For the past 10 years, I have written a weekly column on and off for a number of publications, including The Herald, The Sunday Mail and http://Nehandaradio.com. I think it is fair to say that I have enjoyed writing and publishing for the latter, as evinced by the sheer number of articles they have carried as opposed to all the other platforms. However, as with many things in life, change is necessary and inevitable. Stagnation breed hubris and boredom. Back in the Twentyteens, I received a call from the late Dr. Alex Magaisa. I remember it was nighttime for me, but he was abroad somewhere, probably the USA, and he said “Mukoma, you and I might not agree but I just want to say one thing, write more, Mukoma, you used to, I did not agree with most, but carry on. We must breed a culture of sharing our ideas, and we cannot do that unless we write.” I never did get to ask him what prompted that call on that day, alas. They say that imitation is the best form of flattery, so as I sat to contemplate how to move into a second decade of intermittent writing, I have chosen to copy the transition that Dr Magaisa also made, from publishing his Big Saturday Read on platforms controlled and edited by others to a dedicated website, which lives on to this day despite his untimely departure at https://bigsr.africa While I will no doubt not manage to copy Dr Magaisa’s erudite and confident delivery, and will occasionally get lost in the mundane, I do plan on making the new offering heavy on the factual, and very low on opinion save where the two cannot legitimately and honestly be separated. As the hair has turned greyer, I have come to understand more and more what literary agents mean when they reject your manuscript with “show, don’t tell”. It is far much better to present the facts as they are, and leave the reader to follow the facts where they lead. Oftentimes the writer’s opinion becomes the noise that clouds a message that the facts themselves reveal, perhaps to better effect that any over-egging might achieve. Of course, I will always be grateful for the respectful manner in which the privilege to publish my opinions was treated, particularly by Lance Guma of http://Nehandaradio.com. While our politics clearly do not converge for now, I never experienced judgment or ridicule, and I always found it ironic when some voices would criticise that platform for being pro-opposition when those in government routinely got their opinion pieces published there. Not to mention those that profess support for those in government such as myself. I am now finalising the process of setting up the platform that will host CHINYOKA ON TUESDAY from now on, with a target of a debut on Tuesday 27 February 2024 (or, fingers crossed, 20th!) , thanks to a young lady from Sri Lanka who is working on the site and charging a fee that shows genuine fear of the Lord. I did try local talent, but it would have required twenty times her fee to get something similar, (not guaranteed as unlike her offering, they had no samples to share), and much as one wants to promote local talent, one will not be able to promote two if the first one decimates one’s pocket. So, I want to thank those that have faithfully followed my intermittent articles, and make this promise: the new shall cease to be like London buses, but appear regularly once every Tuesday. The new shall also be, as I have said, fact based narratives. My plan for the first few weeks is to do a series tracking a topic that is important to me: corruption by non-political actors, which I believe is more insidious than that by politicians. But of course this is not a justification of rotten politicians. Rather, it is an understanding that at least with politicians you can vote them out in free and fair elections, which we tend to get every five years according to the electoral commission. But when those who have captured public life operate in the shadows, corrupting the press, the magistracy, the prosecution services and politicians across the divide, then we as a people are right royally in hot soup. Because I believe that with access to information comes an obligation to share, and as Dr Magaisa said to me those many years ago: we must write. And so we shall, every Tuesday, at http://tinochinyoka.com
