1 ‘Men Between’: The Role of Zambian Broadcasters in Decolonisation* ROBERT HEINZE (Department of History, University of Bern) This article traces the history of a group of Zambian broadcasters who established the first radio station in the country and made their mark on broadcasting for years to come. It describes their contribution to modern Zambian culture and to nationalist mobilisation. African broadcasters developed formats, ways of presenting and music that appealed to Zambian listeners and established new, authentically local styles. While radio quickly established itself as an integral part of everyday life and culture in the colony, its effect was highly ambivalent. Broadcasters at the same time undermined and enforced the colonial project of using the medium as a transmitter of modernisation ideology. The article explores Thomas Turino’s characterisation of this team as “cosmopolitans” influenced by BBC ideas of journalism and modernisation ideology, looking at the relationships between African broadcasters and their European superiors as well as their political activity. This shared value system brought them into conflict with the post-independence government and its plans to bureaucratise radio, despite their nationalist commitment and strong support for UNIP before independence. Radio played a decisive role in Zambia's decolonisation. Despite the colonial and Federal states' rigid control of media content, particularly in the one mass medium over which they held a monopoly, they could not prevent subversive practices by both broadcasters and listeners. The reasons for this are manifold and present a combination of general characteristics of radio as a mass medium and more specific historically, politically and culturally contingent factors, such as language diversity in African colonies, the colonial situation, British liberalism and its influences in 2 the Central African Federation and African nationalism.1 First, radio in general – like most mass media – has never been a one-way medium, despite Brecht's and others' inhibitions.2 The minimum option listeners had was not to listen, which automatically gave them some limited influence on broadcast content – every propagandist knows about the sugar of entertainment that has to coat the whip of ideology. Secondly, by the time colonial states introduced radio sets affordable for a big minority of middle and working class Africans, international broadcasting had rendered state monopolies over radio an illusion. As listeners could choose from alternative sources of information, simple propaganda would not help to control the flow of information to colonial subjects. Even the most controlled information programmes could not hide everything from their audience. Thirdly, because of the need to produce popular content, African broadcasters received much leeway in the production of cultural and entertainment programmes, while information broadcasts remained under rigid control. This, I will argue, provided some space for subversive practices among broadcasters. However, concentrating on broadcasters and their role in subverting colonial radio helps to clarify that while politically, most of them were radical nationalists to the point of risking their positions as civil servants, they were also cosmopolitans in that they shared fundamental ideas about the role of broadcasting in the future nation with their colonial supervisors and with journalists in the metropoles.3 This enabled them to criticise colonial information control from 1 The Federation of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland, also called the Central African Federation, was a peculiar constitutional construct uniting the three British colonies Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland under the roof of a central government voted into power by white settlers, and the still existing British colonial administration. Established after years of political pressure from settlers, it significantly extended their influence. Because the overwhelming majority of settlers lived in Southern Rhodesia and were very conservative, and because agrarian Southern Rhodesia profited the most from closer union with the industrial mines of the North, Africans especially in the other two territories felt that this was a move to further subjugate them, economically and politically. Therefore the introduction of the Federation met with widespread, but ultimately unsuccessful, resistance. R. Rotberg, The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa: The Making of Malawi and Zambia, 1873--1964 (Cambridge [Mass.], Harvard University Press, 1965). 2 The marxist writer Bertolt Brecht, in an influential essay, described radio in bourgeois society as a one-way ‘apparatus of distribution’, which needed to be changed into a two-way ‘apparatus of communication.’ Many media theorists have followed this idea to a certain extent. B. Brecht, ‘Der Rundfunk als Kommunikationsapparat’, in B.Brecht, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 18 (Frankfurt/M., Suhrkamp, 1967), pp. 117-134. 3 Both positions are far from being mutually exclusive. Rather, nationalism is itself a result of cosmopolitan exchange, as Partha Chatterjee has argued. P. Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World (Minneapolis, University 3 within – by referring to BBC standards of journalism – but would eventually pit them against the post-colonial nationalist government. While the circumstances of production are an essential part of media analysis, they are often reduced to their formal aspects – how are media outlets structured, which influences, specifically from politics and state institutions are possible and so on. Very few histories and contemporary studies of media institutions have looked at production circumstances from the perspective of broadcasters.4 To cite the most important contribution: Debra Spitulnik has emphasised circulation aspects of media and taken the production sphere of the post-Kaunda broadcaster into account to analyse the dynamics between the broadcaster and its audience. While taking up the analytical implications, this article considers how some of Spitulnik’s themes -- specifically the recurrent central trope of national unity -- emerged in post-independence broadcasting. Also, it focuses on the global influences on journalists’ attitudes to their own work and their role in Zambian society. Such an analysis has to rely in large part on oral history. This, of course, has some problems and limitations. The research of which a part is presented here is based on 20 interviews with former journalists of both the colonial and the post-colonial stations, held in Lusaka during two visits, in 2006 and 2007/08. Most importantly, these interviews were conducted with professional journalists or ex-journalists. Thus the interviewees had ample experience in conducting journalistic interviews and were likely to be more conscious of the implications. Additionally, the interviews were strongly informed by contemporary discourse. To take these limitations into account, oral testimony here is combined with published autobiographies of some of the central actors, as well as contemporary reports and protocols, to allow a contextualisation of these oral sources. The Pioneers of African Broadcasting of Minnesota Press, 1986). 4 A recent example is S.P: Lekgoathi, ‘Bantustan Identity, Censorship and Subversion on Northern Sotho Radio under Apartheid, 1960s—80s, in L. Gunner, D. Ligaga and D. Moyo (eds), Radio in Africa: Publics, Cultures, Communities (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 2011), pp.117--33. 4 The story of colonial broadcasting in Northern Rhodesia is a particularly fascinating one, not simply because the Central African Broadcasting Services (CABS) pioneered broadcasting to African colonial subjects, nor because of its role in developing the first battery-powered radio set affordable for the African middle and (partly) working classes. More than that, the CABS was a fundamentally ambivalent project from its outset. It was driven by the colonial administration's need for information control, but developed into a source of information and education for colonial subjects as well as a mediator of social change and, finally, an intellectual forum for Zambia's decolonisation. This was primarily due to the people working inside the station. Two information officers, Harry Franklin and Kenneth Bradley, pressurised the colonial government to introduce a full- fledged station after radio had been used in the Second World War to broadcast news from the battlefield and exchange greetings between soldiers in the King’s African Rifles regiments and their families in the colony. However, they could only implement their ideas in the post-war period. After coordination between all British colonies in Central and East Africa, and some subsequent experimentation, the project of a full-fledged radio station for all three Central African territories was accepted by the Central African Council in 1947. Only South Africa could boast of such a territory-wide service at the time.5 Information control was one of the motives of the colonial government in introducing the Information Offices and, through them, media for African consumers in the 1930s. Franklin argued that if the colonial administration did not establish its own media, colonial subjects would turn to alternative sources of information and be ‘easily misled by discontented agitators of the “intelligentsia” class’.6 The establishment of the first newspaper in African languages, Mutende, in 1936 (which Franklin edited) had come after the colonial government realised that Watchtower 5 J. Muller, K. Tomaselli and R. Tomaselli, Currents of Power: State Broadcasting in South Africa (Denver, Anthropos, 2001). 