Mohammed Juma and the art of live broadcasting

One of the most captivating things about the coverage of the 2002 FIFA World Cup held in South Korea and Japan was the radio coverage of the 64 games by Mohammed Juma Njuguna.

Contrary to what many of us huddled around our radio sets thought, Njuguna was not covering the games from Seoul, Daegu, Yokohama, the Nagai Stadium in Osaka or any of the other 16 venues where the games were played.

For all the excitement Mohammed generated as we waited for the opening match between champions France and first-timers Senegal, describing his journey — “sasa ndege yetu inatua hapa uwanja wa ndege wa Incheon hapa mjini Seoul” (Now, our plane is landing at Incheon International Airport in Seoul) — he was actually seated in his corner of the broadcasting studios at Royal Media Services, studying the television screens and combing the maps on his desk.

The creative live radio broadcaster (re)creates scenes with such power and graphic detail that we feel we are actually seeing them.

There are never any awkward pauses and clumsy repetitions of vapid uninformative phrases.

Commentary of the kind that Mohammed mastered is the work of a fertile imagination, robust vocabulary and dedication to research, mastering the skills of inquiry enough to know where to look and who to ask.

Long before he made a national name as a witty and animated football commentator on Radio Citizen, he was a household name on Voice of Kenya’s Idhaa ya Kiswahili, the national service of what was then the country’s single radio and television broadcaster.

In the memory of many radio listeners and television viewers of the 1970s, Mohammed’s name is synonymous with Dunia Wiki Hii.

Those who were children and young teenagers back then do not necessarily have fond memories of that show!

It was aired at 9pm on Friday when the youngsters were waiting to relax with Transtel Music, a German show that often featured Boney M (famous for songs like Ma Baker and Daddy Cool) and other leading European musicians of the time.

Such joy was always delayed by Mohammed and his heavy dose of the week’s news round up from around the world followed by the English news bulletin at 9:30pm.

When I told him about how, as children in the 1970s, we hated the interrupting sight of him on television, Mohammed laughed generously.

“You have a very good memory! Dunia Wiki Hii. We started it with a lady called Elizabeth Makini and Salim Mohammed; there was also Joseph Kiema in it and I was invited to be a presenter… After Makini left I became a scriptwriter and producer of Dunia Wiki Hii,” he said during our interview.

There were no quick references and links from Google and Twitter handles in those days, and the waiting public was fully dependent on radio and television to bring the world into its living rooms.

The producer’s job involved hard research studying maps, telexes, tuning into BBC, Voice of America, conducting telephone interviews and comparing notes with broadcasters in Tanzania because they also aired news in Kiswahili.

Gathering local and international news from various sources was one part of Dunia Wiki Hii, the other was translating everything into Kiswahili in ways that would make sense to the public.

For this, Mohammed was often in touch with fellow broadcasters at Radio Tanzania Dar-es-salaam, debating terminology and exchanging vocabulary to aptly capture a fast-changing world.

The producer’s job was made all the more difficult because the government of the day did not entertain criticism. “You had to submit content for approval,” said Mohammed. “Imagine, even Salsa music was considered Communist content.”

Journalists could easily lose their jobs for genuine mistakes such as mistranslating a news bulletin from English to Kiswahili.

He recalled an incident when he mistranslated an item about President Jomo Kenyatta’s day in the provinces.

He had said Kenyatta was travelling back from Nakuru when in actual fact the president was in Mombasa. There was a storm at VoK.

His Editor, Matu Nguri, was questioned by Intelligence but was fortunately defended by the Chief Editor, Kabiru.

Mohammed added, “You couldn’t criticise the government. Producing the show Kutoka Mikowani (From the Provinces) meant reporting what government was doing to develop those areas, not what the people there needed or thought”.

Born in a Muslim village in Kiganjo, Nyeri, in the mid 1940s, Mohammed started his early education in Nyeri Town before his family moved to Mombasa.

He attended Makupa Primary School and won a full scholarship from the Aga Khan for his secondary school education at Mombasa Institute of Muslim Education, which later became Mombasa Polytechnic and is now the Technical University of Mombasa.

The Institute drew its teachers from Zanzibar, Pakistan, Britain and Dar-es-salaam

After graduating from the institute in 1966, Mohammed travelled to Nairobi to look for a job.

By pure chance one day, he ran into his old teacher, Forest Johnson, on the street. When he explained his need, Johnson immediately offered him a clerical position at the Department of Information, where Johnson was the training officer.

Mohammed passed his voice test and started recording Sammy Osore’s radio programme, Africa Leo na Kesho, with Joe Khamisi.

When Stephen Kikumu, the Controller of Programmes heard him on the show, he summoned him to VoK.

“I went to see Kikumu in the morning… he told me, ‘here, you have a very good voice; you are reading news at 9 O’Clock,'” he recalled.

Later, Mohammed left the Department of Information to join VoK full-time where he rose to the position of producer.

In 1975, he was sent to London, seconded to BBC’s African Service; where he gained valuable knowledge and had his first real taste of media freedom.

He could challenge his producer about depictions of Africa that were untrue and actually refuse to read the item without any consequences.

When he returned to Kenya in 1976, he took up football commentary on radio, an art he perfected.

He connected with listeners by using local riddles and proverbs to describe the action on the pitch.

He read out salaams (greetings) to people on and off pitch, sang verses from zilizopendwa (those that were loved) tunes and popular gospel songs, and invited listeners to identify with their teams through careful calls to ethnic citizenship.

Media freedom aside, Mohammed thought there were still many challenges to be overcome. “A microphone is a very sensitive thing; wrong people doing the right job is a headache we must overcome.”

Aside from the absence of serious researchers and good voices, Mohammed pondered the skewed nature of broadcast content.

Did he think 55 per cent local content was possible? “Even when I was at VoK, [the] government tried to do that. But how many local artistes do we have to produce that? What facilities do we have? The local content must be mixed with imported content…the government must pump in money to pay artistes to generate this content…

“We should have more drama in schools to grow this content the way people like Prof [Francis] Imbuga used to do…and local stations should buy this content from independent producers.”

Mohammed was convinced public-private partnerships of this kind would transform our mediascape.

Already, he noted, the entry of private broadcasters transformed the scene and gave a new lease of life to veteran broadcasters like himself.

Francis Gachuri, his young colleague at Citizen, described Mohammed as “an authority, people listen to him”.

He added: “On the parliamentary beat, Mohammed was clearly more trusted by some of the members who would confide in him things they wouldn’t tell us younger journalists.”

Mohammed was awarded a Head of State Commendation a few years ago, but he still felt not enough had been done to recognise the stellar contribution to national development of old media hands like Job Isaac Mwamto, Daniel Njuguna Gatei, Stephen Kikumu, Aisha Mohammed, Amina Mohammed, Zuberi John, Hassan Masoa, Ndessanjo, Amina Fakir and George Opiyo.

A few of these old greats are the subject of Voices of Kenyan Media Veterans, a book by the University of Nairobi’s School of Journalism.

Dr Wambui Kiai of the School of Journalism argues that “journalism is often a blood sport. Survivors, those who live to tell the tale, are in every respect veterans: of threats, imprisonment, torture and trauma.”

Recognising their role in the democratisation and identity-formation processes of our countries is a duty that succeeding generations must never neglect.