David Martin OBITUARY:IANCHRISTIE
In the days before it was fashionable to have a local accent, Ian Christie’s Scottish brogue would have been a barrier to his working as a radio commentator.
Such was the reaction of Mozambique’s late president, Samora Machel, when Christie broadcast for the first time from Maputo in the 1970s for the Voice of Zimbabwe, the radio station which supported the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu).
“Christie,” the Mozambican leader told him the next day, with a customary twinkle in his eye, “with that accent you will alienate even those that might support Zanu.”
It is a tribute to Christie that 25 years later he was still actively involved in broadcasting in Mozambique, although his role was now executive and training, and his voice was heard less often on the airwaves. A number of journalists and broadcasters from the region were trained by him or apprenticed with him, mostly from Mozambique, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa.
I first met Christie in Dar es Salaam in 1970, when he joined The Standard newspaper, where I was then assistant editor, as a sub-editor. That Scottish brogue, his quiet intensity mingled with raucous laughter, and the continual re- lighting and puffing on his pipe, are among my earliest memories.
The newspaper had just been nationalised by the late Julius Nyerere, and Frene Ginwala, now speaker of South Africa’s Parliament, was appointed its first editor. As is usual practice with editors around the world, she brought in many of her own staff. Christie was one of them.
In those days, Dar es Salaam was the centre of the liberation of Southern Africa, and most liberation movements had their headquarters in the capital. Soon, in addition to his shifts at The Standard, Christie had thrown himself wholeheartedly into assisting with the sub-editing of Mozambique Revolution, the monthly publication of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo).
In the early 1970s, Nyerere changed the leadership at the newspaper, but Frelimo requested that an exception be made in Christie’s case. And in 1975, around the time of Mozambique’s independence, he moved with Frelimo to Maputo.
Years later I remember his asking me for my opinion on whether he should take Mozambican citizenship; his roots in Mozambique were so deep that the answer was obvious. He became a Mozambican citizen and the proud owner of the house where he, Frances, Conor and Carol had lived for so long.
Although we came from different ideological backgrounds, Christie’s friendship transcended such barriers. He sent his son to me in Zimbabwe for his secondary education, and Christie and I met frequently, and often argued into the wee small hours.
Christie and I had marched with Frelimo as journalists to see the northern zones of Moz-ambique, which the guerrillas had liberated from Portuguese control. In his case, he went with a column led by Machel. Christie was awarded the Mozambican Star of the Internationalist Combatant for the march.
Christie took his job very seriously as the correspondent of Reuters in Mozambique from 1980, and he believed passionately in the objectivity and ethics of journalism and journalists. On the subject of Mozambique, he was an expert and few foreign journalists visited that country without consulting him.
After Machel died in a still unexplained plane crash in South Africa in 1986, Christie wrote Samora Machel: A Bio-graphy, which was published by Zimbabwe Publishing House in 1988 and Panaf in 1989. More recently, he wrote a comprehensive handbook as a guide to Mozambique.
I will certain miss his wisdom on Mozambique, his laughter, pipe-puffing, and most of all, that Scottish brogue, which I can still hear.