Synopsis:
“When she was twelve years old, Maureen Nkandu told Queen Elizabeth II
that she wanted to be a television star when she grew up. Twenty years later
she was able to tell the Queen at a reception in Durban South Africa that she
had achieved her ambition. In her autobiography, Maureen discusses her early
days at Zambia national Broadcasting Company and why she left, her move to
Bophuthatswana, training in India and Europe, her challenging but exciting
career with South African Broadcasting and her work with the BBC in London. In
pursuit of a story and at considerable personal risk she tracked down rebel
leaders like Laurent Kabila of the DRC, was arrested in Kinshasa on alleged
spying charges, and just got out of Freetown before the rebels invaded. She has
interviewed a long list of African and world political leaders and won awards
for her broadcasting. More recently she has worked with the United Nations and
the World Bank.
This book also frankly discusses Maureen’s family background, her
rivalries with her siblings, difficult relationships, and sometimes abusive
marriage. It also reveals her love for her parents, her three children and the
deep she had for her journalist father.”
Publisher: Gadsden
Publishers
Pages: 136
Review:
“Kalusha and I were young, famous
and madly in love. When I was seven months pregnant rumours started flying that
I had given birth to a coloured-Indian baby. Ours
was a very public break-up and I was humiliated.”, wrote Maureen Nkandu on
facebook. This was a post she put up on 29th June 2017 as part of
the promotion and publicity of her book.
Another post read; “I was 18 years old when I joined ZNBC. I was
young, naïve, confident, determined and grew into a seasoned news anchor. But I
suffered immense sexual harassment and bullying. I refused to give in. They
decided to transfer me to the commercial department and later ZIS saying I was
a bad news reader. I said NO. It was time to leave.”
These two publicity posts were enough to make me mark my diary so I
could get myself a copy when she was in Lusaka next on 1st July
2017, as she was in Ndola on 30th June. When Maureen Nkandu graced
ZNBC screens in the early 90’s. Though very young, I was old enough to remember
the lasting impression she left with me.
I took two days to read the book (maybe less). One can read the book
within a day, but once I put the book down my wife picked it up and I couldn’t
continue until she was done. The book is an easy read, succinct and quite
thrilling, and stimulating I must say. Maureen lets the reader into her inner
fears, then her fascinating strength of character, her sheer determination and
zeal to rise whenever she faced adversity. Perhaps the most gripping aspects in
the book was the fact that behind the beautiful face that was a darling of many
Zambian and international viewers was a woman who was just human with her own
flaws. A woman who was fragile and was taken advantage of by some men.
And yet it’s not all gloom and doom. The courage and strength of Maureen
is shown through her fearlessness that made her leave her country of birth to
apartheid South Africa. Her search for excellence shines through her story of
how she left to study in Europe without even guaranteed tuition and other fees.
Perhaps the part of the book where I drew more inspiration is when she
narrates her ordeal in the Democratic Republic of Congo after she and her cameraman
(a supposed relative of Nelson Mandela), were arrested by Rogue soldiers for
filming them as they were assaulting innocent civilians in the city center. The
narration of her excursion into Freetown in Sierra Leone in the hope of a scoop
to interview rebel leader Foday Sankoh was one gripping chapter. The fact that
she hurriedly left that country just in time to escape an ambush of the UN
peacekeeping troops some of whom had kept her and her colleague company and
provided links for news sources. UN peacekeepers from Zambia caught off guard
and 23 killed as Maureen puts it in her book, ‘hit like sitting ducks’.
That incident made sad global news headlines back then in 1999 as world
cameras rolled on pictures of lifeless soldiers in UN uniforms with Zambian
flags on the pocket and shoulder lay sprawled on the ground. The book
highlights a lot of other career highlights for Maureen among them being the
reporter who broke the news through the BBC that former Zambian president
Fredrick Jacob Titus Chiluba would not change the constitution to stand for a
third term of office.
Throughout the pages, her book is an inspiration. In chasing her dreams,
be it as a broke single mother barely surviving in foreign countries while pursuing
her studies or her forays deep into rebel territories where civilisation almost
seemed non-existent, her life story is full of inspiration.
However, I felt she was rather tight-fisted with some gritty details or
‘pin down facts’. For instance she mentions of sexual harassment from her boss
at ZNBC which even almost destroyed her career, but there are no names
mentioned. I bet the ‘boss’ preyed on more young journalists and definitely
destroyed their careers. She mentions of colleagues who were in love affairs
with government officials who used their authority to ensure she was removed
from ZNBC to avert competition that she posed. She mentions some ANC comrades
who were pivotal in her ‘escape’ from Bophuthatswana but there are no names or
anything more detailed.
Some of the ‘revelations’ should have either included more detail or
should have been completely left out of the book. Once you decide to pen a
biography you have to be willing to let people in on the juicy details. This is
what biographies are all about. If there are details that one is not willing to
discuss, then one should not bring up the ‘clues’. The ANC connections for
instance left me thinking that is a whole story that requires telling (maybe
for another day). Granted, she opened up about her first sexual encounter and
the humiliation she felt after she found hotel staff talking about it and other
details like an abusive marriage and how she almost twice tried to commit
suicide. She could have even spared us that, a child was born so obviously she
had sexual encounters with Kalusha Bwalya. Her suicide attempts too were already
in the public domain, hence nothing really new.
Despite the fact that I feel some juicy details were deliberately
omitted, the book is an all-round excellent read. Maureen’s attempts to put in
her own words some of the rumours that mostly followed her throughout her first
50 years is captivating. I like it all the more because she is one of the few
non-political celebrities to write her biography. Zambia has a lot of heroes
whose lives need to be put up and out to encourage and inspire. Politicians
should not have the monopoly.
I recommend the book for anyone’s collection. It will petrify, terrify,
inspire, challenge, motivate and all the while grip you.
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