When Geoff Nyarota passed away on 23 March 2025, the world had already scripted his epitaph. To some, he was the fearless founder of The Daily News, a paper bombed into silence for exposing Zimbabwe’s elite. To others, he remained tainted by his role as a state editor during the Gukurahundi atrocities. Yet, in his final four years, Nyarota rewrote his story—not with headlines, but with a relentless, digital-age investigation that stretched from Harare to London’s Gatwick and Heathrow airports. What he uncovered was a sprawling motor-vehicle corruption and money laundering syndicate, a scandal dwarfing even the infamous Willowgate affair, with roots in identity fraud, trafficking, and hacked airport databases.
In 2023, while celebrity journalists dominated social media, Nyarota worked in the shadows. Armed with court records, encrypted messages, and sleepless determination, he traced a network of impunity built on forged embassy letters, fake identities, and erased histories. At its core was Hopewell Chin’ono—once Nyarota’s cameraman—whose ambitions had morphed from storytelling to orchestrating scams. Nyarota’s findings helped thwart a million-pound fraud and plugged a dangerous security breach at Gatwick Airport, a victory won not in newsrooms but through code and forensic precision.
This was no mere redemption arc. It was a reckoning—and perhaps the most enduring chapter of Nyarota’s complex legacy.
The Investigation’s Climax
Weeks before his death, Nyarota’s efforts bore fruit. On October 20, 2024, a Derby County Court ruling by Justice Pittman halted an attempt by Jennifer Banyure—a Chin’ono associate operating under Chinono’s encouragement—to plunder a British citizen’s million-pound estate through an identity scam. Banyure, like Chin’ono, had reinvented herself, adopting a new name in 2001—the same year Chin’ono altered his own birth surname, Mukusha. Nyarota’s documentary evidence, detailed in a video released posthumously, exposes their tactics: and their leveraging of social media clout to rewrite histories, silence critics, and subvert justice.
Nyarota’s curiosity about Chin’ono dated back to 2009 when Chin’ono then his employee, deleted his boss’ voice in Nyarota’s own production.
The behaviour coupled with many others’ relating to suspected financial misconduct, led to the AMH newspapers publishing an editorial investigating Hopewell Chinono. This was some months after Chin’ono had falsely accused an NHS practitioner making allegations against him, saying she was deployed to a media outlet she has never engaged.
Then fast forwards 2 years later, Nyarota instructed, “Good morning Simba,” as he wrote on April 23, 2023. “Have you since investigated what £50,000 sports car Daddyhope invested in [1996]? That’s a lot of cash in the UK back then for a young cameraman from Zimbabwe.” By November 25, 2023 he added, “One day Daddyhope will be obliged to address all these questions… His is still a big story that must be unravelled.”
Nyarota’s hunch was prescient: Chin’ono’s wealth and influence masked a syndicate that preyed on the vulnerable, from British estates to Zimbabwe’s civil society.
A Legacy Beyond Gukurahundi
Nyarota’s past as a state editor at The Chronicle during Gukurahundi remains a lightning rod. Some critics argue saying he propped up a regime’s propaganda machine, a charge he faced head-on in later years. In 2015, confronted by peers, he began spotlighting the atrocities he once helped obscure, inspiring a new generation of journalists. His book Against the Grain and articles from his tenure provided historians with raw data on the massacres—proof, his defenders say, of a man wrestling with his demons.
Yet, his final investigation into Chin’ono’s syndicate may outshine these efforts. The documentary reveals a chilling subplot: Chin’ono, a self-styled activist, had advised Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Defence to deploy soldiers against civilians, eroding opposition figures like Nelson Chamisa and Job Sikhala. Nyarota’s voice, once deleted by Chin’ono in a 2009 production, roared back to expose a betrayal deeper than motor-vehicle fraud—a journalist dismantling democracy itself.
Commenting, Chinono responds saying he told the Ministry Of Defence to hunt down the civil society, because of his personal vision of the kind of Zimbabwe that must be.
The Bigger Picture
Nyarota’s critics, vocal about his Gukurahundi role, often sidestep contemporary scandals. They’ve said little about the Qoki property scam, which fleeced Matabeleland women of USD 25 million, or Sengezo Tshabangu’s alleged cover-up of Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Gukurahundi ties. Nyarota, by contrast, kept digging. His exposé of Chin’ono’s syndicate—linked to airport hacks and estate theft—offers a lifeline to victims of systemic corruption, from Matabeleland to Marry Chiwenga, a modern casualty of state-orchestrated injustice.
A Man in Full
Was Nyarota a saint or a sinner? Neither label fits. He was a flawed titan who, in his twilight, wielded his pen like a scalpel, cutting through decades of lies. His death closes a chapter, but his final work—viewable in full at this Facebook link—ignites a question: If Nyarota could confront his past and Chin’ono’s present, who will carry the torch next?
Bigger Than Willowgate.
