Introducing The Pilgrim

• Friday column on travelogue, news analysis and social commentary*

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THE PILGRIM, Friday, November 5, 2021

Dear reader, we begin a collaboration, which may go on for three weeks, three months, or, Lord forbid, for three-and-thirty years.

I didn’t write the above sentence, but the great and controversial American journalist Norman Mailer did (though its exactly how I feel today) when he launched his popular column in The Village Voice weekly newspaper on January 11, 1956.

Mailer’s own column was mischievously titled Quickly, A Column for Slow Readers, which was read and loved in New York City and bore witness to the inventive literary talent that made Mailer one of the most important features journalists and public intellectuals of his day.

Norman Mailer

So you must already be noticing that it is with the benefit of various journalistic influences that I launch today what will be called The Pilgrim, a column that I shall write in this newspaper every Friday, with a specific focus on travelogue, news analysis and social commentary.  

You might be wondering, why call it The Pilgrim?

We loosely use that term here to refer to an eclectic worldview, which I have been developing as an employee and student in different countries, currently studying for my Master of Science in Media Studies at the Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville in the USA.

I say “we” because that’s a title we pieced together with my idol in this nerve–racking journalism profession, the legendary Jack Zimba, with whom I had the rare privilege to share nshima for lunch during the time I served this paper as a staff writer before taking up graduate studies.

Jack Zimba

Clearly, as the primary goal, this column will cover my reflections in the form of travelogue on cultural differences, experiences or destinations in countries such as Zambia, Switzerland and America, so that you broaden your horizons or consider taking a trip.

Secondly, this column shall be an outlet for my own analysis of topical issues in a given week; for example, it has just emerged that the Government wants a refund from plane manufacturers who had been engaged as part of the re-launch of Zambia Airways. I shall show you in this column why it’s more profitable for the Government to focus efforts on maximising profits from improved airport infrastructure and other operations in the tourism and hospitality industry, instead of embarking on a grandiose airline project with little or no commercial promise at all.

I shall try to examine news stories and answer the question: so what? Why should you care?

I shall also use this platform for social commentary in relation to social media gossip and drama, including the whole range of malfeasance in public, so long as it’s behaviour that tends to rob well-meaning Zambians of their peace and quiet.

The Pilgrim shall capture not only compelling storytelling—which I’m confident it shall do well—but it shall also go beyond mere opinion to give you historical references, scientific facts and present the best intellectual arguments available, in search for a nuanced, enriched understanding of the world we live in today.

But whatever happens, I envision that this column shall emerge as a critical part of what German philosopher Jürgen Habermas referred to as the public sphere, a dimension of our daily lives when we get to form public opinion about civic issues in a democratic country that is Zambia.

So if high-quality journalism means the promotion of civic use of media, this column shall partly endeavour to do that.

Like many a good column, I hope that after every reading, your own vocabulary would have improved by a word or two, just as it happens with the Nigerian political columnist Farooq Kperogi, or the writer almost next door in South Africa, Fred Khumalo, who writes Close-Up for City Press.

Fred Khumalo

Though it shall be my first time to practice columnese and bear with its exacting demands on creativity, I am not new to the craft, as you might have already noticed.

I am conversant with the work of veteran journalists like Edem Djokotoe or the regular opinion pieces of Laura Miti in the now defunct The Post, and I also keenly followed I Remember in the Times of Zambia until its author, Alfred Mulenga, died not long ago.

The launch of my own series today reminds me that while I cannot repay the Zambia Daily Mail and my editors Emelda Mwitwa and Jack Zimba for the investment they have made in my career, practicing journalism at this level is my own way of saying I won’t put their training to waste.

Emelda Mwitwa

And as I allow you to enter my headspace through my ideas and stories every Friday, I expect you the reader to be magnanimous with feedback, not to deny me rebuke, praise or criticism.

And finally on that note, dear reader, today you and I (like Norman Mailer) begin a collaboration, which I believe should last for the longest possible time.

Let’s call it The Pilgrim.

*This column is published every Friday in Zambia's best-selling newspaper, the Zambia Daily Mail