Speculation mounts on Jokonya death

By Lance Guma
26 June 2006

Speculation continues to surround the death of information minister Tichaona Jokonya at the weekend. Some reports suggest he was found dead in a bathtub in the Rainbow Towers Hotel (formerly Sheraton) but government sources now say he died in his sleep. Jokonya was supposed to have addressed state media editors on Saturday around 10am but never got to do so. With questions arising over why someone who lives near Harare was in such an expensive hotel at taxpayer’s expense, the Sunday Mail explained that Jokonya and ministry officials were working late into the night on the restructuring of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings. His home is in Beatrice just outside Harare and the idea according to the state media was to avoid the 65km trip to and fro.

Jokonya is reported to have died in the early hours of Saturday morning in Harare. According to the NewZimbabwe.com news site the 68-year-old minister’s body was recovered from a bathtub at the Sheraton Hotel where he had booked a room on the 16th floor. The report said hotel staff forced the door open after Jokonya failed to answer the door to his bodyguard. It is not clear whether anyone was with him but the minister lived with his wife and children in Beatrice. Other reports suggest that Jokonya had undergone dialysis treatment at a hospital in the capital and had decided to rest ahead of a planned meeting with managers from state controlled media outside Harare the following day. Jokonya was Zimbabwe's ambassador to the United Nations and a diplomat before taking on the information ministry left vacant by Jonathan Moyo.
It will be difficult for many journalists to sympathise with Jokonya so soon after he made several threats against them. He initially promised to relax media restrictions in Zimbabwe but it was not long before he too began to attack journalists from the private media calling them ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ Just last week Jokonya blasted the government's media critics accusing them of being traitors. During a press conference Jokonya asked: ‘Do you know what the end of a traitor is? The end of a traitor is always death. The unfortunate thing about a traitor is that you are killed by both your own people and the person whom you are serving.’ His words seem to have turned prophetic.