By Newsdesk
Journalist Sandra Nyaira died Thursday afternoon,
Cause of her death were not yet announced at the time of publishing
More details to follow …..
Nyaira was an investigative journalist and communications and public information officer at the United Nations headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
She worked for Voice Of America (VOA) in Washington D C and her work also featured in the London Times, The Guardian and The British Journalism Review.
Nyaira rose to fame after she became the first woman in Zimbabwe to take a leadership role in the newsroom at the age of 26 and also became more popular after she got arrested for exposing corrupt officials through an article she published.
In April 2001 she wrote articles accusing Robert Mugabe and the then parliamentary speaker Emmerson Mnangagwa of corruption, and again she was charged with criminal defamation that year.
Nyaira has been a Shorenstein fellow at Harvard University.
She was on a career high when she left Zimbabwe. For her work as political editor of the country’s then leading independent newspaper the Daily News, she had earned a prestigious Courage in Journalism Award from the Washington-based International Women’s Media Foundation.
After traveling to the United States to receive the prize, Nyaira attended the journalism master’s program at City University in London on a scholarship.
The late president Robert Mugabe’s government, after several unsuccessful attempts to muzzle the Daily News, finally succeeded in closing the popular daily in 2003 amid an escalating crackdown on the independent media.
Family and colleagues warned Nyaira, who had already been arrested once on criminal defamation charges, that it would be foolhardy to return home.
