2003 SPECIAL HONORS RECIPIENT BIOGRAPHIES

GEOFF NYAROTA – PERCY QOBOZA

My career as a journalist spans 25 years.

From 1982 to 1983 I was Editor of The Manica Post, a weekly newspaper published in Zimbabwe’s third largest city, Mutare. I was then appointed Editor of The Chronicle, a daily newspaper published in Bulawayo, the country’s second largest city.

While I was Editor of The Chronicle the newspaper published, in 1988, a series of articles which exposed large-scale corruption involving government ministers and officials. A judicial commission of inquiry was appointed to investigate the allegations published by the paper. The commission confirmed the allegations and vindicated the paper. Five government ministers were forced to resign. One of them subsequently committed suicide. I was removed from the position of Editor, as a result, because The Chronicle was owned by the government.

In 1990 I became the Executive Editor of The Financial Gazette, a weekly business and financial newspaper. I was fired from this position the following year on trumped-up charges when the publisher was subjected to pressure to get rid of me in return for a foreign currency allocation from the government to enable him to import a printing press. The publisher made an out-of-court settlement to me.

From 1994 to 1996 I was based outside the country in Mozambique. From there I travelled throughout southern Africa, organizing and managing training programmes for journalists in various countries.

On return to Zimbabwe I launched The Daily News, the country’s only independent daily newspaper. Within 15 months The Daily News became Zimbabwe’s largest selling and most influential newspaper, eclipsing by far the circulation figures of the previously existing two dailies, both owned by the government and in existence for more than 100 years.

The government of Mr. Robert Mugabe became extremely hostile to The Daily News. Our journalists were harassed, arrested and subjected to violence. I was arrested on no less than six occasions between 2000 and 2002. I received two death threats during that period. A grenade was tossed into and exploded in a shop immediately below my office on the ground floor of our office building. In January 2001, a massive bomb explosion destroyed our printing press. The Daily News never missed an issue, however.

In December 2002, I was dismissed from my position as Editor-in-Chief of the paper by the new owners of the paper, following a series of misunderstandings with the new Executive Chairman of the company. The newly appointed executive chairman had resigned from his previous position as chief executive of another company after The Daily News exposed his fraudulent activities there.

I immediately left Zimbabwe to escape from further harassment, including from the police. In January 2003, I was invited to accept a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University.

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