6 National Archives of Zambia (hereafter NAZ) 20/170, H. Franklin, Report on the Development of Broadcasting to Africans in Central Africa (Lusaka, Government Printer, 1950), p. 7. 5 tracts circulated among the population and could become dangerous if not countered.7 The project for African radio went far beyond this, however. Franklin knew that for a mass medium to establish itself as the central source of information and entertainment, it needed to take the audiences’ needs and wishes into account. Looking at his work and his relationship with his colleagues, one must also acknowledge that Franklin was committed to establishing a radio programme produced by Africans for an African audience. Given his liberal political commitment, it is quite possible that his use of the agitator argument was tactical – to convince his superiors – rather than ideological. Soon after the station was established, he employed African announcers, and together with his successor Michael Kittermaster, he ‘created around him a team among whom colour-discrimination was completely unknown’,8 an assessment which is corroborated by their African colleagues.9 The CABS also soon became extremely popular with its audience, not least because of its first African producers. Creative pioneers, Edward Kateka and Edwin Mlongoti managed to adapt Zambian oral literature and other local cultural forms to the new medium. This was no small feat, given that radio needed a fundamentally different approach to orature, mostly because it eliminates the visual elements of performance as well as the possibility for interaction with the audience.10 These first CABS broadcasters were extremely inventive and left a permanent mark on Zambian radio. Mlongoti, despite his relatively good education, had worked as a railwayman before joining Mutende as an office-orderly. He had started in broadcasting during the war, but only as a translator for government talks. Franklin brought him back when CABS took off, and Mlongoti -- nicknamed ‘Ha-Hi-Ha’ because of his infectious humour, quickly became one of the most popular broadcasters. His death from diabetes in 1952 came as a shock to many, and his funeral saw Northern Rhodesia’s small artistic and intellectual elite gather to mourn him. Kateka, ‘a Falstaffian man’, had a similar 7 The African Watchtower movement, although different from Jehovah’s Witnesses, followed their literature in its opposition to all forms of earthly government. R. Smyth, ‘War Propaganda during the Second World War in Northern Rhodesia’, African Affairs 83, 332 (1984), pp. 345--58, 347. 8 P. Fraenkel, Wayaleshi (London, Tauris, 1959), p. 23-24. 9 Interview Andreya Sylvester Masiye, Lusaka, 16 January 2008. 10 E.R. Wendland,‘From the Eyes of a Girl to the Eyes of a Goat: Julius Chongo's Visualization of Dramatic Narrative for an Invisible Radio Audience’, Research in African Literatures 37, 2 (2006), pp. 98--123. 6 background and produced a live music and entertainment programme, earning the Bemba nickname ‘Mfumfumfu’, ‘he from whom words pour unceasingly like a river down a waterfall’.11 Peter Fraenkel gives some examples of their artful production skills.12 CABS influenced Zambian broadcasting for years to come, well beyond the country's independence. Although it nominally existed ten years, the first half of this period was decisive to found this tradition. From 1953, CABS was forced to act as a propaganda station for the Central African Federation, which completely lost it the listeners' trust it had built up in the five preceding years. In 1958, it was incorporated into the newly established Federal Broadcasting Corporation (FBC) as its African Services. However, the time from 1948 to 1953 was later hailed as ‘the golden years of broadcasting in Northern Rhodesia’13 – and rightly so. Franklin already left the station in 1951, because he felt the increasing power of Rhodesian settlers had damaged the ‘paramountcy policy’: ‘What was certain (or so it seemed to me) was that either increasing white political power in Northern Rhodesia or total white political power in a Federation spelled the end of the policy of the paramountcy of African interests[,] the only policy under which I felt I could work’.14 He would stay true to his convictions and eventually became the representative for African interests in the Legislative Council and Minister for African Education and Social Services. Kittermaster took over, but soon left himself. Fraenkel stayed until 1957, but later reprimanded himself for thinking he would be able to ‘mellow’ the ‘increasing illiberalism’ in the Federation.15 It is a sign of their influence that the CABS never completely lost its liberal roots, and most African broadcasters who played a role in Zambia's decolonisation had started under Kittermaster. Who were these people and what was their role in the decolonisation process and independent 11 Fraenkel, Wayaleshi, p. 41. 12 Ibid. To my knowledge, no recording of their plays has survived. 13 M.V. Sichalwe, The Development of Radio Broadcasting in Northern Rhodesia (MA Thesis, University of Zambia, 1988), p. 59. 14 H. Franklin, The Flag Wagger (London, Shepheard-Walwyn, 1973), p. 200. ‘Paramountcy policy’ refers to the condition required by the British government under which it accepted a closer union between the three colonies, only if the interests of Africans received precedence over those of white and Indian citizens. See Rotberg [please use short title]1965. 15 Fraenkel, Wayaleshi, p. 221. He elaborates in his later work; P. Fraenkel, No Fixed Abode: A Jewish Odyssey to Africa (London, Tauris, 2005), p. 231. 7 Zambia? The station in Lusaka had begun relatively small, but grew to 40 African and 15 European broadcasters and technicians in 1960, and established a studio in Kitwe. Before the FBC African Service was restructured to prepare for the country's independence in 1964, African broadcasters could only actively produce cultural and entertainment programmes. In news and political feature programmes, their role was reduced to announcing and translating. Also, they earned considerably less than their European colleagues. Nevertheless, from written autobiographical sources and interviews one finds that they formed a closely knit team. Even under Federal control, while censorship and listener protests made the work extremely frustrating, the cultural programmes offered some freedom, and Kittermaster’s successors, Cyril Sapseid and Donald Lightfoot, continued the liberal tradition inside the station. The broadcasters at CABS and the FBC were part of a network that connected colonial officers with African civil servants and teachers. One of the veterans of broadcasting in the country, Andreya Sylvester Masiye, had ventured into broadcasting while a soldier in the King's African Rifles during the Second World War. After a time working as headmaster of Katete Development School, he returned to radio in 1954 when Kittermaster invited him to join CABS. He had remained in contact with Franklin and the CABS throughout that time, and had recorded Nyau songs in the Katete district for use on the radio. Another, Joseph Chileshe, lost his job as a clerk due to taking part in the ANC's two-day prayer and stay-away protest against the introduction of the Federation in 1953. His former colleague Lightfoot, however, asked him to join him at CABS. The broadcasters’ network seems to have been strong enough to allow such a move: despite his openly nationalist political commitments, Chileshe could return to the colonial civil service of whichCABS was a part. From 1953, however, repression gradually increased – in the Federation as a whole, as well as in radio itself. Censorship and control grew more important in day-to-day work. Masiye recounts instances of spying among his colleagues, and Federal authorities used contacts versed in local 8 languages (mostly missionaries) across the three territories to listen to the African language services.16 However, CABS -- and from 1958 the FBC's African Service -- remained in Lusaka.Moreover, Donald Lightfoot and Peter Fraenkel, the CABS liberals retained important positions. This meant that some important aspects of CABS persisted, which might have played a role in African broadcasters’ resilience against Federation. Furthermore, broadcasters in Lusaka had firsthand experience of the consequences of losing listeners' trust. After CABS was forced to broadcast federal propaganda, rumours circulated in Northern Rhodesia that they were the newest victims of banyama – vampire men who, instead of sucking blood, controlled their victims' minds, so that even people like Nkhata and Kateka supported the Federation. Peter Fraenkel saw the rationale behind the rumour: ‘How could the announcers broadcast “bad news”, news which displeased Africans, unless they had lost all their will-power? How else could they be made to read pro-Federation propaganda on the air?’17 The story acquired a very real power when a mob assembled at Edward Kateka’s house -- whom they accused of having abducted a child -- and chased him until he found refuge in a police station. Luise White speculates that the specific banyama rumours about African broadcasters were connected to their work as, essentially, storytellers: ‘What did cause these accusations? Was it the general panic, the men themselves, the stories newscasters told on the air or the way they told those stories?’ She suggests that ‘it was the work that was suspicious, not the man’.18 For many African broadcasters, the situation in radio under Federal control was extremely frustrating and tense, especially during the latter half of the 1950s when nationalists radicalised, and conflicts multiplied. Although the banyama rumours subsided eventually, the censorship, control and spies remained. However, broadcasters – and listeners – creatively sought out spaces for subversive communication. Andrea Masiye, after a successful career in broadcasting that had brought him into the 16 A.S. Masiye, Singing for Freedom: Zambia's Struggle for Self-Government (Nairobi/London/New York, Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 21--39. 17 Fraenkel, Wayaleshi, p. 202. 18 L. White, Speaking with Vampires: Rumour and History in Colonial Africa (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000), p. 304. 9 Zambian Ministry of Information, wrote a book that stands alongside Fraenkel’s account as one of the most fascinating sources for the history of broadcasting, not only in Zambia, and even more for the history of African cultural resistance to colonial rule. In it, he recounts the history of singing under colonialism, of the constantly changing ‘traditional’ songs, reinterpreted popular and ‘modern’ tunes, and political texts that expressed everyday resilience. He also explains the involvement of broadcasters in the circulation of these songs. The CABS attached great value to what they called 'traditional' songs and had undertaken a grand archiving project. Vans went on tours throughout the region to record performances for use in radio. Broadcasters shared ideas about aspects of ‘traditional’ music in the colonies, and the archiving project fixed this music in space and time. Hugh Tracey's ethnomusicological research and recording tours strongly inspired the project. Alick Nkhata had worked with Tracey in the 1940s, and was also involved with the CABS vans. The CABS broadcasters had a clear sense of the value of ‘traditional’ music and shared Tracey's view that it was gradually dying out. This means that they saw ‘traditional’ music as a part of ‘traditional’ African society, and likewise something old, immutable and without significant history. Again, black and white broadcasters shared this view, at least in part. Thomas Turino sees the connection between Kittermaster, once a producer responsible for indigenous music in the SABC, and Nkhata, who had worked with another SABC expert, Hugh Tracey, as one of shared ‘cosmopolitan ideas about indigenous arts’.19 Cosmopolitanism was the foundation for the shared mindset of broadcasters at CABS. Thus, it can be understood as ideology in the Gramscian sense of a ‘conception of the world which is uncritically absorbed by the various social and and cultural environments in which the moral individuality of the average man is developed’. This need not be a coherent, uniform ideology; rather, ‘even in the brain of one individual, [it] is fragmentary, incoherent, and inconsequential, in 19 T. Turino, Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music in Zimbabwe (Chicago/London, Chicago University Press, 2000), p. 99. 10 conformity with the social and cultural position of those masses whose philosophy it is’.20 Cosmopolitanism included assumptions about Zambian culture and society as well as ideas about the country’s future. In Northern Rhodesia, it was connected to a liberal tradition that influenced colonial and nationalist intellectuals alike.21 Turino understands cosmopolitanism as a type of ‘cultural formation’ that is ‘simultaneously local and translocal’,22 and which has long been associated with elites and privilege. His research shows this applies to a certain extent to CABS and FBC broadcasters, although one should be wary of neglecting the differences in racial privilege between black and white broadcasters in colonial society. Also, one must note that these cultural formations mirror global hierarchies. They are ‘more heavily influenced by certain particularly powerful sites’23 – enforced through colonial or neocolonial structures, be they economic, political or cultural. The cosmopolitan environment at CABS brought with it a variety of assumptions about the characteristics of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ African music. For example, CABS broadcasters were convinced of the ‘poverty’ 24 of Zimbabwean music. The connections between Nkhata, Tracey and the CABS team ‘provide an important glimpse of how early ethnomusicological ideas, such as the need for preserving ‘the Traditional’, might have been popularly diffused and influential beyond scholarly circles’.25 Broadcasters looked for a specific set of characteristics to identify ‘indigenous’ music; however, more often than not, they defined it by the absence of ‘modern’ characteristics, such as European rhythms or instruments. Consequently, an Annual Report of the station stated that ‘indigenous music’ was even in the rural areas ‘becoming adulterated by rhythm and melodies 20 A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1971), p. 419. For our purposes, it might be better to replace ‘masses’ with ‘social groups’; Gramsci of course is interested in the question of why the Italian peasants and proletariat were in the grip of Catholicism in the nineteenth century. 21 B.J. Phiri, A Political History of Zambia (London, AWP, 2006) describes the history of (ultimately doomed) liberal efforts such as the Capricorn Africa Society to influence colonial politics. The liberal nationalism of Harry Nkumbula and the ANC, the first nationalist party in the colony, is explored by G. Macola, Liberal Nationalism in Central Africa: A Biography of Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 22 Turino, Popular Music in Zimbabwe, p. 7. It thus transcends not only the opposition between nationalism and cosmopolitanism that Appiah, for example, creates, but also questions that between ‘localist’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ cultural styles set up by Ferguson. See K. Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, (New York, W.W. Norton, 2006); J. Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999), p. 92. 23 Ibid., p. 8. 24 Fraenkel, Wayaleshi, p. 57. 25 Turino 2000, p. 99. 11 adapted from European tunes’. Such an idea of ‘adulteration’, however, was only possible if there was a concept of ‘unadulterated’ music fixed in time and space; at CABS they ignored long histories of musical change and exchange of forms and instruments. They saw ultural change as problematic, and the report worried that it seemed ‘almost inevitable that the indigenous music is gradually dying out’. Nevertheless, the broadcasters could not resist fast-changing listener tastes and subsequent demands for contemporary music in programmes –‘hilly-billy’ and ‘tsabatsaba’ music were played more and more throughout the decade.26 Both styles were associated with the working class, which might have played a role in the broadcasters' dismissal of them as inauthentic. However, as Masiye shows so impressively, Zambian music had already developed and adapted to the colonial situation. Zambian songs had long commented on social and political grievances and, for example, expressed anger about plans for amalgamation – of which Federation, as they saw it, was only a superficially moderate version. When people turned against the radio for propagating Federation, CABS recording vans ‘had their tyres punctured in remote villages’, and Africans refused to perform for the recording teams. Even if ‘they could be persuaded to [record songs], many of their songs had the refrain, ‘We don't want Federation’.27 Masiye quotes from the song: ‘Ife sitifuna Federeshoni/Tifuna boma la anthu akuda (We do not want Federation/We want a black government)’.28 However, what happened in Lusaka in the late 1950s went beyond everyday popular resilience. And the African broadcasters were at the heart of it. Early on, CABS had developed music request programmes, the most popular being ‘Zimene Mwatifunsa‘ (ciNyanja: Yours for the Asking). Listeners would write to the station to request a song, usually attaching greetings or a message. Zimene Mwatifunsa was for a long time the single most popular programme, because of its up-to-date music (it was also the basis for the hit parade), but more importantly because it facilitated contacts and the exchange of messages between workers in the cities and their families in the rural areas. Messaging programmes such as Zimene 26 All quotations from NAZ 15/87, Northern Rhodesia Information Department: Annual Report for the Year 1950, p. 6. 27 Fraenkel, Wayaleshi, p. 207. 28 Masiye, Singing for Freedom, p. 23. Italics in the original. 