Obit::Veteran investigative journalist Dumi Muleya dissects his candid views on the late Geoff Nyarota, lays bare his respect for him amid bitter-sweet arguments

Obituary by Dumisani Muleya

I’m deeply saddened by the death of veteran Zimbabwean editor Geoff Nyarota, a prominent journalist, best known for his investigative reporting on corruption and human rights abuses.

My deepest and most heartfelt, sincere condolences to his family, relatives and friends (i got in touch with the family). And indeed to the journalism profession.

Personally, I had a great relationship with him over the years.

We would talk about journalism, politics and other things in life in general in meetings, social networks and over drinks.
We also occasionally spoke about his health challenges, fund-raising and seeking medical attention when it was still possible for him to discuss his plight.

We collaborated on some issues, mainly training young investigative journalists, for instance in one project we ran in 2021 as The NewsHawks with young female investigative reporters which produced some media stars.

Nyarota was the main trainer. I had approached him to do that and he agreed.
He was a great guy, as a person and as a journalist; humorous and sarcastic, yet a braggart, polemicist and cynic of note.
I’m fully aware of what many other colleagues think about him. He was a brilliant journalist, but polarising figure.

But then, we all have different corners of experience with different people.
I never directly worked with or under him, yet we collaborated well on many things, for instance on journalist training programmes and investigative stories.

From my corner of experience with him, our relationship was always open from day one.
There was open disclosure, we openly, honestly, and transparently communicated with each other, which I realised many other colleagues were not always able to do with him for one reason or another.

I personally don’t like associating with people based on make-believe or social smiles.
For me, Duchenne smile is always the best indicator of frank engagement and a marker of sincerity.
On an average day, we mainly engaged intensely on a range of issues, largely three things: Whether journalism standards were going down or not, a major generational challenge; the Willowgate Scandal and the role of media in Gukurahundi, including his own as the editor of The Chronicle from April 1983 to January 1989, among other things.

Nyarota was a great journalist, he was a pioneering investigative top dog who exposed corruption and human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, inspiring a young generation of journalists to do better.
Yet his legacy is somewhat complex and contested.
His role in Gukurahundi as Chronicle editor has always been an albatross around his neck.
We debated that issue for years ad infinitum.
He was fully aware of my views on that.

Sometimes he would joke if we debated something and I did not mention some of those issues.
He would, for instance, say “I’m glad today that Mr Muleya, Dumi, didn’t raise Gukurahundi, so it means I can drink in peace, at least for now”.
We would laugh and drink, yet both of us knew that it was not a laughing matter. A genocide can never be a laughing matter anywhere in the civilised world.
Initially he was irritable about it, but in the end he was comfortable, albeit still defensive.

He would quickly dig into defensive mode whenever those issues were raised, just like many other journalists who worked for the state-controlled media during that period.
He had his own side of the story about the explosive political situation at the time, which is fine, how journalists did not have access to Matabeleland region due to the state of emergency and Robert Mugabe’s scorched earth policy; fear of being killed if they ventured deep into the killing fields.
The Fifth Brigade was deployed in Matabeleland North on 20 January 1983 – just over two months before Nyarota arrived in Bulawayo – starting in the Lupane area, before spreading to Tsholotsho, Nkayi and other surrounding districts.

Soon after that the army unit, which had undergone political and ethnocentric indoctrination before deployment, rampaged through the region within three months, aggressively intimidating, beating,

attacking, raping, maiming and slaughtering thousands.
Gukurahundi, like any genocide, was in phases: Classification (us versus them mentality), symbolisation (dissidents), discrimination (ethnicity), dehumanisation (cockroaches), organisation (Five Brigade), polarisation (propaganda), preparation (deployment), persecution (identifying victims by ethnicity), massacres and denial.

Nyarota arrived in Bulawayo in April 1983 amid intensifying massacres.
He was not physically there during the earlier stages.
So when he argued that he was not there – it wasn’t me, it’s correct he was not there at the point of deployment but, of course, he later arrived on the crime scene after he was appointed to replace Tommy Sithole who was going to The Herald.

The Sithole and The Herald story is for another day.
So from the first day in office, Nyarota – who was young at 32 and inexperienced after becoming editor of the paper with only five years in the profession – had a huge task ahead of him given that he was faced with covering the biggest story any journalist could report in Zimbabwe at the time.

It remains the biggest story so far one can tell since independence in 1980.
There can’t be any comparison between Willowgate and Gukurahundi in terms of magnitude, significance and proximity of interest as a story.
What did Nyarota do? He didn’t hesitate: He covered it like a Zanu PF commissar or a government PR hack, which he was as a Ministry of Information officer and Canaan Banana’s press attache just two years earlier.

