Reflections On The Transition To A Proletarian Print Media In Zimbabwe With Special Reference To Agricultural Change And Development: Abstractions On The Theme Of Economic Reporting

I will be approaching the whole subject of agricultural change in Zimbabwe from the concerns of a historical researcher. With the continued operation of the 30 year rule under the National Archives Act, newspapers have indeed become the major primary source for research into our recent past. History in Zimbabwe would indeed be dead as a dodo, were we to accept the position that our colonial past cannot be objectively investigated until such and such a document were opened to public scrutiny. Adopting such a stance would only reduce Zimbabwean historians to powder monkeys, passing on primary and raw data to be fired off by foreign scholars who have their own varied concepts of what Zimbabwe is.

A paper prepared for the Zimbabwe Institute of Mass Communications Course on Economic Reporting, 12 November, 1985.