The Financial Gazette

Tabitha Mutenga, Staff Reporter

VETERAN newsman and The Financial Gazette’s prolific columnist Bornwell Chakaodza (59) has died, following a courageous fight against cancer, which was first diagnosed in 2008.
Chakaodza died on Tuesday night at a local private hospital, two weeks after coming from South Africa for treatment.
His widow, Emma Julie Chakaodza, yesterday expressed sadness at the veteran journalist’s death, who leaves behind four children, Gordon, twins Natasha and Nash and Bornwell Jnr.
“Bornwell was dedicated to his profession. He loved his job so much. He ate, slept, and walked his job to the extent of writing articles during chemotherapy. His most famous saying was ‘learning does not end; there is always a beginning,” said the widow.
A former director of information in the then ministry of information, Chakaodza also saved as editor of the State-run daily The Herald, before moving to the privately run weekly newspaper, The Standard.
Besides penning weekly articles for The Financial Gazette, at the time of his death, the veteran journalist was the deputy board chairperson of the Voluntarily Media Council of Zimbabwe (VMCZ) on top of acting as a media consultant and political analyst.
A devout Anglican, two weeks ago, he wrote a piece in The Financial Gazette that revealed deep personal anguish at the mayhem in the Anglican Church titled: Kunonga: Are you ready for Judgment Day?
Yesterday, Chakaodza’s friends, colleagues and church mates spoke glowingly of a life well lived.
Hama Saburi, Editor-in-Chief of The Finan-cial Gazette, said Chakaodza’s death has robbed the media industry of a father-figure and mentor of note.
He said journalists of Chakaodza’s calibre were difficult to find anywhere in the world, adding that filling the gap left by Chakaodza would be a herculean task.
“I worked under Chakaodza at The Herald and, until his death on Tuesday, he was one of our columnists, penning the National Agenda column. Throughout my association with him, he was professional, humble and passionate about his work. It is sad that we have lost an important pillar at this critical juncture when the nation is looking up to people like him for direction. The journalism profession has been left poorer without Bornwell”, said Saburi.
Precious Shumba, the spokesperson of the Anglican church led by Chad Gandiya said: “Bornwell was a voice of reason in a jungle of confusion in the Anglican Church. He understood what was happening and was able to put it into perspective through his contributions in the media.”
VMCZ executive director, Takura Zhangazha said: “As the deputy chairperson of the board, he was a true believer in media self-regulation, which would accentuate into press freedom in the country. An experienced journalist, a trainer, and a teacher, his passing on is a sad development at VMCZ.”
The director of the local chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa, Nhlanhla Ngwenya, said: “He was humble, he never used his vast experience to look down upon others, and even if you were new in the field you could engage him on the same level.”
Born in Guruve in 1952, Chakaodza worked as a teacher at Tegwani High School in Plumtree between 1975 and 1977, before joining The Herald in 1978 as a reporter.
He also worked for Parliament as Hansard deputy editor, between 1982 to 1984.
He graduated with a BA degree and certificate in education from the then University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (UBLS); MA and M.Phil degrees from the University of York, United Kingdom; Diploma in journalism from the then Rhodesia Printing and Publishing Company as well as a diploma in Advances in Family Health Communication from the John Hopkins University in the United States.
After working for government, Parliament and newspapers, writing was a deep passion that cut across the ages and divides.
While bedridden, last week he penned his last epistle for this paper under the heading Archaic laws must go. In it, he lamented political censorship, which he said is often applied to a ridiculous extent in most post-independent African states.
Although in his call for legislative reforms he did not personalise issues, Chakaodza was in fact a victim of draconian laws after having previously been arrested under the colonial-era Censorship and Entertainment Control Act, the Public Order and Security Act as well as the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA).
As part of the hazards of his journalistic work, Cha-kaodza spent countless hours in the country’s police cells: in 2002 he was arrested five times inside two weeks. In May of that year, he was detained together with then Standard entertainment editor, Fungayi Kanyuchi, for publishing “obscene statements and pictures” under the country’s censorship laws.
When a piece later appeared detailing jail conditions based on Kanyuchi’s experiences, the pair was again arrested under AIPPA for “abusing journalistic privileges”. In 2004, Chakaodza was also detained following the publication of a story in which the family of the late Leonard Chimimba, the then chief executive of Bindura Nickel Corporation blamed senior government officials for plotting the latter’s assassination.
Rest in peace BC.