Nyarota, a former teacher, had trained as a journalist at the Cadet Journalism School at Rhodesian Printing and Publishing Company, publishers of The Rhodesia Herald, now The Herald.

The Rhodesian Printing and Publishing Company, which later became Zimpapers, was initially owned by the Argus Printing and Publishing Company of South Africa, but in 1981, the Zimbabwean government purchased a controlling shareholding from the Argus Group.

No sooner had Nyarota arrived in Bulawayo from Mutare than he quickly caved in under pressure to collaborate with the killers, not expose them as what any serious journalist would do.
While Nyarota and others had excuses – lame excuses – capitulated or beat the war drums for Gukurahundi, more experienced and serious journalists were on the ground writing the story.
They took a risk and went into the field.

What they saw was horror.
For instance, Donald Trelford of the UK Observer went deep into Matabeleland and fished out the story, and ran it.
That is what brave and heroic journalists like Telford do. Not take the easy way out.
Many stories were reported in the international media, particularly the Sunday Times and UK Guardian (my favourite Fleet Street newspaper), which was a thorn in the flesh for Mugabe.

Its correspondent in Zimbabwe Nick Worrall was also courageous and forthright in his reportage of the story (like Telford — who was later fired by Mugabe’s friend Lonrho mogul Tiny Rowland for exposing the massacres), and was subsequently deported.
Peter Godwin and several others also did a great job, but sadly not local black journalists who dismally failed to cover what is or was easily the biggest story in independent Zimbabwe.
Some still have excuses up to this day or are apologists for that dereliction of duty and failure.

Others, for narrow interests, persist to justify it; remaining inward-looking, boxed in a defensive mode, steeped in vague historical myths, ancient hatreds, a violent political culture and rotten value system, while brandishing a broken moral compass to the world.
The inability to care for much beyond our immediate needs and beloved ones – our own – is perhaps the greatest challenge of our times, certainly in Zimbabwe.

This applies to journalists.
Only the Moto magazine, other periodicals and some foreign correspondents reported the story, leading to deportations of some of the journalists.
This sad episode is one of the biggest tragedies of Zimbabwean journalism yet, as tragic as the Gukurahundi itself.
Some journalists did not only ignore the story, but they beat the war drums for the genocide, Rwandan-style.
Certainly the Chronicle under Nyarota led in that regard – it campaigned for Gukurahundi. This is a serious issue that no right-thinking journalist or person can ignore.

Now there are even academic studies to prove that.
For instance Dr Bhekinkosi Ncube did a study titled Excited by the killings: How the Chronicle Newspaper Covered Gukurahundi Genocide in Zimbabwe.
It empirically and evidentially proves what was already known because the evidence is in the public domain.

The Chronicle’s news coverage, editorial thrust, narratives and tropes encouraged and promoted Gukurahundi blatantly.
All the state-controlled media, including The Herald and ZBC, among others, did the same.
Very tragic journalism. Criminal stuff.
I always raised this with Nyarota in word and in writing through the front door, but we remained cool with each other till the end.
In the midst of all this debate, Nyarota would call and in recent times come to our offices for a drink, a cool Rupert & Rothschild wine.

It was never and should not be personal as professionals.
We need to teach other to debate issues without descending into a whirlwind of intellectual dishonesty or emotional blackmail, insults and threats as Zimbabweans always do on social media.

We can’t gaslight each other on such critical issues.
Apart from that, we debated many other issues with Nyarota.
Our most fierce and intense debate was not even on Gukurahundi, but on the standards of journalism, as a generational challenge.
Nyarota pushed the narrative that the standards have gone done. Some of us always asked him how?

Journalism in the digital and social media era is not perfect – as it never was anyway – but is now much more open, challenging and effective compared to the shameless bootlicking of the 1980s where journalists were treated like or were even reduced to a mindless herd of fawning, obsequious sycophants.

Of course, typically, Nyarota would always quickly use his story, Willowgate, as an example to argue standards have gone done.
For him, it was the standard measure, the benchmark.
There is no evidence to prove that, it’s just an opinion driven by a generational sentiment and self-gratification.

We need a study to test that assertion.
Usually I would acknowledge Willowgate was a great story, no doubt about that, but often sarcastically remark, “So your whole career Mr Nyarota is essentially based one story?”
He didn’t mind being humorously criticised as it was also his style of engagement.

We would laugh, but to him it was not a laughing matter.
If you commented on his Willowgate blockbuster unfavourably, it was war. Sometimes it would break relations.