12 Mwatifunsa have remained an integral part of broadcasting in Zambia as in other African countries, and their relevance has only diminished with the advent of mobile telephones.29 Although the FBC cancelled Zimene Mwatifunsa, it introduced another programme in the same format, Lucky Dip, broadcast in each of the seven African languages used in radio separately. The change was significant, as ‘Zimene’ had been more nationally inclusive. Lucky Dip’s concept was in tune with Federal policies to counter nationalist tendencies and to build a Federal model in radio. At the time, these programmes were the most direct way listeners could influence broadcasting content (later, the phone-in discussion programmes would take their place). Through these two channels – recordings and requests – dissident messages hidden in poetic lyrics found their way into a heavily censored programme. Andrea Masiye cites a host of examples, from which only some can be quoted here. For instance, there was a sweet religious melody by a group of Watchtower adherents. It spoke about the wickedness of man who had exalted himself to a high position in this mundane world. Man was trampling on the rights of others, bringing untold misery and suffering. There was no peace. God Almighty would one day descend on them and punish such people. He would take away their brief authority. The exalted would be vanquished forever. And those who were suffering under the usurpers would live on to celebrate their victory. This tune was for a long time at the top of the weekly request programme hit parade. Christians, Muslims and heathens alike asked for it. The reason was obvious to both African broadcasters and listen-ers, but not to our European colleagues and supervisors. To the Africans, the hymn was not referring to an imaginary people in a fictitious situation. It was pointing to the Africans of Central Africa, particularly those of Northern Rhodesia.30 29 A detailed analysis of the post-1989 broadcaster is D. Spitulnik, 'Personal News and the Price of Public Service', in E.S. Bird (ed), The Anthropology of News & Journalism: Global Perspectives (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2010), pp. 182--98. 30 Masiye, Singing for Freedom, p. 24-25. 13 At the beginning of the 1960s, another political song followed this banned Watchtower tune on the top of the hit parade. More outspoken, it still managed to slip through censorship for a while. Masiye cites parts of the song: "Lidzafika liti dzuwa lopulumuka Kwa anthu amu Africa wosauka Africa, mazunzo ndi ambiri Komabe tidzawagonjetsa Koma kale-kale mu Africa Timali kugulitsidwa ukapolo Africa, mazunzo ndi ambiri Komabe tidzawagonjetsa When will Freedom day come For the poor African people Africa, persecution is too much But we shall overcome Long ago in Africa We were sold as slaves Africa, persecution is too much But we shall overcome The text seemed to be about either religious deliverance or freedom from slavery, but the chorus in the present tense alluded to ongoing struggles for political freedom. Given the repressive nature of FBC broadcasting, it is astonishing that such a song could be played day and night. This was partly due to broadcasters' cunning. Broadcasters were very aware that once British officials knew about the subversive nature of the song they would ban it. To assure listeners that so far there was no danger, another song came in handy. It was a release by a white group calling themselves The Tokens. Their innocuous sounding number was called 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'. It was an assurance from one listener to others, or from the announcer to his listeners, that the British were not aware of what was happening.31 31 Ibid., 26; R. Malan, In the Jungle: How American Music Legends Made Millions off the Work of a Zulu Tribesman who Died a Pauper (London, ColdType, 2003) describes the complex history of this song and its place in the history of global pop music. 14 In the end, the song was banned after an African announcer – according to Masiye an informant planted in the station by the Federal government – divulged its implications to the officials. Through the knowing cooperation of African broadcasters, locally composed songs circulated widely in the Federation. Thus, an old local practice – commenting on and mediating political and social developments through song – developed into contemporary national discourse. As Debra Spitulnik has correctly remarked, request programmes in Zambia ‘have played a critical role in constructing an imagined – and concretely participated in – national community that extends beyond the immediate world of face-to-face encounters’.32 The more or less unspoken collaboration between nationalist broadcasters and listeners, who subverted Federal censorship, infused the national community with anti-colonial discourse. A host of contradictory developments arose from this: on the one hand, listeners saw African broadcasters as ‘Capricornists’ – collaborators with settlers, on the other, they sent in requests for dissident songs.33 Similarly, broadcasters worked as propagandists for the settler regime, reading out censored news, while contradictorily, they established subversive practices. However, these discrepancies play an integral part in the way resistance plays out in repressive circumstances. Subversive discourse was indirect and usually metaphoric or poetic. Moreover, listeners eventually came to understand the constraints placed upon broadcasters. Much more interesting for an analysis of the broadcasters' role in the decolonisation of Zambia is the fact that although many broadcasters took risks by engaging in subversive practices, they also shared many colonial ideas about Zambian society and culture and Zambia's political and social future. These values did not clash with Zambian nationalism, nationalism expressed them. Zambian nationalists did not question the goal 32 D. Spitulnik, ‘Personal News’, p. 182. 33 The Capricorn Africa Society (CAS) was an ultimately unsuccessful attempt by white liberals to influence Federal politics. They wanted to integrate an African elite into Federal politics and envisioned democratic citizenship for all races, provided that all subscribed to the values of ‘Western civilisation’. Thus, it was hated by settlers and nationalists alike. Nationalists called those they accused of collaboration ‘Capricornists’, because they suspected the society of operating clandestinely to support the Federation. Thus the society attracted banyama rumours, because ‘Capricorn’evoked a conspiracy theory. See Phiri, Political History, pp. 32--42. 15 (to achieve a modern society, which promised much, most importantly a significant rise in living standards), but the means by which it would be achieved and who was to lead the way. Many African broadcasters sympathised with nationalist politics, and the music programmes allowed dissident messages to slip through Federal censorship. Moreover, Federal spies often lacked a deep understanding of local languages, and broadcasters learned to speak figuratively to disguise political meaning. During the Federation period, nationalist mobilisation grew again. The ANC, which had taken an enormous hit after failing to prevent the introduction of Federation, recovered only slowly.; however,the The party split, leading to the formation of the more radical Zambia African National Congress (ZANC) and, subsequently, the United National Independence Party UNIP), which increased nationalist pressure against Federal racial discrimination. Andreya Sylvester Masiye, one of the most senior broadcasters, and Alick Nkhata, the famous musician, were both actively involved in UNIP. Masiye had written a two-hour historical radio play called ‘Journey to the Lands of Kazembe’, with barely disguised anti-colonial overtones. This led to a raid on the Lusaka premises by Federal police (probably because one of the spies reported it before broadcast).34 In 1962, following a personal request by Kenneth Kaunda, Masiye left the FBC to organise UNIP election broadcasts from Dar es Salaam.35 Alick Nkhata had become famous in the 1950s both as a solo guitarist and bandleader of the Lusaka Radio Band. He managed to blend local ‘traditional’ styles with global pop music such as blues, reggae and calypso to create a new, distinctly Zambian music. In his songs, he tackled problems of social change and its consequences for Africans: ‘He sang of town “wives” who painted their lips, of the awkwardness of wives from the rural areas, of the loneliness of men away from home, of the fear of dying away from relatives, of the joys of town life, of drinking, of “jiving”, of sex’.36 In the 1960s, Nkhata performed at UNIP rallies during the election campaign, together with the other great Zambian musician of the time, 34 A. Masiye, D. Lightfoot, Journey to the Lands of Kazembe, undated recording, ZNBC Sound Archives, Cat. No. 734. 35 Masiye, Singing for Freedom. 36 H. Powdermaker, Copper Town: Changing Africa (New York, Harper & Row, 1962), p. 233-34. 