![]() |
|
Sevenzo |
Farai Sevenzo, 40, a former presenter of Network Africa, one of the flagship radio programmes of the British Broadcasting Corporation visited Uganda early this month from the London based Channel 4 TV to cover the Lords Resistance Army insurgency. Wokorach-Oboi talked to him. Below are the excerpts.
Question: Some people here in Kitgum think you look like Gaetano, (Jjuuko Kaggwa, Uganda�s former representative to the BBA house)?
Answer: I...Yeah, a lot of people have said that to me but I don�t think that I look like Gaetano and I only saw him in the newspaper. I hate this Big Brother Africa thing. I can�t stand how people can watch Gaetano having sex for two hours in that squalid TV programme. No I don�t look like Gaetano it is he that looks like me.
I understand you are Zimbabwean?
Yeah, I was born in Zimbabwe and my family is still living there and I carry one passport, Zimbabwean. I left Zimbabwe half way through
the University of Zimbabwe. I have lived in England for 14 years.
When and how did you join the BBC?
I can�t tell you how I joined (laughs). But I started working with the BBC on the 2nd of June 1998. It was five years of very good time. I enjoyed where I worked, I enjoyed the job and most of all reporting for Africa. I had a wonderful team of colleagues. To this day I still think the BBC�s �Focus on Africa� and �Network Africa�
programmes are the best in the world in terms of African news, in terms of what is happening, in terms of the speed of getting the news from the continent. You know we broke Sani Abacha�s death. We know when there is a coup and a lot other events that occur in Africa. And infact it is just not we in the office. Our stringers across the continent are so in tune with what is happening. It is going to take the CNN and the Voice of America a long time to beat that kind of system, we are really up to date. I keep saying �we are� but I
am no longer with them.
Most of your listeners in Africa think the BBC is biased when it comes to reporting about events in the continent. That you are only interested in the bad news: wars, famine, bloody coups and the like.
What is the biggest news here?
It is the Lord�s Resistance Army. That is what makes news. You know our problems are what make news unfortunately. There might be a very good thing happening in Iraq at the moment but what is it? We can�t know that when there are killings everywhere. So I don�t think it is fair to say that. News is about events that affect our lives because they are so bad.
The BBC is such a big and influential media organisation. It must be very challenging to work for such an institution?
To be honest, I don�t want to be representative of the BBC. You know, you can ask Will Ross or Ali Mutasa. I don�t work for them anymore. I resigned in February 2003 because I just wanted some new changes. I came to the
BBC as a film maker and I am going back to what I do best. Yeah the BBC is big. It is a huge organisation that siphons talents from various places. Sometimes, I have a problem with those who don�t believe in individual voices because they all want to represent the BBC. This anonymous, huge corporation.
It must be very paying to work for the BBC?
You know I think it is a wrong thing for anybody to join any organisation or any job only for money. If I wanted to be rich I could sell diamonds from
the Congo. I can�t be rich by working for the BBC, the BBC pays so badly. They pay
worse than the Zimbabwean Broadcasting Corporation, yet the job is just so challenging. You know I would much rather have the job than the money such that when I go home at
night I feel satisfied that I have explained to my fellow Africans what is going on in Ivory Coast. I have explained to fellow Africans that today (Foday) Sonkoh is this, or that is what is happening in Sie
rra Leone. You know it is your job, you pick pride in it. Everybody knows the BBC pays so badly especially the Africans. When you consider that every single story coming out of Africa depends on a stringer who is stuck out somewhere in say, the deepest Delta region and telling us this and that is what is happening.
It happens here in Uganda as well where you find people risking their lives to tell us about the LRA rebels. Journalism in the whole world relies on people who get paid absolutely nothing.
Why did you leave the BBC?