I once provoked a tumultuous encounter – a stormy clash of perspectives – on Willowgate during a drink in Mutare at Golden Peacock Hotel.
Once i raised it, outlining my line of engagement, that is he did not originate the story either hypothetically or in terms of information gathering, and that it was a essentially a leak to the Chronicle by Obert Mpofu (he told me the background – bragging he was the source), Nyarota sprung into dramatic action, stopped the bar from being closed, bought some large quantities of beer, warning me “my brother now that you have raised this, it is going be a long night”.

I asked about role of the late Tichoana Mukuku on the story. I also asked if a leak can be considered an investigative story?

I further asked why he doesn’t want to give credit to others who also worked on the story. I even suggested his whole career was based on one story.
If you know Nyarota you can imagine what happened after. It was drama.

The opening line was: “Mr Muleya, I’m very glad you have raised these issues with me. But as a precursor, let me tell you I have never had peace since I wrote the Willowgate; from authorities, those affected, from journalists, mostly those who are jealousy – people are jealousy out there Dumi and of course certainly from you for different reasons… but I’m very happy to engage with you anytime, anywhere…”
As usual, he went to narrated how Mukuku, who was the original reporter doing the Willowgate story, was removed from the assignment.
In Nyarota’s words: “We removed Mr Tichaona Mukuku, may his soul rest in peace, from the story after realising that each he went to Defence Minister Enos Nkala’s house for some interviews, he always returned with some expensive goodies and some fine wines for himself. He started going to the minister’s regularly for dinner and drinks, initially by himself and later with his wife. We realised that the story won’t survive and so Davison Maruziva, my deputy, and myself took over the story.”
Nkala, a belligerent Mugabe cabinet hawk who was a Gukurahundi agitator, was part of the story and threatened to deal with “little” Nyarota.
Mugabe said Nyarota was “overzealous”.

Five ministers and MPs were implicated.
Key figures political involved included

Maurice Nyagumbo, Minister of Mines, Nkala, and Frederick Shava, then Minister of Labour and now Higher and Tertiary Education.

The story forced Mugabe to appoint the Sandura Commission of Inquiry chaired by the late Justice Wilson Sandura to probe the issue.
Some ministers like Nkala and Shava were found guilty and forced to resign. Nyagumbo committed suicide.
The scandal led to a major shake-up in the government, with several ministers and legislators resigning or being fired.

In the process, it damaged government’s reputation and led to widespread public outrage, hence seen as one of the most significant investigations in local journalism.
The bar was drowned in laughter, with one colleague swiftly remaking, ‘you and Nyarota are always interesting to drink with’.

During that lively night, there was a group of journalists, including Brian Mangwende, NewsDay editor then, and the late Foster Dongozi, who served as the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists secretary-generally for life, practically, in the bar, as we were on an Information and Media Panel of Inquiry (IMPI) study on the state of the media, investigating its ecosystem, models, ethics, marketing and advertising, and sustainability in the digital era.

It was a useful study, although some zany journalists thought it was about Zanu PF succession, which was entirely false.
There was no love lost between Dongozi and Nyarota, but from time to time they had friendly engagements, not the ones based on mutual contempt and ridicule.
As Nyarota had initially warned, well, it became a long night indeed.

The subsequent debate was explosive and continued into the early hours of the morning.
I was the agent provocateur.
Will write properly about this one day.
Nyarota spoke incessantly, it was like a sermon or a stream of consciousness but gripping and fascinating all the same.
It continued even as we walked to our rooms at the cusp of dawn as I was booked opposite and next to Nyarota’s “Presidential Suite”, which he had demanded almost like at gunpoint.
That brought to a hectic close a long unforgettable day with Nyarota who had earlier clashed with Dongozi, Mangwende and myself after we had defied his vain instruction that we had to arrive in flamboyant style in Rusape in a convoy of cars for a lunch at a motel by the riverside just before the town on the left across the bridge from Harare.

The demand was from Marondera all cars, more than 10 vehicles, and a bus, should follow Nyarota’s lead car as we enter Rusape behind him, the chairman of the IMPI process. He was proud of that title as he loved power, glory and influence.
It’s a pity his attempt at politics the year before, in 2013, was a disaster. Nyarota tried to become MDC-T parliamentary candidate in the 2013 elections.

