Geoffrey Nyarota

Geoffrey Nyarota is a joint fellow with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. He founded Zimbabwe’s only independent daily publication, the Daily News, in 1999. On Dec. 30, 2002, he was fired as editor on what management said were administrative grounds. But his dismissal came amid an escalating campaign by President Robert Mugabe’s government to quiet criticism from independent news outlets. Nyarota escaped to South Africa after police visited his home at midnight searching for him. The government closed the paper in September 2003. Nyarota began his journalism career at the Herald in 1978 as one of the first black trainees the paper hired before Zimbabwe’s independence. He eventually became editor of the Bulawayo Chronicle, Zimbabwe’s second-largest newspaper. During his tenure there, the Chronicle launched an investigation that linked government officials with corruption. Four government ministers eventually resigned; another committed suicide. And Nyarota later lost his job “for his own safety,” management said. He later become editor of the Financial Gazette but again was fired amid government pressure. Nyarota has received seven international journalism awards. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2003–04.