By the time Geoff Nyarota died in March 2025, many had already written the final chapters of his life. Some remembered him as the courageous founder of The Daily News, bombed for daring to tell the truth. Others still wrestled with his past as a state editor during Gukurahundi. But in his last 2 years, Nyarota was no longer just chronicling motor vehicle corruption—he was dismantling it, byte by byte, stretching his fingers from Harare to London’s Gatwick and Heathrow Airports.
In 2023, while attention swirled around celebrity journalists and social media noise, Nyarota was quietly tracing the digital footprints of a syndicate orchestrating identity fraud, trafficking, and hacking of the UK’s most sensitive airport databases. It was a network built on impunity—fueled by fake names, forged embassy letters, and weaponised silence. At its heart were figures once admired in media circles, using their platforms to subvert justice and erase past crimes.
What Nyarota uncovered—through sleepless nights, buried court records, and encrypted messages—helped block a dangerous breach at Gatwick Airport and stopped a million-pound fraud in its tracks. It was a war waged not in newsrooms or courtrooms, but in code, documents, and digital forensics. And it was one he fought with the same relentlessness that marked his finest investigations.
This was not redemption. It was reckoning. And it may be the most vital chapter of Nyarota’s complex legacy—one that only now begins to surface.
Because of Nyarota’s investigation done in the weeks running up to his death, an attempt by a Hopewell Chin’ono colleague, Jennifer Banyure, to rob a British citizen’s million pound estate, has been stopped at a Derby County Court ruling by Justice Pittman on 20 October 2024.
“Good morning Simba. Have you since investigated what £50 000 sports car Daddyhope invested in [1996]? That’s a lot of cash in the UK back then for a young cameraman from Zimbabwe.,” Nyarota wrote on 23 April 2023.
He would further warn on 25 Nov 2023, saying “Good morning. This is truly fascinating. One day Daddyhope will be obliged to address all these and many other questions about himself. Whether he chooses to respond to the questions or not, his is still a big story that must be unravelled and written in its fullness.
“There are several people with information about Hopewell. They include Themba Mliswa who chose to cut a deal with him at the time of my investigation back them.”
Geoff’s investigative curiosity on his former employee Hopewell Chin’ono has so far saved a British male citizen a million pounds he was about to lose to Chin’ono’s syndicate through an identity scam. The attack was by a female colleague of Chin’ono’s Jennifer Banyure who in 2024 did this using a name she changed in 2001, the same year Chin’ono changed his own name from Mukusha.
In the documentary, Nyarota’s work exposes a group of social media activists who are not only re-writing history using false identities, but are so daring like Chin’ono once did, to delete his boss’s own voice as Nyarota cried out over his 2009 documentary news production, “…You hear Hopewell’s voice replacing mine as the narrator. His original and contracted function and role was that of cameraman. Period…”
Nyarota’s expose’ may cure a major concern by the civil society over how their fundamental human rights have been robbed by a character that like the deletion of his voice, is also accused of causing confusion and expunging the political authority of the nation’s opposition leader Nelson Chamisa, and one of his aides, Job Sikhala.
Full personal account:
I agree that all state media journalists including Nyarota need to be confronted over their role during atrocities. I confronted him in 2015 over Gukurahundi.
Was Nyarota a devil? Perhaps he was like Mnangagwa’s efficacious Motlanthe agent for Gukurahundi, who stands up to say ‘all these years since the 1980s it is Mnangagwa they want to kill!’ Sengezo Tshabangu? Maybe.
The morals of state editors in communist regime run newspapers seem the same across countries- Russia, China, etc. People working in regime newspapers certainly have a role they play both as an institution and as individuals, even when their part is not as damaging as Tshabangu’s.
I have also heard complaints from journalists at the Chronicle narrating some regrettable alleged treatment there over their work exposing Gukurahundi murders. What was wrong remains wrong, and there should not be any sugar coating.
What I don’t agree with is the claim that Nyarota did not accept responsibility or bounce back to shine the spotlight on the horrors he participated in as the abusive state’s propaganda editor. My experience with Nyarota is different. A lot of my penmanship is a product of Nyarota’s shining the spotlight on the Gukurahundi and other horrors, following my meetings with him in 2015. Some of the news articles used by historians detailing events and statistics of Gukurahundi were published by the same Chronicle under Nyarota’s editorship. People writing off Nyarota’s legacy, have not been anywhere near the painful moments over the last 10 years, when, I, using Nyarota’s works, have fought to expose the horrors and help pave the way for restorative justice for the masses. Yes, Nyarota had his errors. A person who’s made a mistake needs to do what they can best within their means to try and rectify or address what went wrong.
Nyarota versus Qoki/Tshabangu, versus Hopewell Chin’ono – who’s worse?
Without disregarding complaints that may be legitimate, some of the people accusing Nyarota have not said anything to criticise ongoing-scams terrorising the Matebele people such as the nation’s latest money laundering project run by Welshman Ncube’s publicists to scam Matebele women USD25million for fake Qoki properties, in order to finance the Tshabangu party’s destruction of parliamentary democracy; something that’s now worsening not only the province’s deprivation, but the country as a whole. Many anti-Nyarota crusaders have distanced selves from active spotlightings such as:
- The Belgrade War Crimes Prosecution case on Jacob Mudenda Oct 2019.
