Fred M'membe
| Fred M'membe | |
|---|---|
| Born |
11 March 1959 Mongu, Barotseland |
| Nationality | Zambian |
| Occupation | Journalist, editor |
| Organization | Zambia Post |
| Awards |
MISA's Press Freedom Award (1995) International Press Freedom Award (1995) World Press Freedom Hero (2000) |
Fred M'membe (born 11 March 1959) is a Zambian journalist known for his editorship of the Zambia Post. He has received numerous international awards for his reporting. In 2000, the International Press Institute named him one of its World Press Freedom Heroes.
M'membe was born in Mongu, Barotseland on 11 March 1959. He went to St John's Secondary School, where he did his junior secondary, and later went to St Francis in Malole where he completed his senior secondary. He studied accounting at the Copperbelt University. He worked for a time as an accountant before moving into journalism in November 1990. He is also a qualified member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and has a Master in Economic Policy and Planning from the University of Zambia. He also holds a law degree from the University of Zambia and is an advocate of the High Court and Supreme Court of Zambia.
He met Mike Hall, a Malawi-born journalist who covered Southern Africa for the BBC and UK and US newspapers. At the time, Zambia had only two newspapers, both of them controlled by the government of Kenneth Kaunda, and the pair felt that an independent news source was long overdue. With Hall's help, M'membe went on to found Post Newspapers Limited in 1991, as well as a printing company, Independent Printers Limited, which would be responsible for printing The Zambia Post, Post Newspapers' flagship publication. The pair modelled the paper's design on South Africa's liberal Weekly Mail and Lisbon, Portugal's daily Público. Despite a modest circulation of 40,000 and Zambia's "anemic" economy, the paper quickly proved a financial success.
As the only independent newspaper in Zambia,The Post has frequently come into conflict with the government. In the first ten years of its existence alone, it was the target of more than fifty criminal and civil suits. Though the paper supported Frederick Chiluba's Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD) in the 1991 election that ousted Kenneth Kaunda and won Chiluba the presidency, M'membe soon became critical of what he perceived as Chiluba's failure to live up to his campaign promises.
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