MY CURRENT ASSIGNMENT, TO conduct an interview, had taken me to the Literature Bureau, an agency for writers writing in Shona and Ndebele. I had almost walked past their office on Samora Machel Avenue, the northern artery of the city centre, so inconspicuous was it opposite the Monomotapa Hotel which, with its 20 storeys and modern architecture, towered over and completely outshone the low buildings in the area.

Through the bleary shop window I could make out some faded posters on the walls – announcing writing workshops and competitions – and equally sun-bleached catalogues on a table which, on closer inspection, had information about novels and children's books in the local languages. Their covers showed images of women with babies on their backs, a village scene, or a warrior with a spear.

‘The Bureau is of a colonial legacy,’ my interviewee explained when he saw me looking at them.

David Hlazo, the current director of the Literature Bureau, who spoke seven languages, was originally from South Africa. He was around sixty years of age and had a very dark complexion. The fine lines around his smiling eyes and criss-crossing the skin of his face reminded me of a map stitched into parchment paper.

He soon brought me back to the present. ‘

‘The colonial government saw in the black men only idiots,’ he said.

The Literature Bureau was founded in the early 1950s, as the government wanted to develop a local reading market. The Bureau was to stimulate writing in Shona and Ndebele but at the same time it was supposed to make sure that writers abstained from touching on political matters. Every manuscript was screened by the Bureau and then put into print by local publishing houses.

‘Anybody who mentioned Mugabe's name in writing would be committing an offence, punishable by imprisonment,’ Mr Hlazo told me.

So there was strict censorship?’ I asked, my pen poised above my notebook.

‘No, there was no censorship,’ he corrected me. ‘The authors just had their taboos – not to publish anything on political or religious issues, or anything defamatory about anybody.’

‘So a sort of indirect censorship?’

‘Yes, that's right. And even today, I can't visualise anyone writing in the vernacular producing a political manuscript.’