- the GoldMafia Documentary 2015-2023.
- the UN rapporteur investigations 2018-2020.
- The Exposure of state operations accusing Sikhala and his cousin Chinyanga.
- The anti Matebeleland-Qoki-Scam.
- The nation’s most vivid Gukurahundi cover up agent Sengezo Tshabangu, who since the Motlanthe Commission continues to cover up Mnangagwa’s role in the Gukurahundi atrocities.
- Nyarota’s exposure of Hopewell Chin’ono since (AMH) 2021, over not just a motor vehicle scandal, but the man’s undercover activities physically advising and corrupting the Ministry of Defence, to deploy solders after the civil society. This is arguably the country’s biggest scam that once thoroughly exposed, could provide an accessory to addressing the Gukurahundi atrocities. In this scam the chief perpetrator is another journalist, who has worked to destroy the civil society’s power.
A. Accountability of Geoff Nyarota:
• Geoff must be held to account for his actions as a state media editor, particularly during his time at The Chronicle.
• His actions should be assessed both institutionally and personally.
• Attention should also be given to his historic, his current actions, right up to his death, as announced today.
B. Measuring Geoff’s Character:
• Considering Geoff’s actions from the 1980s to today, how does he measure up?
• In the late 1990s, he founded The Daily News, Zimbabwe’s only independent newspaper at the time.
• The newspaper exposed government wrongdoings until it was bombed.
C. Geoff’s Exile and Return:
• After the bombing, Geoff left the country and became stuck in America.
• When he returned to Zimbabwe about 14 years ago, he late went broke due to manipulation and sabotage.
D. Geoff’s Book and Its Influence:
• Geoff wrote Against the Grain, where he provided his perspective.
• The book is foundational for my own work, which has exposed major atrocities.
• Many of these atrocities remain connected to unresolved issues like Gukurahundi.
E. The Case of Marry Chiwenga:
• Marry Chiwenga, though she is not Ndebele, was bombed in Matebeleland.
• She faces ongoing injustice as government actors like. Christopher Mutsvangwa and Auxillia Mnangagwa manipulate her case for political gain.
• She has been deprived of access to her children.
- She is a victim of behaviour officially started by Nyarota’s former employee Hopewell Chin’ono who advised the Ministry of Defence to execute violence torture victims since 2018-19.
- Chin’ono has also been responsible for using journalism to cause confusion and destroy parliamentary democracy the very institution that can only thoroughly investigate atrocities – in a way that has stripped all institutions including the media of the ability to investigate human rights abuses.
- Geoff Nyarota did a lot of solo work to investigate Chin’ono’s financial claims down to the point of isolation among peers. He later on told me to help investigate Chin’ono over his motor vehicle-wealth story, and it is Nyarota’s research that’s now opened arguably the biggest human rights story that can now address ways of stopping the Tshabangu-Hopewell encroachment against the human community. So far, a Gatwick Airport hacking breach guided by Chin’ono has been exposed and stopped leading to a court win at Derby County Court on 20 Oct 2024. Chin’ono’s colleague Jennifer Banyure attempted to win a million pound property using a fake identity she changed in the same year Chin’ono, previously surnamed Mukusha, changed his.
F. Self-Reflection for Geoff’s Critics:
• Critics who accuse Geoff of failing to expose Gukurahundi must also reflect on their own role.
• They have a responsibility to diligently address those historic atrocities.
G. The Role of Civic Responsibility:
• Assisting victims like Marry Chiwenga or those affected by the 2018 and 2019 atrocities contributes to addressing unresolved historic injustices.
• Those who take on this responsibility will surpass Geoff’s legacy.
H. Modern-Day Victimhood:
• Marry Chiwenga now faces accusations similar to those made against the previous wife of the same man 12 years ago (attempted murder while sedated).
• She suffers from denial of medication, an unfair legal process, and deprivation of access to her children.
• She is a modern-day victim of systemic injustice.
I. The Hypocrisy of Geoff’s Critics:
• Those accusing Geoff of past failures may themselves be perpetuating the same injustices today.
J. The Hopewell Case:
• These critics have also failed to expose another journalist who committed worse acts: advising the Minister of Defence to deploy soldiers against civil society.
• That journalist is Hopewell.
K. The Deeper Corruption:
• Hopewell’s actions and the corruption linked to the atrocities faced by Marry and others are fueled by journalists who are celebrated as award-winning.
• Despite not working for Chronicle or Herald, Hopewell’s role has gone beyond military brutality—he has directly influenced the Ministry of Defence in a damaging way, far worse than what Geoff is accused of.
L. Final Reflection:
• Therefore, criticism of Geoff Nyarota must be delivered with moderation.
- If Geoff was a demon, there seems a bigger scam, that of his own employee who not only deleted his boss’ voice, but is now using social media to amplify opinions against Nyarota so that his scams like the Gatwick Airport hacking attempt are not viewed with the seriousness they deserve.
- – By Simba Chikanza, Al Jazeera GoldMafia Documentary Founding Researcher