Geoffrey Nyarota

Journalist, author and publisher, Geoffrey Nyarota was born in the eastern border town of Mutare in easten Zimbabwe. He attended secondary school at St Mary's, Hunyani and Goromonzi High School. He enrolled at the then University of Rhodesia and graduated in 1974 with a BA General (Second Class Honours).

He became a secondary school teacher at Regina Coeli Mission in the eastern districts of Zimbabwe. Arrested in January 1977 and accused of aiding Zanla guerillas waging battle to liberate Zimbabwe from colonial rule, his career was terminated the same year after a fierce battle in the school grounds between Zanla and soldiers loyal to the rebel regime of Ian Smith.

In 1978 Nyarota was admitted to the Cadet Journalism School at the Rhodesian Printing and publishing Company, publishers of The Rhodesia Herald, now The Herald. On attainment by Zimbabwe of national independence in 1980 Nyarotae became press secretary to the country's first President, Canaan Sodindo Banana. who was replaced when Prime Minister Robert Mugabe became first executive President.

From 1982 Nyarota became editor of The Manica Post a weekly newspaper published in his home-town, Mutare. He then became editor of The Chronicle, a daily newspaper published in Zimbabwe's second largest city, Bulawayo, in the south-western regions of the country. He was summarily dismissed from this position in 1989 after he exposed massive corruption among top officials in the new government of President Mugabe. The so-called Willowgate Scandal prompted President Mugabe to appoint Zimbabwe's first judicial commission of inquiry, the Sandura Commission, headed jy Justice Wilson Sandura. Five cabinet ministers were forced to resign, while one, Maurice Nyagumbo, committed suicide.

Nyarota then became executive editor of The Financial Gazette an independent weekly financial and business publication, which he transformed into a popular and much sought-after newspaper.

Again he was dismissed after the publication came under pressure from a government angered by the newspaper's hard-hitting stance. Nyarota left Zimbabwe to live in exile in Maputo, Mozambique, for three years.

On return to Zimbabwe he launched The Daily News an independent daily newspaper, which reached the phenomenal figure of 129 000 copies in circulation within one year. The newspaper so incurred the wrath of the authoritiels that Nyarota was arrested on a total of six occasions, while his paper's printing press was destroyed in massive bomb explosion in January 2001 and an assassin was hired to kill him. The assasin developed cold feet and confessed details of the plot to Nyarota.

After he was dismissed once more from the position of editor, this time from The Daily News, early in 2003 he left Zimbabwe yet again, first for South Africa and then proceeded to the United States.

He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University from 2003 to 2004. In 2005 he was simultaneously a fellow of the Joan Shorenstein Center for the Press, Politics and Public Policy, as well as a research fellow with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, both also at Harvard.

While at Harvard he researched for and wrote the manuscript for his first book, Against the Grain, Memoirs of a Zimbabwean Journalist. The book was published by Zebra Press in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2006.

It is the story of the trials and tribulations of the independent press in post-independence Zimbabwe. Previously, in 2004, he had contributed a chapter on Zimbabwe in The Corruption Notebooks, a book containing contributions by 25 journalists on abuses of power in their respective countries.

In 2006 he launched The Zimbabwe Times, an online daily newspaper for the thousands of Zimbabwean citizens living in the Diaspora. On return to Zimbabwe he established a new publishing company, Buffalo Communication (Pvt) Ltd, in 2011. The company specializes in publication of magazines.

Nyarota is the winner of nine international media wards for his work as a journalist and for his dedication to the profession. They include the Golden Pen of Freedom received from the World Associan of Newspapers in 2001; the Percy Qoboza Foreign Journalst Award received from the the United States-based National Association of Black Journalists in 1989 and in 2003.

He received the prestigious Guillermo Cano Press Freedom Award presented by UNESCO in 2002.

In 1989 he attended the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of Western Ontario in Canada as a distinguished visiting journalist and in 1990 he attended the annual Leardership Course at Georgetown University in Washington DC.

After three years at Harvard Nyarota was invited to Norway as a Guest Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Oslo. In 2006 he was appointed Visiting Professor of Political Studies at Bard College in Upstate New York.

Board Memberships

1992 – 1994 - Nordic-SADC Journalism Centre, Maputo, Mozambique
1997 – 1998 - Landmark Publishing (Pvt) Ltd, Harare, Zimbabwe
1998 – 2002 - Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe
2002 - - World Press Freedom Committee, Washington DC, USA
2007 - 10 - Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Oxford University, UK
2009 - - Centre for International Media Ethics, Chicago IL, USA
2011 - - Buffalo Communication (Pvt Ltd), Harare, Zimbabwe