A toast to solid partnership

By Newsday | Jun. 9, 2025

We launched in 2010, a year into the inclusive government, the glorious days, if you were to ask any citizen.

WE turned 15 on Saturday, a quindecennial of solid and fearless journalism.

It's a journey well travelled, despite the landmines, legal or political, that we encountered along the way.

We have been “banned”, “unbanned” and “banned” along the way. We have remained resolute in our quest to serve our loyal partners that include those that will have “banned” us.

We launched in 2010, a year into the inclusive government, the glorious days, if you were to ask any citizen.

Then, the warring parties, Zanu PF and the two MDCs, had turned their swords into ploughshares to reboot an economy ravaged by word-beating hyperinflation, for which the national statistics agency had lost count.

Within months, hyperinflation had been defeated and the economy experienced the other side of inflation/deflation, a decline in price levels of goods and services.

On our launch, we promised to make NewsDay a marketplace of ideas. We have lived up to that pledge and no voice will claim that it has been suppressed.

We were there when the late former President Robert Mugabe’s administration lost its moral compass as it pushed for a life presidency.

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We are seeing the same traits in the second republic with the ED2030 slogan gaining currency despite the supposed beneficiary, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, declaring that he will leave office when his constitutionally-mandated two terms end in 2028.

We are holding the Mnangagwa administration accountable, acknowledging where it has scored successes and highlighting instances where it is a mirror image of its reviled predecessor.

We are not there to please anyone. As famous author George Orwell said, “Journalism is printing something that someone does not want printed. Everything else is public relations”.

Where our colleagues fall short and resolve to hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil, we have been the outlier, shining the light on darkness.

Our work has been recognised, with our reporters sweeping the board at the National Journalism and Media Awards, a testament to our commitment to excellence.

It has been a difficult journey, one where threats and arrests have been used to silence us. We now face a new threat — Strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP). SLAPP is being used to cow us into seeing no evil, hearing no evil and speaking no evil.

We are alive to the new threats and pledge to do our work diligently, anchored by fairness, objectivity and verification of facts.

We are also alive to the impact of artificial intelligence on journalism and the sprouting of content creators calling themselves journalists. What distinguishes us from them is that while they emphasise speed, we are driven by speed and accuracy. Where we err, we have corrected, unlike the new content creators.

Our growth has been anchored on the support of our partners — readers, subscribers and advertisers.

Thank you for patronising this brand. Your support has made us stronger and fuelled us to improve.

We toast to this strong partnership and promise not to waver from our pledge. As the late American author and activist Helen Keller once said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”