Mmegi celebrates 40th anniversary
Lesang Maswabi | Monday February 12, 2024 06:00
And as one unknown writer put it “Life begins at 40, is not merely an adage; it's an empowering reminder that each phase of life offers fresh beginnings. It's a nudge to appreciate the wisdom that comes with age, embrace evolving life circumstances, and most importantly, to celebrate the journey that led us here.” So relevant has the aforementioned maxim been to the revered media institution that is Mmegi formerly known as Mmegi Wa Dikgang. Though the roots of Mmegi in its former incarnation can be traced back to 1968 when it was established by the late visionary, Patrick van Rensburg as an A4 newsletter when its cover-price was five cents at Swaneng Hill School in Serowe, we are, however, celebrating Mmegi’s 40th anniversary in its current format which began in 1984, when it turned tabloid (A3 size). The newspaper, which was one of van Rensburg’s projects at Swaneng, would then relocate offices to Gaborone in the same year, but continued to print in Serowe at Serowe Printers, some 300km away from its headquarters in Gaborone. Indeed Mmegi has gone through significant transformations over its life span.
As the newspaper became an integral part of the Botswana society through generations, becoming the people’s link to the world outside the immediacy of personal contact, both locally and internationally, it has had to make sure that it first be viewed in conjunction with the social context of the community it serves. Whenever social orders, economic and political events took root, Mmegi has had to play an important role in their development. However, to achieve this, the newspaper has had to become and remain the people’s eyes and ears. The newspaper could only continue to wear this mantle if it had its finger on the pulse of change, which for a long time has earned itself respect from the public. The vital role that Mmegi will play in the forthcoming October 2024 Botswana general elections points to the above. Reporters from the Mmegi media group have always and will become central to spreading news as events unfold from across the length and breadth of the country. They will spend days and sleepless nights waiting to report on the verification, counting of ballots and finally confirming the results. The various transformations mentioned above and in particular the changes that took place over the last four decades were also inspired by market trends in the industry. These would normally take effect after informed decisions had been arrived at following several readership surveys and advertising researches. These processes are normally conducted by reputable newspapers across the world so as not to be seen to be taking their current loyal readers and prospective readers and advertisers alike for granted.
Historical (unforgettable) incidents at Mmegi
(i) Regular bomb threats Quite often in the late 80s and early 90s, our office would regularly receive anonymous calls, especially on Wednesday nights deadlines from what we obviously suspected to have been coming from some sectors of the then Apartheid South Africa’s security agents, warning us that they were coming to bomb our offices if we were not going to leave the place right there and then. Even after we had convinced ourselves that those calls usually laced with heavy Afrikaner accent and insults were indeed coming from the then brutal South African Defence Force (SADF) organs, we would just simply ignore the threats and carried on with our work, only to be worried way after we had knocked off and reassembled 24hrs (and most times 48hrs) later. Our historic background and relationship with the pioneer of Mmegi, Patrick van Rensburg who had long come into exile in Botswana in the early 60s after resigning from his South African vice-consul diplomatic post in then Belgian Congo. He had earlier taken up the Liberal Party membership and also joined international anti-apartheid organisations such as AAA (Artists Against Apartheid), before fleeing to Swaziland and eventually Botswana with other refugees. His defiance and stance against his former Apartheid government invariably put us on harms-way. PvR’s family or Pat as we used to affectionately call him, would later be made Botswana citizens in 1973 through a directive from former president Sir Seretse Khama.
(ii) The Newslink saga
In 1990 Mmegi’s truck carrying a newspaper consignment on the final breaking and closing story of Newslink, the covert and spy newspaper got hijacked on its way back to Gaborone from Johannesburg’s Sekulu Printers in South Africa on a Thursday evening. Interestingly and as if we had had a premonition of what lay in wait that evening, we would immediately arrange with the printers to re-run the same Mmegi issue from the films and plates that had not yet been disposed. Hence the paper would hit the streets on the mid-morning of that Friday, though delayed by a day. A classic case of, “you can delay the struggle but never deny it”.
(iii) Methaetsile Leepile single-handedly trying to stop fleeing Newslink trucks at the border
Now, I have often heard local creatives and ordinary folk liken courageous and crazy acts by some of their own as “stuff of Hollywood”, but I still have to witness the fearlessness shown by brother and mentor Leepile. He would upon learning from sources that the Newslink group were about to take flight after we (Mmegi) had for the second continuous week carried follow-up exposés on them, initially rushed to alert the Custom and Immigration authorities about Newslink’s planned escape, only to find those in power not bothered at all. Leepile would, however, not surrender his efforts there, but drove all the way to the Tlokweng border where he would continue with his pursuit as the Custom and Immigration officers stood-by and watched the then failed covert operation and who knows, maybe even a coup d’état, pack their equipment just rolled across the Tlokweng-Kalkfontein border, except for Leepile who kept on trying to physically block the trucks and shouting to the Botswana authorities to intervene at the same time.
(iv) The Mmegi Sport (back) page that went missing
Sometime in the early 90s whilst the newspaper was still in the paste-up era, a very unusual and shocking incident happened right at the closing minutes of production. Since we were still printing across the border, initially at Sekulu Printers and later Pretoria News, either Billy Chiepe or Titus Mbuya and I would always have to beat the 2000hrs deadline by at least leaving the office 20-30 minutes earlier to deliver the paste-up to our then driver Brown Tlhowe who would then be waiting across the Tlokweng – Kopfontein border. Several mistakes would happen then because of the rush on such Wednesday deadlines, but none other had ever occurred like the one that would ensue that day. And it would never repeat itself to this day. On that day, as Chiepe and I went about wrapping up production by printing, tiling the pages together and pasting them on the grid-layout pages, a few staff members from the Newsroom (Editorial) led by Mbuya and the late Rampholo ‘Chamza’ Molefhe would volunteer to give a hand by counting the completed pages before dropping them into the paste-up box next to the light-table in the Paste-Up room which was just outside the Graphics office.
At the last count, which Chamza had conducted the pagination seemed to have tallied well for a 24-page edition as they appeared to have evened out and off, we went to deliver our paste-up box to our ‘Mr Reliable’ Tlhowe across the border some few minutes after both the Immigration and Custom offices on the Botswana side and Home Affairs ones on the South African side had closed. For some bizarre reason both of the respective countries’ officers, including army officers of the then apartheid South Africa always had a soft spot for us by letting us hand over the paste-up box through or over the gates without even checking whatever else it could have contained and this despite often being late. We would only then be alerted about the disaster by our printers via a telephone call the following day. And since there were no cell-phones then, they had to wait for our office to open at 0800hrs on Thursday morning after they had discovered that missing page shocker when the paper arrived at their plant just before Wednesday midnight. A call would come through “Hello. Is that Maggie?” as most white people would normally sound trying to pronounce Mmegi.
After the printer related the mishap, half of the production team had to be recalled to the office from our respective home rests. We met with management, wherein a decision was made to repeat an in-house Mmegi Publishing Trust (MPT) full-page advert for that Sport (back) page in order to balance the pagination and let the paper go to bed that day. As the saying goes, the rest is history!