Geoff Nyarota’s book chronicling assault on media launched

By Lance Guma
07 July 2006

Geoff Nyarota the founding editor of the banned Daily News has released his long awaited book ‘Against the Grain: Memoirs of a Zimbabwean Newsman.’ Media reports indicate that the book is already selling well in South Africa while bookstores around the world, including the worlds biggest online retailer Amazon, have also added it to their catalogues.

In the book Nyarota chronicles Zimbabwe’s decline under the leadership of Robert Mugabe and how as editor of the Daily News he was harassed by the state. He narrates how as a young man he believed that his children would one day enjoy freedom in a new Zimbabwe seeing that most people were denied the same under colonial rule. He says he quickly realised how the returning war heroes were more interested in enriching themselves than in uplifting the poverty-stricken millions.

Nyarota says he began to expose the wholesale corruption perpetrated by the Mugabe government and it took several arrests, torture, intimidation, costly legal fees and, finally, a contract on his life to make him flee his homeland in 2004. He says Mugabe began to see him as public enemy number one and caused him to sacrifice everything he’d worked for. He however maintains that Mugabe could not destroy his pride or his principles.

The Daily News was bombed twice in what clearly bore the hallmarks of a military operation. On the morning of 22ndApril 2000 a powerful bomb exploded at an art gallery on the ground floor of the newspaper's offices in the city centre. The art gallery was situated directly below Nyarota’s office. The papers printing factory in Harare was also bombed on the 28th January 2001, causing extensive damage to the Z$100 million printing press and the building. His book sheds light on these experiences.

Sandra Nyaira a former political editor with the Daily News and current coordinator for the Association of Zimbabwe Journalists says Nyarota’s efforts should be commended. She says ‘we have had too many books about our country by too many people coming from outside, people who fly in and fly out overnight while writing books about Zimbabwe.’ Nyarota’s book goes someway towards presenting the indigenous view she said.

Nyarota is a Fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism and the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, both at Harvard University in the United States. He is the recipient of nine international journalism awards including the Golden Pen of Freedom, presented by the World Association of Newspapers, and UNESCO’s Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Award.