Mark Chavunduka, the Zimbabwean newspaper editor whose torture by state agents in 1999 served to focus world attention on President Robert Mugabe’s policies towards the media, has died, family members confirmed on Wednesday.
Chavunduka (37) was chief executive and proprietor of the local magazine company, Thomson Publications, when he died on Tuesday.
His father, Dexter Chavunduka, said he had been ill for a long time.
Mark Chavunduka was editor of the independent weekly The Standard newspaper in January 1999 when he and reporter Ray Choto were arrested. They were tortured for three days by military intelligence police to force them to reveal their sources for a report of a failed military coup attempt the previous year.
The incident was perceived to be a significant turning point in the government’s policies.
Mugabe publicly endorsed the action of the officers who subjected the two journalists to prolonged assault, electroshock, partial drowning and bastinado, the painful whipping on the soles of the feet.
Mugabe also scorned an appeal from the country’s judiciary for him to take action against the officers and to commit himself to the rule of law, and threatened the judges who had made the appeal.
Instead, Mugabe had the two journalists charged with “publishing a false report likely to cause alarm and despondency”.
To this day, authorities have done nothing to carry out a Supreme Court order in 2000 to investigate the incident.
“Chavunduka was a young man who will be remembered for standing up to the army and a young man who, by being tortured, brought the attention to the world to the kind of thing Robert Mugabe does to try to silence people,” said Trevor Ncube, the chief executive of The Standard and owner of the Mail & Guardian.
Chavunduka was lauded by international press freedom and human rights organisations for his refusal to be cowed by his ordeal.
After he was awarded a scholarship to Harvard University, his family urged him to stay in the United States for his safety. “I am so angry about the way we were treated and I won’t give the government the satisfaction of knowing I have run away,” he responded. — Sapa
Mark Chavunduka, born 1965, died November 12 2002