16 Bartolomeo Bwalya.37 Nationalist politics separated the African broadcasters from their liberal superiors, but other things united them. The African broadcasters at CABS belonged to a Zambian intellectual elite -- most had finished secondary school and worked as teachers and civil servants before joining the station. They shared ideas about modernity, development and African cultures that would shape radio programmes until after independence. This is most visible in cultural and entertainment programmes that, during the 1950s, emphasised ‘traditional’ music and told stories of rural Africans coming to the city, encountering problems and conflicts on the way as theydeveloped into ‘modern’ subjects. Feature formats had less flexibility, forming part of a scheme to propagate modern values, such as hygiene, the work ethic and the rule of law in the colonial state. Entertainment and music programmes did not spout blatant propaganda, however, but showed sensitivity for the needs and anxieties that accompanied social change in the Zambian urban areas. Cosmopolitans and Transnational Hierarchies Peter Fraenkel, in his 1959 account, describes his African colleagues as members of an intellectual class that had developed under colonialism, which he dubs ‘Men Between’. According to Fraenkel, they stood between African tradition and the modern education and culture colonialism had brought to the territory, between town and country, between their African peers and European colleagues. His binary analysis is problematic because it employs the very categories African intellectuals defied, but it hints at the very real situation of broadcasters in colonial radio. Broadcasters were men between in more than one sense, and not only in their class position. They all too often found themselves between different cultures, between different styles of broadcasting and between colonial politics and their listeners’ views. 37 Again,Bwalya’s and Nkhata’s popularity and nationalist engagement transcend Ferguson’s distinction between clearly separated ‘localist’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ cultural styles. See Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity, pp. 82-122. 17 An analytical expression for the issue Fraenkel identified is the concept of cultural brokers. Often used in the social sciences to describe ‘indigenous’ actors in non-Western societies the cultural brokers’role is, often uncritically, seen as that of mediators in areas such as education, health services and development aid. Historians and ethnographers, however, have for some time called for a different concept of cultural brokerage and of the persons involved, one that avoids the essentialism and dichotomies that inform much of the literature. Andreas Eckert, writing about African clerks, describes them as ‘cultural brokers’ situated in a space beyond colonial binaries that distinguished between old and new, indigenous and western or between tradition and modernity.38 This intermediate space, he writes, showed the limits of the colonial order. David Coplan sees South African musicians as cultural brokers engaged not only in vertical but also horizontal mediation, because they ‘occupy linkage roles between sectors of society and mediate between cultures in contact in ways that affect the perception and action of their listeners’.39 Alick Nkhata, who ‘may well have [had] a deep understanding of the different cultural and aesthetic positions involved’40 in his work as a musician, ethnomusicologist and broadcaster, can serve as an example of both types. There are alternative concepts, the most attractive being Thomas Turino's analysis of CABS broadcasters as ‘cosmopolitans’. To describe them as ‘cultural brokers’, Turino argues, is to take over ‘essentialist ideas of race or regional heritage’, which may have been the underlying reason for employing them in the first place. Cultural brokerage was something that they did – or were supposed to do – but does that mean they were cultural brokers? Also, to see all CABS broadcasters as cosmopolitans means to emphasise their shared traits more than their differences. The ‘closely knit team’ of black and white broadcasters at CABS shared ideas about African culture, about modernity and its effects on ‘traditional’ African societies and about the desired path of Zambian society. Although white broadcasters may have had a less radical vision than staunch nationalists 38 A. Eckert, Herrschen und verwalten: afrikanische Buerokraten, staatliche Ordnung und Politik in Tanzania, 1920- 1970 (Munich, Oldenbourg, 2007), p. 167. “Kulturelle Makler“ in the original; my translation. 39 D. Coplan, 'The Urbanisation of African Music: Some Theoretical Observations', Popular Music, 2 [issue number? There is no issue number, RH] (1982), p. 119-120. 40 Turino, Popular Music in Zimbabwe, p. 101. 18 like Masiye and Nkhata, all were convinced that Africans needed greater political power and that the desired goal was a democratic, industrialised and urbanised 'modern' Zambia. Following the connections between local cultural formations and global hierarchies mentioned earlier, one must ask how much CABS and FBC broadcasters were influenced by colonial and BBC ideas about the role of radio in society, what constitues ’good radio‘ andtheir role as broadcasters in Northern Rhodesia and independent Zambia. This question needs much more complex answers than it might seem, and the influence of BBC culture is subtle and not always visible in the work at CABS. More importantly, broadcasters did not simply take over a hegemonic BBC culture, but transformed it into something new – a CABS culture influenced, but not totally dominated, by its famous British example. Also, BBC ethics may have had an ambivalent effect that subverted colonial policy more than supporting it. Structurally, CABS didn't follow the BBC model, but interestingly, the FBC did – to a degree. Again, the credit goes to Harry Franklin. The Federal constitution entitled Prime Minister Godfrey Huggins to take control of broadcasting, and the colonial government of Northern Rhodesia would have let him do this. However, Franklin, newly elected representative of African interests in the Legislative Council, argued that the station, which was already in crisis, would lose listeners’ trust completely if it were directly subordinated to Federal government.41 Using public pressure, he managed to force Huggins to appoint a commission headed by BBC experts, among them Hugh Carleton-Greene who had ample experience from his work in northern Germany after 1945. In 1955, the commission recommended centralising the three stations of the Central African territories in one overarching institution. It also recommended the organisation of this institution as an independent corporation, however. This happened in 1958, and the headquarters transferred to Salisbury. The new institution united broadcasting for ‘Africans’ and ‘Europeans’ under one roof. The FBC was, following the recommendations, established as a nominally independent corporation led by a broadcasting board, thus following the BBC model. However, contrary to the 41 H. Franklin, Unholy Wedlock: The Failure of the Central African Federation (London, Allen&Unwin, 1963), p. 174. 19 recommendations, the members of the board were appointed by the Governor-General (i.e. the British colonial representative in the three-tier Federal government). This left no representation of African interests, although broadcasting to Africans was a declared goal of the FBC. In 1958, with the incorporation of the CABS as an ‘African Service’, the FBC was established. The commission had suggested that the board members be appointed ‘without regard to race’ and ‘not [...] as representatives of any particular territory or racial group’.42 This rejection of quotas led to an all- white board consisting mainly of public figures from Southern Rhodesia. The board answered to the Federal Minister of Home Affairs. It appointed the Director General and (in consultation with him) the Heads of the different Services, laid down programming and employment policies, set the salaries of top management posts and supervised the finances. Thus, the Board held considerable power over the station, although its members were appointed by the highest ranking official without any consideration about representing the diverse population of the Federation. Moreover, the government could ‘require that an announcement should be made or that a particular broadcast should not take place’, and in case of emergency it reserved the right to completely take over the station.43 However, during the state of emergency in Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland in early 1959, the government did not seem to have deemed a takeover necessary, as the Corporation had complied with ‘vital measures of secrecy’, handling the situation ‘with high responsibility’.44 Nevertheless, the independent corporation model gave the FBC more leeway than if it had been totally subordinate to the state. Although upper management was largely unaffected, as well as the English Service, the African Service could retain its liberal working environment, because it was based in Lusaka where Sapseid and Lightfoot did their best to uphold it. In contrast, the English Service in Salisbury ran increasingly into conflict with the BBC’s External Services, with broadcasters constantly complaining about the BBC’s coverage of nationalist campaigns in Southern Rhodesia. The FBC regularly relayed BBC news broadcasts, and listeners often 42 BBC Written Archives Center (hereafter BBC WAC) E1-1,422-1, Report of the Broadcasting Commission of Inquiry, 1955, p. 12. 43 Ibid., 14. 44 BBC WAC E1-1,422-2, FBC Annual Report, 1 February 1958--30 June 1959, p. 11. 