Veteran journalist Sam Munyavi is no more.

Last month June, I received news that Sam has had stroke and was seriously ill. It was a severe stroke that left him in a vegetative state, unable to do anything for himself or speak. It was just a matter of time.
He shouldered on for five weeks and sadly, at the age of 65, he passed around 4am on Sunday 19th July 2015 at Bedfordshire Hospital.
Sam Munyavi is survived by his wife Agnes and five children, two girls and three boys. Plans are in progress to repatriate his remains to his homeland.
Most of the younger journalists would not know Sam because he has in the years running up to his death not been doing what he knew best since his last media house, the Daily News, was bombed. Sam used to work for the Sunday Mail and some would remember him as one of the journalists who made us buy that paper because we did not want to miss his ‘Laughter it Off’ column and the antics of little Bruce. We always wanted to know what mischief little Bruce had been up to during the week. Sam brought daily happenings and kids’ antics live in his writings.
Sam left the government controlled media house and joined the Daily News where he was arrested a number of times whilst performing his duties. Sadly this was going to be his last fort as a journalist. The media house met that unsolved fate, bombed out of function leaving most of its staff, among them Sam, unemployed. Sam was disheartened. When I met him later in the UK, one could not escape the sense of disappointment and the vulnerability of being journalist in a hostile environment. When I asked Sam about returning to journalism, even reviving his little Bruce stories, he shook his head and lifted his bottle of beer to wet his lips.
Sam had left his homeland a disheartened man to join his wife in the UK in 2005 where he worked as a community facilitator at Bedford Borough Council and lived peacefully away from the glare, glamour and animosity of African journalism.
Ndaba Nhuku