Veteran journalist Geoffrey Nyarota has died.
Nyarota, who edited top publications like Chronicle and Daily News, succumbed to colon cancer on Saturday.
He was 74.
Nyarota is popular within journalism circles for exposing the Willowgate scandal in 1989 while editing Chronicle.
Tributes have been pouring in since news of his death broke.
Presidential Spokesperson George Charamba, on X, said Nyarota was the first press officer to Zimbabwe’s first president, Canaan Banana.
“Not many know that he was the First Press Officer of Zimbabwe’s inaugural President, Canaan Banana. Isu takazouya well after. He left that Office to become the Editor of Manica Post. Before both, he was a TEACHER and then a cadet trainee at the Herald. This was before Independence. Briefly detained at Rusape during the war,” wrote Charamba with his Jamwanda2 account on X.
Information secretary Nick Mangwana said he is saddened by the death of “a media giant who left an indelible mark.”
“Saddened by the loss of Zimbabwean media giant Geoff Nyarota. As a pioneering editor, he left an indelible mark on the country’s journalism landscape. His contributions to investigative journalism and robust public discourse will be remembered.”
Alpha Media Holdings publisher Trevor Ncube wrote: “Geoff was a pioneering investigative journalist who will be missed by family and friends. He battled cancer valiantly for a long time.”
Brezhnev Malaba, a former editor of The Chronicle, said Nyarota’s work “inspired many.”
“Some criminals he exposed in the 1980s are still masquerading as political leaders — and this impunity explains why Zimbabwe has been destroyed by catastrophic corruption.”
Born in 1951 in Harare, Nyarota started off as a teacher and joined The Rhodesian Herald as a trainee in 1978.
He was promoted to editor of Manica Post in Mutare.
In 1983, Nyarota was appointed editor of The Chronicle in Bulawayo
In 1989, Nyarota came to national prominence after exposing Willowgate, a scandal in which senior government officials in President Robert Mugabe’s cabinet had been given early access to buy cars at an assembly plant in Willowvale wholesale, which they later resold at a 200 percent profit.
Five ministers resigned in the aftermath of that investigation but Nyarota also lost his job and spent years teaching journalism in South Africa.
In 1999, he founded The Daily News which was bombed a year later with its printing press destroyed.
In 2001, the Committee to Protect Journalists awarded Nyarota its International Press Freedom Award, which recognizes journalists who show courage in defending press freedom despite facing attacks, threats, or imprisonment.
The World Association of Newspapers awarded him its Golden Pen of Freedom Award in 2002.
That same year he was also awarded UNESCO’s Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize.
On December 30, 2002, Nyarota resigned as editor of the Daily News before the publication was shut down in 2003.
Nyarota moved to the United States where he got a fellowship at Harvard University and wrote his first book, ‘Against the Grain, Memoirs of a Zimbabwean Newsman.’
He also ran a shortlived online newspaper, The Zimbabwe Times. – Twenty Four Seven/Zim Live