20 complained about the coverage. John Parry, Head of the European Service, forwarded these complaints, but also constantly corrected even minor mistakes. The Federal Prime Minister Roy Welensky himself complained about what he called the BBC’s ‘slant’ and in several instances considered sueing for libel.45 The BBC had no sympathy for the views of the FBC settler broadcasters and insisted on designing programmes that complied with broadcasting values such as newsworthiness, non-interference and the refusal to let censorship affect programme contents. After Ian Smith’s ‘Unilateral Declaration of Independence’ in 1965, the conflict escalated to the point where the FBC’s Rhodesian successor, headed by the same managers, accused the BBC (which broadcast from transmitters in Botswana) of ‘Murder by Radio’ in a pamphlet distributed among British MPs, accusing the BBC and Great Britain of inciting ‘Murder, Arson, Sabotage and Destruction in Rhodesia’ through subversive broadcasts from Zambia and Botswana.46 Nevertheless, the BBC’s influence ramified in additional ways. The expansion of FBC services as well as staff positions required additional professional training. The first broadcasters at CABS had either been trained in the military or on the job. Some had organised their own stay; Joseph Chileshe, for example, went to London in 1958 to teach Bemba at the School of Oriental and African Studies and took the opportunity to work at the BBC, producing broadcasts for what was later called the World Service. Individual broadcasters, including Edwin Mlongoti's son Cosmo, visited journalism courses at the African American Institute in Dar es Salaam, which were sponsored by UNIP.47 The BBC began organising courses in Lusaka only in 1964, but they taught individual broadcasters from the African Services before that. Producers trained in the Special Course for Overseas Broadcasters and then were attached to the BBC's African Service for an overall period of 45 Bodleian Library, Rhodes House (Oxford): Papers of the Rt. Hon. Sir Roy Welensky, KCMG, 1907--1991 (hereafter Welensky Papers), 283/7: Correspondence with the DG of BBC and others concerning bias in radio and television coverage of events in the Federation, 1959--1963. 46 It was dismissed by government representatives as well as BBC representatives as extremely weak. PRO FO 953/2411: Allegations that Radio Zambia with British Aid incited Rhodesian Africans to Violence, 1966. 47 Interview, Cosmo Mlongoti, Lusaka, 10 October 2006; UNIP Party Archives, Lusaka, 6/5/4, A.S. Masiye to Sean Kelly, 4 September 1963. 21 six months. This model was used in all British African colonies, providing training opportunities for African staff while at the same time using their skills in the BBC’s multilingual Empire Service broadcasts. Many of the African broadcasters saw the BBC, its journalistic ethics and its techniques as the goal for radio in Northern Rhodesia and Zambia. The English (General) Service in Salisbury, however, came increasingly into conflict with the BBC, primarily for their reporting on the political situation in Southern Rhodesia. The media in general and settler newspapers in particular noticed numerous examples of negative or perceived negative BBC reporting, sometimes going so far as to demand censorship of relayed BBC broadcasts, asking that in critical times the FBC should consider recording the BBC news bulletins, vetting them for offensive material and only transmitting an approved version – with official answers on contentious points.48 Ultimately the FBC censored itself. It had submitted to the settler government's rationale and agreed to report on events from the settler perspective. The BBC Colonial Service had no sympathy for this stance and insisted on designing their programmes strictly according to newsworthiness, non-interference and the refusal of censorship. Via BBC news relays, listeners to the English Service (the name which replaced ‘European Service’ to reflect its large African listenership) recognised the difference between the two, which resulted in the BBC having a good reputation among African listeners. The BBC’s culture also affected the work environment at CABS and its successors. Colonial Information officers cited the BBC as a model for their work: Always we told the truth, according to the gospel of the B.B.C., in so far (sic) as we knew it. If we had not, and had tried to gloss over set-backs and disasters, we could not have lived with ourselves and we should also have floundered from lie to lie into ever worse confusion. Honesty was not only the best, but the only possible policy.49 CABS managers followed the same principle: ‘The long-term advantages of a reputation for honesty far outweighed the short-term disadvantages in telling the whole truth to primitive listeners. 48 ‘At a Time of Tension BBC is Found Wanting’, The Chronicle Weekend Magazine, 6 March 1959. 49 K. Bradley, Once a District Officer (London, Macmillan, 1966), p. 115. 22 This became an article of faith with me, as it was with Kittermaster’.50 However, even for the BBC, the ‘telling the truth’-policy does not mean that the BBC [World Service]'s goal, to influence foreigners' minds in favour of the political principles it represents, differs fundamentally from that of any other External Service. It so happens that those principles are the minimally offensive ones of liberalism, moderation, and parliamentary democracy; and that the best way to promote them is through liberal, moderate means. The notion of ideological persuasion is not absent, it is merely tacit.51 Thus, importantly, BBC ethics did not necessarily conflict with the colonial officer’s role in colonial society. Harry Franklin, the first director, remarked that the station ‘tried to keep politics […] out of broadcasting as much as possible’, which meant first ‘white politics’, but soon also ‘African [i.e., nationalist] politics’. He claimed that the reason for the station's popularity was its ability to ‘[steer] clear of politics’.52 This ethic is similar to the BBC's self-image as impartial, which in the colonial situation translated into upholding the social and political status quo.53 In both the colonial and federal states, this was hampered by outright censorship and the Federal government’s desire to use broadcasting as blatant propaganda. As shown above, FBC censorship was harsh and control strong, but the liberalism of the African Service in political reporting, as well as media ethics, provided some counterbalance. However, the influence of ‘powerful sites’ – in this case, London and ‘Bush House’ (where the BBC's Empire Service was based) – went far beyond that. The BBC's ethics and style were important influences, primarily on the news and commentaries formats. African broadcasters saw the journalistic ethics embodied by the BBC as ideals to strive for, especially when they struggled 50 Fraenkel, Wayaleshi, p. 31-32. 51 J. Hale, Radio Power: Propaganda and International Broadcasting (London, Temple, 1975), p. xv. 52 Franklin, Flag Wagger, p. 193. 53 In its early years, the BBC's role (e.g. in the 1926 general strike) can be seen in a similar way; A. Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom Vol. 1: The Birth of Broadcasting (London, Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 329-351. 23 with Federal control. With the end of Federation, they appeared to have won. The Northern Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation, established on 1 January 1963 in expectation of the independence of Zambia, was structured as an independent corporation, this time with African representatives in decisive posts on the Board. Because of a lack of sufficiently educated African personnel, the post of Director General was for some time after independence occupied by whites. The first was Donald Lightfoot, followed by Michael Kittermaster, who returned to Zambia in 1965. However, the fact that these two had been chosen also speaks to their long time commitment to African broadcasting and their opposition to the Central African Federation.The ethics of objective, disinterested journalism are of course connected to the Kantian, normative notion of cosmopolitan citizenship, reformulated in the 1990s by David Held and again, post-9/11, by Kwame Anthony Appiah. Although neither refers explicitly to journalism, and Appiah only to media in a chapter on cultural imperialism, their notion of citizenship relates to the ethics of objective journalism, which seeks to produce educated citizens capable of making informed decisions in democratic politics. David Harvey criticises this normative notion of a new cosmopolitanism as, basically, old-style universalist liberalism that only apparently addresses the postcolonial critique and ignores global hierarchies of hegemony and power. His notion of the enduring geographical unevenness inherent in cosmopolitanism is important here, because it relates to the global material and intellectual hierarchies within which the broadcasters functioned.54 However, these were not the only hierarchies to which they were subjected. Ironically, their embrace of BBC ethics put African broadcasters at odds with the UNIP government after Zambia's independence. From its inception, UNIP assumed that it represented the majority of African voters, and that, as it was the true representative of African interests, democratic decision-making processes inside the party were unnecessary: ‘Seventy Years of colonial rule had 54 D. Held, Cosmopolitanism: Ideas and Realities (Cambridge/Malden, Polity, 1995); Appiah, Cosmopolitanism; D. Harvey, Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom (New York, Columbia UP, 2009), p. 98--122. 