Last week one of Tanzania’s well known journalists, Mr Juma Penza, silently passed away at the Agakhan Hospital, catching some of us who had been off the press for a week or so, completely unaware!
But given the immense contribution he made in this thankless inky path called journalism, it would be the zenith of absurdity if Penza’s departure was allowed to pass without a word, especially from some of us who had worked under him.
Penza as most of us loved to refer him to, was my boss when I was transferred to Arusha Shihata (Tanzania News Agency) Bureau in June, 1979 after completing my two year diploma course in journalism at the Tanzania School of Journalism, presently School of Journalism and Mass Communication (SJMC) of the University of Dar es Salaam.
Originally, Penza was an employee of the Tanzania Standard Newspapers (TSN), publishers of the Daily News, Sunday News, and lately, Habari Leo.
After being employed as a trainee reporter in the late 1960s, he was in late 1970s sent to the regions as part of the TSN’s efforts to expand its news gathering network.
And when Shihata was formed, a number of TSN reporters in the regions were seconded to Shihata in order to strengthen the newly formed news agency.
A loquacious and jovial man, Penza is one of very few Tanzanian journalists I have personally met and worked with who had very high sense for news, referred to in journalistic realm as a knack or nose for news.
In fact it was his close involvement in news writing that more than once brought him problems during his active days in the profession.
However, the best known incident occurred when he was Shihata Bureau Chief in Tanga in the late 1970s.
The source of the problem were his series of articles on coffee smuggling through the port.
Those involved in the racket included highly placed officials both in the government and the ruling party, CCM who now decided that they would fix him, nowhere, but during a high profile meeting of the central committee of the ruling party, CCM, which was scheduled for Tanga.
As had been planned, Penza’s name was included as one of the CC’s agenda in a meeting that was to be chaired by none other than CCM’s Chairman, the Father of the Nation, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere.
It took almost nine hours to work on the rest of the agenda, and just as Mwalimu was about to close the meeting, one of CC members reminded him about the last issue on the agenda…
At this point, Mwalimu asked the member to explain to him about the Penza issue…
But before he could finish, Mwalimu interjected:
“Do you want the nation to be told tomorrow that a whole CC met to discuss a journalist’s story about coffee smuggling?”
That marked not only the end of witch-hunting against the poor young journalist who had just done his bit of duty, but allowed Penza to continue doing what he knew best, write news.
Penza’s coffee smuggling story is important because there is presently a school of thought among some Tanzanians, including journalists, that during the one party state, party and state owned media only did one thing, they sang about the government in power!
However, a critical appraisal of many stories carried during the time renders such claims baseless.
Indeed, there were stories such as the food and sugar scandals carried by the Daily News published by the government owned Tanzania Standard Newspapers (TSN), which saw two ministers losing their posts.
Therefore like the food shortage and sugar scandal, Penza’s coffee smuggling story equally rocked the nation.
Penza was however, not short of controversies. For instance, during one of Shihata Bureau Chiefs’ meetings held in Dar es Salaam, he was accused by some of his colleagues of having misused the company’s fund to the tune of 10,000/-, quite something during the time.
When pressed to explain the form of misuse by the Shihata Director, Mr Hadji Konde (deceased), they claimed that Penza had used the money to buy expensive furniture and other office equipment.
The office equipment turned out to be two desk typewriters and a portable typewriter.
As for the furniture, they were quite expensive, but the kind of what the CAG (Controller and Auditor General), Mr Ludovick Utouh will tell you a value for money (VFM) type of furniture.
Further investigation on the matter later showed that Penza had not misappropriated a single cent, that he had used the money for furniture and typewriter and the Arusha Bureau Office turned out to be the best equipped and furniture office in the country!
After the misuse of funds story was over, Mr Konde now asked the rest to give their opinion about Penza’s work output.
Not a single man raised his finger against the man as statistics showed that he had filed more stories than any Shihata bureau in the country!
However, those who had raised their voices against Penza were not done!
One of the journalists argued that Penza had filed more stories than any bureau in the country simply because Arusha was the seat of an international conference centre.
What the journalist implied was that it was easy to collect and write stories in Arusha than any region in the country.
Asked to comment on the argument, Penza had this to say:
“Stories are written…you don’t collect stories in the streets…”
One day I asked Penza what he had learnt from his journalistic endeavors, and especially, the accusations that had been levelled against him and he had this to say:
“Regardless of where you are, you can reduce the number of your enemies quite considerably if you work hard. My enemies failed in their effort to destroy me because I had outdone them in work performance…had I had nothing to show in the form of performance, I would have been done!”
That was Juma Penza in his element. Indeed, if there is anything that I learnt from Penza in the course of working under him, it was to work hard in whatever task I was involved in.
And indeed, that has greatly helped in making me what I’m today. Thank you Penza for showing me the ropes, rest in peace.
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