No, there was nothing sinister or anything like that. I have been working for them for five years. I came there pretending to be a journalist when I was a film maker. I have never done a day of journalism training in my life. You know I really enjoyed working with my immediate boss, Elizabeth Ohene who is now in Ghana, Robin White, now retired and other colleagues. I just said I needed to carry on meeting new challenges in my life.
But I am still in the news business in a way because I am making documentaries about Africa. And that is all I wanna make: films, journalism, reporting and writing about Africa.
So you feel it is now time for you to concentrate on producing films?
To be honest, I have been shooting films all this time even when I was still at the BBC I used to take time off to make films. I made a documentary of Kamuzu Banda (former president) in Malawi, I did two films last year on Zimbabwe and I have a film coming out soon. Hopefully I may do it in December or something like that.
This is your first time here. What brings you to Uganda?
A TV station in the UK asked me to come over here and report on the unreported war. What is happening is that the Lord�s Resistance Army insurgency that has gone on for the last 17-years is not really public knowledge in the West. It is only known by Ugandans and may be in a few African countries but there are very few people
who have explained why for the 17 years, so many people have been dying in brutal ways, why so many children have been abducted. It is the sort of news that needs telling and that is why we are here.
What has been your impression of the sufferings of the civilians in Soroti, Gulu and Kitgum mostly affected by the Kony insurgency?
It has brought me to tears. I mean when I speak to women who are night commuters, I can�t help thinking of my mother, my aunt. When I see these little children I think of my own children even though they are not in this kind of situation. I think this should just not be happening!
Whenever you were interviewing some of these war victims, you sometime ran short of words. Is this the first time you got so close to this kind of situation?
We have had war in my country, Zimbabwe but like I told you before, every time am talking to any woman who has walked into town as a night commuter, I feel like I am talking to my moth
er. I think this should not be happening. I wonder why there is such a lack of will to end this war.
What will you remember most about your visit to Uganda?
I like Ugandans and I think they are fun people, I think they are extremely bright people. There are so many people out there on the streets doing jobs that are way below their educational qualification and yet they are very tolerant. But am just really depressed about this war. I have come here to report it and at the moment am finding it too much for me.
Zimbabwe has not been faring very well in the world media recently. What kind of politics is going on down there?
I always ignore the media. The media don�t know what they are doing. They are just writing stories for stories� sake. But dictatorship in Zimbabwe? You are right. You know there is a saying in our country that, �whatever has a wound cannot be hidden.� You can�t wrap it up because you can see that the thing is there. So Zimbab
we�s problem is at the stage where the wounds are so massive that you can�t hide it. So the media are right in talking about it. But what is going on there is a terrible situation whereby there are two schools of thoughts about it. There is one school of thought that says all the media backlash against Zimbabwe is because Robert Mugabe did something
that every African leader in Zambia or South Africa or Kenya would like to do: to give land back to the people. But it is no longer a story of land in Zimbabwe, it is a story of
hardship. It is about the workers who are not farmers not being able to go to work because they cannot afford transport fare. It is about the workers within the city, the civil servants, and the
middle class that has been reduced to lower class because they can�t afford petrol, they can�t afford to send their kids to school, it is also about lack of commodities. It is also about a government that has been completely blind to the
people�s a
dvice. You know this people have been in power for so long, I think they have forgotten how to listen.
Where were you staying in Kampala?
I was staying in this pretty hotel called Speke Hotel. Well, there were two things that really annoyed me there.
When I walked in, they have this huge picture of Speke. He is some colonial explorer, isn�t he? My great great grandfather was Dr David Livingstone�s porter. But there is no way am gonna hang a picture of him carrying Dr Livingstone�s goods. So when I see the picture of Speke in Speke Hotel and this blackman carrying his goods and he (Speke) is looking majestically into the distance it pains me.
I really think that we have to move away from the perception that Europeans invented us. We were there before they came, ok. The second thing I hate is that I think that Speke Hotel is run by people who, wherever the hell they came from, are very rude.
Published on: Tuesday, 21st October, 2003 |