24 not demonstrated the power of political debate’.55 UNIP's leaders refused to negotiate with the more moderate ANC unless absolutely necessary. The party's victory in the January 1964 elections for its leaders showed a clear rejection by the electorate of the ‘multi-racial politics’ preferred by the British, in favour of African nationalism. Initially UNIP considered itself both the symbol and the main proponent of national unity. In the first years after independence the party retained its dominance in Zambian national politics, but it was challenged by intra-party conflict as well as an ANC opposition that, albeit on a small scale, had a stable electoral base. Conflicts inside the party as well as with the ANC opposition were soon given an ethnic interpretation. The ANC's electoral base was southern Zambia, while every time a UNIP body or the parliament itself contained a majority from a particular region or ethnicity, political conflicts would be expressed in ethnic terms.56 The increasing authoritarianism of UNIP in government, and its leaders' conviction that the process of nation-building could only be achieved by a strong party in power, led it to overhaul the autonomous model of the NRBC in 1965, incorporating the new station – renamed the Zambia Broadcasting Services (ZBS) – as a parastatal. The nationalisation process at ZBS redefined the role of the medium as well as that of the broadcasters. Their self-definition differed significantly from the expectations the new government put on them. Of the broadcasters I interviewed, those who had started before the restructuring of ZBS, complained bitterly about the censorship, control and administrative barriers put in place by the UNIP government. Significantly, the younger generation of broadcasters, who had joined after the establishment of ZBS, accepted this as part of their job:So we were being controlled by the state. And you also knew what to do, because you can't just go on 55 Phiri, Political History, p. 117. 56 See the recent studies that revise Zambian contemporary history. C.M. Chabatama,Y.A. Chondoka and B.J. Phiri (eds) Zambia: Forty Years After Independence, 1964-2004 (Lusaka, University of Zambia Press, 2007); J.-B. Gewald, M. Hinfelaar and G. Macola (eds), One Zambia, Many Histories: Towards a History of Post-colonial Zambia (Leiden, Brill, 2008); G. Macola, Liberal Nationalism in Central Africa: A Biography of Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula (London, Palgrave, 2010). 25 air and say something which will not please the Government. You'll be in trouble’.57 The responsibilities were made clear for aspiring journalists: ‘Once you joined the institution, you were being oriented for three months. During this period, you were told the function of the particular institution you were joining’. This function was quite clear: ‘With the Government Services at that time, I think there were no problems, because we were inclined to fulfill the requirements of the government. Our duties were specifically to promote the activities of the government. We were an agent or the mouthpiece of the government’.58 Looking at the region, this was not unusual. The Tanzanian Broadcasting Corporation (TBC) developed in a similar way and even carefully censored Tanzanian music (which never happened in Zambia) mainly because of the musical tradition of Taarab which was used by the TANU government as propaganda.59 The restucturing of the Zambian station as a parastatal led to significant changes in hierarchy, career paths and working conditions for broadcasters, most of which the older generation, who had resisted CABS and FBC censorship, could not accept. What specifically did not go down well with them was the introduction of strict censorship by the ruling party to the news and actuality programmes, which had opened up to African producers and nationalist content only two years before. While young broadcasters who had joined the ZBS from 1965 accepted the new regime, older journalists saw their expectations of doing BBC-style independent journalism ruined. This was not just because of censored programmes, but also because they felt obstructed in day-to-day work. Cosmo Mlongoti, who had joined the relatively new ZBS TV station, explains: They didn't even appreciate the constraints of having only one camera to undertake services of government operations and other, civic operations. To them, what was most important was government operations. We experienced times when there was a camera assigned for State House operations. And even if there was something very important that was taking place 57 Interview, Emelda Yumbe, Lusaka, 27 December 2007. 58 Interview, Mwansa Kapeya, Lusaka, 19 December 2007. 59 K. Askew, Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania (Chicago/London, Chicago University Press, 2002), pp. 255-56. 26 elsewhere, that camera should never leave the station, it should stay. [I] had served during colonial times, and I had colonial bosses, and we were free to move equipment to whatever case or priority. We did it freely. We came into a time when you could not do that freely. I don't know who would ever give you permission. You'd probably have to ask the minister for permission to use the camera elsewhere, to avoid any conflict between State House [and] your organization. The Director himself would never allow you, because if he did, he'd lose his job. And as I said, quite a number of guys lost their job[s] because of that kind of thing.60 In 1969, this development culminated in the employment of broadcasters as civil servants, thus falling below even FBC practice.The last time broadcasters had been employed as civil servants had been when the colonial government had used CABS as its mouthpiece. With incorporation into the bureaucracy came a significant cut in salaries.61 Many broadcasters were not happy with this development: They looked at broadcasters and tried to fit them into civil service slots or job descriptions. So you became a clerical officer or senior clerical officer. [...] But, you see, that was not the only problem. [...] There were even more serious structural things, where people expected you to be in the office at the same time as the civil servants, oblivious of the fact that at 5 p.m. the typical civil servant goes home. You as a broadcaster are continuing with the work.62 Alick Nkhata, now Deputy Director General, protested, but without success: A broadcaster is not a Clerical Officer in the sense that he types drafted material. A broadcaster is creative. He makes up his own stories, produces them and these are later broadcast. Now if we take into consideration the fact that stories or talks which find their way into programmes must be informative, educational and entertaining, then we must admit that a broadcaster must be a creative personality if he is to provide material required of his 60 Interview, Cosmo Mlongoti, Lusaka, 10 October 2006. 61 According to Eddie Mupeso 30 per cent. Interview, Eddie Mupeso, Lusaka, 8 January 2008. 62 Interview, Charles Muyamwa, Lusaka, 26 September 2006. 27 profession. [...] We shall never attract good men to the broadcasting profession if they are going to do a more difficult and exacting job to be paid the same salary as a man who merely types letters day in and day out.63 Nkhata’s idea of Zambian broadcasting combined journalistic ethics with authentic Zambian culture in programmes, not only through ‘traditional’ content, but by going beyond merely having the right education (i.e. journalism courses at Evelyn Hone College or the BBC). Broadcasting, he argued, was a creative profession, and qualifications included an understanding of, for example, ‘deep’ Bemba – a deep understanding of iciBemba, one of the largest language groups in Zambia: We firmly believe that a Bemba announcer or Lozi announcer should be able to understand the idiomatic and proverbial aspect of his language, to make broadcasting more interesting. We also believe that he should be able to have some idea of how people live in his tribal area, etc. etc. These qualities are abundant in persons who have had education up to standard six in the rural areas, during the period 1940-1956. We do not see any reason why people of this educational standard with extensive experience either in the teaching or clerical field, should be barred from joining broadcasting as broadcasters.64 This submission, which the government ignored, shows that Nkhata still adhered to ideas about the path to modernity that had been shaped during colonialism. His concern to further develop an authentic Zambian style of cultural broadcasting (which he, as well as Kateka, Mlongoti and others, had masterfully shaped) he shares with many of his colleagues in colonial broadcasting, that the country should become more modern socially, while remaining true to its traditions culturally in order to reconcile social and cultural change. This, for them, was the only way to develop an authentically Zambian national identity. Consequently, they organised programming so that Lozi, Tonga or Bemba cultural programmes wove together in formats like ‘Zambian Jazz’ or ‘Zambian 63 Institute of Commonwealth Studies (hereafter ICS), 115/3/1, A. Nkhata, Written Submission to the Administrative Commission of Inquiry into Effectiveness of Zambia Information and Broadcasting Services, 30 November 1967, p. 14. 