But he was routed by Pishai Muchauraya who got an emphatic 447 votes against his paltry 49 in the primaries. After that, he never forgave Nelson Chamisa who was organising secretary.
Back to Marondera, so Nyarota had a secret deal with Dongozi, who at some point called himself Mwalimu, one of those rare moments they agreed with each other.
From Marondera, we were going to stop in Headlands for the convoy rehearsals and arrive in Rusape like a Head of State was in town.
Nyarota wanted to paint the town red. It was a big deal for him. His moment of glory.
Dongozi, who was travelling in the same car with Mangwende and me, had told us in confidence his deal with Nyarota, and we had laughed our lungs out.
So after some haggling about it, we agreed to sabotage the plan; rain on Nyarota’s parade by rushing ahead of the long convoy without him knowing to disrupt the formation and grand arrival.
Our rationale: The whole thing is absurd.
So we rushed and slowed down as we approached Rusape, majestically turning left to motel for a sumptuous lunch as Nyarota frantically called our driver to check where we were.
When the driver told him we had already arrived and were drinking, all hell broke lose.
Nyarota arrived fuming and sweating. He burst into a fierce tantrum – a blazing tirade – threatening to call the minister – Jonathan Moyo – to summarily expel us from the process for insubordination.
We engaged in a strategic retreat by keeping quiet.
Tensions only subsided after we had apologised to him, but we had already ruined his day big time – which was the main objective. So there was no need for further engagement on that matter.
A cynical way by us of dealing with an absurdity that smacked of vainglory.
I later asked Dongozi why Nyarota was so angry about such a petty thing, and he said:
“No look, the problem is you spoiled his sweet homecoming, returning home like a President because that’s his home town, by the way he is originally from Nyazura nearby. He wanted to arrive in style and put on a show on his home ground, a spectacular performance.”
That was incredibly preposterous.
We laughed until one of us almost dropped his glass of beer!
That was Nyarota for you, he could be serious and also petty at the same time.
In the morning after at Golden Peacock in Mutare, Nyarota, smiling and looking happy, invited me and Mangwende to get into his brand new Land Cruiser for a very long drive from Mutare to Masvingo via Chimanimani and Chipinge.
After a whole day of animated chatting and laughter (interestingly there was no reference to the ridiculous Rusape fiasco), we finally laid to rest the Willowgate debate – a surreal mix of fact and fantasy for the man they called the Doyen of Journalism, a title he so much cherished – and had an awesome drink at Great Zimbabwe Hotel in Masvingo that evening.
It was 15 April 2014.
There is a reason why I remember that date vividly – Gareth Bale’s astonishing legendary sprint that started just inside Real Madrid’s half and ended with the ball in the back of Barcelona’s net in the Copa del Rey Final at the Mestalla in Valencia.
It ended 2-1 to Madrid.
Who can forgot such a memorable El Clasico.
I slept well after that magnificent victory, and Nyarota’s exhausting debates and long drive.
After we had laid the Willowgate debate to rest, with me saying whatever the attendant controversies, that was Nyarota’s career-defining scoop, but Gukurahundi remained a moot point.
Yet we were cool, which remained the case over the years.
When Nyarota launched his fourth book
titled The Journalist as an Outcast: Perils of investigative reporting in Zimbabwe in February last year, he called to invite me and I attended, and we had a great chat.
He says in his book he has great respect for me as a journalist, something I really appreciate.
I always told him the same too. And nothing has changed even after he is gone.
Unfortunately, that was the last such a time we had a good chat as he became more ill after that and was overwhelmed.
Well, in the end Nyarota’s legacy is complex and multifaceted, reflecting both his outstanding contributions to investigative journalism and media, as well as his complicity in Gukurahundi, something i say with a heavy heart, especially during this moment of grief.
I always felt it was unfair to debate this in his absence. Now he has gone silent forever and we won’t hear from him anymore, again and ever.
But truth has to prevail for the common good and posterity. That’s the only way we can learn from our mistakes, and ensure never again on some things.
Nyarota’s legacy serves as a reminder of the complexities and nuances of human experience, and the need for nuanced and contextualised assessments and evaluations of individuals and their actions or activities in the public interest.
Rest in peace Cde Geoff Nyarota – Nyati. Till we meet again, hopefully in your new world there is eternal peace, so we don’t have to discuss such contentious issues and spend decades in trenches of cerebral combat.
After all, we are all mere mortals. Our time will also come as the sun will rise tomorrow.
Hamba kahle mdala, famba zvakanaka mdara Geoff.

Dumisani Muleya is an acclaimed investigative journalist with a career spanning over two decades.He is the former editor of the Zimbabwe Independent and Editor in Chief of The Newshawks.He writes in his on capacity to mourn his fellow cadre Geoff Nyarota