed the corruption of "Willowgate" (1988), involving the selling of government-issued cars by cabinet ministers for instant profits. He became editor (1999–2003) of the Daily News, the first private daily paper in Zimbabwe, and was repeatedly harassed by the government—including "six arrests and two death threats... not to mention three bomb attacks" on the newspaper (303). Nyarota concludes that Robert Mugabe did not suddenly change in 1980, or in 2000, but has been consistent throughout his rule; as Mugabe said at independence, "What I was, I still am" (328). Nyarota, editor of the Chronicle at the time (1982–84), analyzes the Gukurahundi not as an ethnic assault against the Ndebele people, but as a military action to consolidate power; the recent farm assaults were also not against "whites."

Often accused of publishing mostly about the new opposition party from 2000, Nyarota explains at length how government officials (from police to cabinet) were told not to speak to Daily News reporters and that the ruling party's information department prohibited election advertising in independent newspapers. The closure of the Daily News resulted not from government threats, nor a paid informer in the editorial department, nor even the unresolved cases of bombing, but from its own financiers. Opposing the arguments of the editorial staff, they made the decision to refuse to register under a new draconian law, allowing the government to declare the paper illegal. More than three hundred staffers lost their jobs.

This award-winning editor not only gives us insight for continuing the Zimbabwean debates, but also gives pause to Americans. Nyarota accounts well what happens to investigative reporting and accountability when reporters become "hopelessly embedded with the government" (136).