Godfrey Mwakikagile - Newspaper Background

Newspaper Background

In those days, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, was the headquarters of all the African liberation movements, under the leadership of President Julius Nyerere, and Godfrey Mwakikagile got the chance to know many of the freedom fighters who were based there when he worked as a young news reporter in the nation's capital.30

They included Joaquim Chissano who was the head of the FRELIMO office in Dar es Salaam and who later became the minister of foreign affairs and then president of Mozambique when his country won independence after 500 years of Portuguese colonial rule.31

Many other freedom fighters who were based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, also went on to become national leaders in their respective countries after the end of white minority rule in Southern Africa. And they all still have strong ties to Tanzania even today.

In his seminal work, Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era, Godfrey Mwakikagile has written extensively about the liberation struggle, and the liberation movements, in Southern Africa in what is probably one of the best accounts of that critical phase in the history of Africa. He has also, in the same book, written an excellent analysis of the Congo Crisis during the turbulent sixties.

Godfrey Mwakikagile has also written a book about the struggle against apartheid and the end of white minority rule in South Africa and on the prospects and challenges the country faces in the post-apartheid era. The work is entitled, South Africa in Contemporary Times.

The years he spent on the editorial staff at the Standard and the Daily News were critical to his future career as a writer. Those were his formative years, and had he not become a news reporter, his life, and his career as an author, might have taken a different turn.

As he states in Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era, he was first hired by renowned British journalist David Martin who was the deputy managing and news editor of the Tanganyika Standard. The managing editor was Brendon Grimshaw also British who, in the seventies, bought Moyenne Island in the Seychelles and became its only permanent inhabitant. Brendon Grimshaw also played a major role in recruiting Godfrey Mwakikagile as a member of the editorial staff at the Standard.32

It was a turning point in Godfrey Mwakikagile's life.

That was in June 1969 when he was a student at Tambaza High School in Dar es Salaam. He was 19 years old and probably the youngest reporter on the editorial staff at the Standard during that time.

The Standard which was renamed Daily News in 1970 was the largest English newspaper in Tanzania and one of the largest and most influential in East Africa. And it served Godfrey Mwakikagile well, not only in terms of providing him with an opportunity to sharpen his writing skills but also - after it became the Daily News - in helping him to go to school in the United States where he became an author many years after he graduated from college.

David Martin, when he worked at the Tanganyika Standard and at the Daily News, and thereafter, was the most prominent foreign journalist in Eastern and Southern Africa in the sixties and seventies. And he wrote extensively about the liberation struggle in the region for the London Observer and for BBC.

He went to the combat zone with FRELIMO guerrilla fighters in Mozambique many times and also covered the Angolan civil war for BBC and for CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation).

He knew and worked closely with all the leaders of the liberation movements including Robert Mugabe, Dr. Eduardo Mondlane, president of FRELIMO, who was assassinated in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in February 1969; and Mondlane's successor Samora Machel who died in a mysterious plane crash in 1986 when he was president of Mozambique.

The plane crashed on the South African side of the border with Mozambique and the apartheid regime was suspected of having caused the "accident." He was succeeded by Mozambique's foreign affairs minister, Joaquim Chissano, as president.

David Martin was also very close to many Tanzanian leaders including President Julius Nyerere, and President Benjamin Mkapa who was also his close friend for many years since the sixties when they worked together in the media.

He also interviewed President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia many times during the liberation struggle when many freedom fighters were based in that country and used it as an operational base as they did Tanzania.

He wrote more than 20 books. He died at his home in Harare, Zimbabwe, in August 2007, where he went to live after Zimbabwe won independence in April 1980.

President Mugabe delivered an official condolence message and David Martin was accorded a state-assisted funeral in recognition of his works exposing apartheid South Africa's destabalisation campaign in neighbouring countries, racial brutalities and injustices under white minority regimes throughout Southern Africa and for his outstanding role as a champion of racial equality.

The report of his death which included President Robert Mugabe's long message of condolence on behalf of the government and the ruling party ZANU-PF was published in the Zimbabwean government-owned newspaper, The Herald, 22 August 2007, and was headlined, "President Mourns David Martin."33

Another report on David Martin's contributions as a journalist when he reported extensively on the liberation struggle in Southern Africa, and on his support for regional integration of the countries in that part of the continent after the end of white minority rule, was published in the same paper on August 24 and headlined, "Martin - Man of Many Talents."34

He was buried in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. Mozambican President Armando Guebuza and former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa were some of the African leaders who sent condolence messages.

Zimbabwean government leaders including cabinet members, Tanzanian officials, war veterans who fought for Zimbabwe's independence during the liberation struggle in the sixties and seventies, and diplomats, attended the funeral, according to The Herald, Harare, Zimbabwe, 25 August 2007, in a report headlined, "Martin Laid to Rest."35

David Martin often said he credited his education to the 10 years he spent working as a journalist in Tanzania and was inspired by President Nyerere and by the liberation leaders and movements based there. He interviewed many of those leaders many times during the liberation struggle and thereafter.

In his book Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era, Godfrey Mwakikagile has written about David Martin and the role he played as a journalist during the liberation struggle in Southern Africa. But David Martin was also instrumental in opening the door for Godfrey Mwakikagile into the world of journalism, writing everyday, after which both became successful writers.36

As Godfrey Mwakikagile himself has stated in his books including Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era, Africa after Independence: Realities of Nationhood, The Modern African State: Quest for Transformation, Military Coups in West Africa Since The Sixties and in Africa is in A Mess: What Went Wrong and What Should Be Done and others, his background as a news reporter which included meeting deadlines when writing news articles prepared him for the rigorous task of writing books.37