It is not often that a jovial call from an old friend in the African night brings back chilling memories of brutality that could have shamed the devil. It came from Washington; from fellow journalist Ray Choto – a man who was prepared to die, at the hands of his own people in his own land, to protect his sources. The kind of journalist everyone should want to be.
The unexpected call sent my mind racing back to January 1999 and nine days of sun and torrential rain that dripped with dark deeds.
Choto and Mark Chavunduka wrote a story for their newspaper, the Sunday Standard in Harare, claiming that there had been a coup attempt. Senior military sources told them that 23 soldiers, including seven officers, were under lock and key.
The government was enraged but, instead of refuting it, or writing a lawyer’s letter to the Standard, sent soldiers to clap Choto and Chavunduka in handcuffs and leg irons. They were kept for what Choto called “nine days of hell”.  Soldiers stripped them, blindfolded them, beat them with planks, kicked them in the kidneys and shoved their heads in drums of water.
For days we pumped out the story, day and night from Harare and pestered the authorities. What makes me sick to my stomach is that everyone in power knew where the two were, but no one had to guts to leak it. It sticks in my craw even more that if the journalists had been from the United States or Europe the story would have been at the top of world news and the battered young men would have been out before the sun went down.
Instead it was more than a week before we set eyes on Choto and Chavunduka; even then they were still in custody in the Magistrates’ Court. They were charged with an old colonial law, the Law and Order Maintenance Act, and released on bail. I can still see Chavunduka smiling as he saw me striding into the court on that sunlit day.
“Chris, what’s happening?”
“I thought you were going to tell us,” I laughed. A few minutes later the two shared another relieved smile as I waved them off in their car on their way to the Sunday Standard.
What did happen on those violent nights was no laughing matter. Back in his newsroom, Choto told, gesturing with his painful and swollen hands, how his torturers pushed live electric wires into his testicles. He was in so much pain he snapped the chain of his handcuffs.
The torturers were worried, at the end of their work, as the blood poured down the faces of the two young journalists; they feared Aids, Choto said. It had been raining heavily outside, so the torturers kicked their two young countrymen, naked, down a grassy bank to wipe off the blood.
To cap it all, the Supreme Court threw out the case against the two on constitutional grounds. A letter to the editor would have saved everyone pain, shame, money and trouble. The journalists believed their ordeal was a warning to the independent press.
Choto flew to London for psychological and physical repair. He took a fellowship at Stanford University, California, before joining the Voice of America in Washington. In 2002, he went home to visit his family where a military source told him to get out fast; his family agreed. He hasn’t set foot in Zimbabwe for more than 15 years and missed his mother’s funeral in May 2010; a thorn in his heart, he says.
Chavunduka died young in 2002; friends agree his ordeal hastened his demise.
When I spoke to Choto on that night call, we chuckled through our reminiscing. We talked of  hardship and lost friends, in the robust way journalists do, that’s how we live with the pain.
For me, I will always think of the smiling Choto and Chavunduka, bathed in that summer light, as they drove from court with broken bodies and many nightmares to come. How many journalists pay this high price for principle? I wonder why Africa breaks its youngest and brightest on the wheel.

Torture That Could Have Shamed The Devil

It was nine days of hell that Ray Choto will never forget. Live electric wires were pushed into his genitals; it was so excruciating that he snapped the chain of his handcuffs. With his editor, Mark Chavunduka, he was stripped and blindfolded at a military base in Cranborne, a suburb of Harare. Their captors shoved their heads in drums of water. They were forced to do push-ups in the rain, in between beatings, and afterwards their torturers kicked them through the wet grass to clean off the blood.
It all began because of a news story the now late Chavunduka, founding editor of The Standard, Zimbabwe’s independent Sunday newspaper, and Choto, the newspaper’s former chief investigative reporter, wrote in January, 1999 that 23 soldiers, including seven officers, were under arrest for inciting their comrades to overthrow president Robert Mugabe. The authorities wanted to know who leaked the story. The two young African men suffered at the hands of their own people but never revealed their sources.
“As a journalist, my responsibility is to protect my sources. Even if it meant that I was going to be thrown into jail or killed. I was ready for it in defense of ethical journalism,” says Choto, 15 years on.
“The torture was very barbaric. I was handcuffed, put in leg irons, and tortured by way of electric shocks all over my body. They also hit me with wooden planks, clenched fists &#8230;”
Their crime? According to Choto, it was allegedly contravening a section of the Law and Order Maintenance Act. They challenged the constitutional validity of the controversial colonial law and the Zimbabwe Supreme Court declared the provision null and void and the case fell away.
Both were flown to London for psychological and physical treatment. In May 2000, Choto received further treatment in Australia.
Contrary to reports that he fled Zimbabwe, Choto explains that he went to the United States (US) on September 6, 2000 to take up the prestigious John S. Knight Fellowship for professional journalists at Stanford University in California. It was during his first year at the university that Mugabe’s government introduced strict laws that made it difficult for journalists to work.
The program appointed Choto as a senior fellow, extending his stay in the US for another year. This came at a time when Zimbabwe’s government news publications labeled Choto an enemy of the state. He cites an article that detailed a press conference, held by the military and the police, in which they warned the independent media that they were ready to treat those that write negatively about Zimbabwe the same way they treated Choto and Chavunduka.
Choto went home on the first of day of 2002 and planned to be in Zimbabwe for eight days. A senior source in the military agreed to secretly meet him at a hotel in Harare. Choto had called him to tell him that he was in the country and asked if he had time to meet for a drink. The military source sounded hesitant, but agreed. They communicated in code in case the phone was bugged. When they met, the military source asked Choto why he came back in dangerous times and told him to leave the country.
Choto got on a plane and left. He then telephoned family and friends to ask whether he should return. All, including his mother, said no. Choto, now 13 years in the US, says he will not go home as long as the ruling party, Zanu-PF, is in power.
“The loss of my mother in May 2010 was, and remains, a thorn in my heart. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go to Zimbabwe to see her laid to rest.”
Now a senior editor at the Voice of America (VOA) in the Africa Division in Washington D.C., Choto says that it is challenging to work on stories from a distance.
As Mugabe begins his seventh term, Choto clings on to hope.
“The solution lies in the hands of the people of Africa. They have to elect democratic leaders and reject undemocratic leaders who come to power through chicanery.”
You have to listen to a man who shed blood for his beliefs.   FL

Tag: Ray Choto

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