64 Ibid., pp.12-13. 28 Musicians’ that featured a Zambian-produced music, that blended several musical traditions (Jazz, guitar music and urban Zambian music). This coincided with listeners’ tastes, as an audience survey established in 1971: nearly half of all interviewees wanted more Zambian music on the radio. In 1973, the government decreed a 90 per cent quota for Zambian music played on ZBS, and the station reintroduced ‘Zimene Mwatifunsa’. But Nkhata's model -- which represented the journalists’ practical and ethical ideals – was frustrated by a government that conflated the stability of the young Zambian nation with the party's longevity in power, convinced that UNIP was the only true representative of the Zambian nation. Shortly before choosing the authoritarian option, the president, Kenneth Kaunda, held a two-day ‘national mass media seminar’ for the country's journalists. In a ‘lengthy and “brutally frank”’65 address, he sharply criticised them for failing to fulfil their duty to help build a ‘Humanist society’. For Kaunda, ‘the mass media were to be an instrument of nation-building’, but instead journalists ‘still lived in the colonial past’ and were ‘caught up in the cobwebs of the so-called ethics of journalism, a lot of which were no more than colonial myths designed to mislead young Zambians in order that they could work against Zambian interests in furtherance of foreign interests’.66 This paranoid worldview, in which not just criticism of government, but all negative reporting was deemed counterproductive and a threat to nation-building, stood behind the government's repressive measures against the media. By 1972, these policies had already affected the media so strongly that the assembled journalists ‘unanimously endorsed the President's remarks’.67 For Zambian politicians, ‘[t]he press was to foster national unity in all that it published. Any article that could possibly cause disunity in the nation was anathema to the party’.68 All journalists who had joined the station during the colonial and Federal periods had left the station by the time Kaunda introduced the one-party state. The new generation had fewer qualms 65 F. Kasoma, The Press in Zambia: The Development, Role and Control of National Newspapers in Zambia, 1906- 1975 (Lusaka, Multimedia Publications, 1986), p. 104. 66 Kenneth Kaunda, cited in Ibid. 67 Ibid., p. 105. 68 Ibid., p. 134. 29 about their role in Zambia, at least partly due to their training in courses organised in Lusaka. A BBC broadcaster seconded to ZBS reported in 1965: Great stress was laid in these courses on the broadcasters' responsibilities to the country and to the part they could play in its further development. Early in 1965 a rather formal 'hand-out' about a speech of President Kaunda's urging Zambians to form co-operatives had been broadcast. Each course discussed at some length how, as broadcasters, they could help to keep people interested in this idea by using different radio forms.69 Thus, the journalists role was not ‘objective’ and autonomous reporting (a goal that had been set in theory before independence, albeit never structurally enabled), but to contribute positively to the country’s development – i.e., nation-building. In UNIP's worldview, in which the party and its government was the only guarantor of national cohesion, criticism of either amounted to endangering national unity. Under the colonial government, there had been no conflict for journalists between BBC liberalism and UNIP's nationalism, for the censorship in colonial radio that suppressed discussion of nationalism was a clear violation of the BBC's core principles. Now, however, the nationalist government continued the policy of censorship, albeit based on a different ideological reasoning. While nationalist broadcasters continued to be sympathetic towards UNIP and its project of nation-building, they could not tolerate constant interference in their day-to-day work. Masiye took a position in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting but eventually left to study and practice law. As Deputy Director, Nkhata struggled unsuccessfully with governmental restrictions and finally returned to his career in music. In 1974, he retired to his farm in southern Zambia.70 Chileshe had already left in 1963 to become a public relations officer for the Anglo- American Corporation in Kitwe. Mlongoti and others also left, frustrated by the working conditions. By the early 1970s, all of the more prominent broadcasters who had started in colonial radio had left the station. 69 BBC WAC E 44/32/1, S. Booth, Report of Secondment to Zambia 1965. 70 Tragically, he was killed in 1978 during a Rhodesian army raid on a nearby camp of Zimbabwe African Peoples Union fighters, which operated (with UNIP’s support) from Zambian soil. 30 Conclusion Colonial radio was a fundamentally ambivalent project, because it had to respect listeners' wishes if propaganda was to reach its target audience. African broadcasters, who had been integrated into the system for exactly that reason, participated in this ambivalence. Their political commitment and creativity played an important role maintaining this ambivalence through a particularly repressive period in Zambia's colonial history. In music and entertainment programmes, African broadcasters, in cahoots with their listeners, subverted the very propaganda that they translated and announced in the controlled news slots. However, they could count on their direct superiors’ sympathy. This cosmopolitan formation took ideological ambivalence a good step further, not just subverting colonial propaganda, but also influencing African broadcasters' attitudes towards nationalism, Zambian culture and their own role as journalists in colonial and post-colonial society. While this strengthened their resolve in challenging the colonial state, it also put them at odds with UNIP’s increasingly authoritarian style of government from 1965 onwards. Cosmopolitanism -- as a class-based analysis of an intellectual formation -- can explain the apparent contradiction between dedicated nationalist broadcasters and their nationalist government. It also highlights their attitude to modernity in general and Zambia's path to achieving it in particular. Thus, Zambian broadcasters, as a part of the country's intellectual elite, absorbed many colonial ideas about Zambian culture, modernity and the nation. They also saw their role as journalists in light of the BBC ideal of objectivity and autonomy. While an analysis of broadcasters' attitudes allows us a close look at how colonial ideology influenced post-colonial elites, it also shows the cleavage through these elites after independence, influenced by their social and political position. Although UNIP politicians and broadcasters shared ideas about the future of the Zambian nation, about the character of that nation and its path to modernity, and although broadcasters might even have shared UNIP’s identification of the party with the nation itself, they could not tolerate the 31 authoritarian attitude the party and government exhibited toward journalists. While UNIP’s attitude towards nation-building is not unique in the region, other nationalist parties in the following years would build up their own specialised media staff. In countries such as Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, lengthy guerrilla wars and the cohesion developed by nationalist movements in exile, led to the establishment of nationalist propaganda media outlets, among them radios broadcasting from External Services in thoseAfrican countries that supported them (Zambia being one of the mostimportant). After independence, the staff of these external stations took the higher positions of new broadcasting stations in their home countries. Particularly in Namibia and Zimbabwe, the main problem consisted in bringing together two formerly opposed teams of journalists. In 1980s Zimbabwe, the new station, ZBC, ' found itself in a hostile media environment, surrounded by institutions with long colonial experience’.71 Thus, it remained under strong government control, with loyal Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) cadres, many of them with experience in the former external radio 'Voice of Zimbabwe’, staffing key posts.During the first years after independence, UNIP became more and more nervous about ethnic rifts inside the party, and in the nation, and reacted sensitively to any criticism of government, which it saw as endangering national unity. What for UNIP was a prerequisite for national unity, the broadcasters saw as endangering the liberal, democratic? society they wanted to build. What had united them before independence, set them apart after it. Dr. des. Robert Heinze Department of History, University of Berne, Switzerland Länggassstrasse 49, 3000 Bern 9 e-mail: robert.heinze@hist.unibe.ch Tel: +41-(0)31-631-5087 71 J. Zaffiro, Media & Democracy in Zimbabwe, 1931-2002 (Colorado Springs, Colorado International Academic Publishers, 2002), p. 81. 32