LAUSR

“Reading through a book doesn’t just mean turning the pages,” writes Noam Chomsky, “it means thinking about it, identifying parts that you want to go back to, asking how to place it in a broader context. ... [I]t is an intellectual exercise, which stimulates thought, questions, imagination” (Chomsky 2014, 103). As if to confirm the above, reading through Ngoma’s book, a collection of newspaper articles written over a long career and personal reflections, one cannot help thinking that he is indeed an experienced journalist. As one who has worked as a sports, travel, features and political journalist interviewing showbiz people, political leaders and football stars Ngoma, perhaps, has a right not to just share his experiences but to teach or make suggestions too. As such, reading through his text is a somewhat nostalgic journey back to journalism school; basic but key clichés students learn in introduction to reporting modules easily race through one’s mind. They are: “Don’t use a sentence where a word would do,” “have a nosee for news,” “a journalist is as good as his last story,” “be fair,” “be inquisitive,” “be firm and brave,” “be ethical,” “be persistent.” Seeing himself as an “investigative journalist” (2011, 10), Ngoma advises that a journalist must “read widely” (11). Like the writers of the earlier era such as Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain, Ngoma believes that writers must also read the Bible—the difference being that he is himself a firm believer of the Christian faith. Apart from his good command of the language, Ngoma’s other attribute that can’t escape the reader is