Zakeus Chibaya (1977–2007) was a Zimbabwean journalist based in South Africa.
He was a correspondent for The Zimbabwean. He was also a member of the Forum for African Investigative Reporting. He passed away on 10 September 2007 after a brief illness.
Zakeus Chibaya was harassed and attacked by the Zimbabwean government for writing negative stories about the Masvingo province land reform programme for the Masvingo Mirror, naming the government ministers involved. In retaliation, the ministers sent youth militia to attack Chibaya and banned him from covering all government functions. They also filed a defamation case against the newspaper and demanded that it fire Chibaya, threatening to continue the lawsuit if they did not comply. He fled to Johannesburg in South Africa.
Zakeus Chibaya: a tribute
Zakeus Chibaya joined FAIR in 2004 after conducting a series of in-depth interviews with disheartened Zimbabwean soldiers. Disappointed by the growing lack of opportunities for investigative journalism in Zimbabwe, he moved to South Africa. While studying journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand, he became involved with exile organisations and exiled journalists from his home country. Chibaya wrote numerous investigative articles on Zimbabwe for The Zimbabwean and the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR). One of these articles, in which he exposed the mistreatment of refugees and migrants in South Africa, was published internationally and earned him the ‘Excellence in Journalism’ award for solidarity with refugees, presented by the Canada-based International Institute of Journalism.
For the FAIR Transnational Investigation, Zakeus Chibaya interviewed numerous individuals living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa, documenting their struggle to access medication. In doing so, he was once again confronted with the intransigence of the South African authorities, who denied and actively opposed the massive scale of the epidemic. Tragically, he fell ill while reporting on the endless queues of people waiting for treatment and medication. The words of those he interviewed, who spoke of 'queuing until they could no longer stand', may well have reflected his own situation. It was only after he succumbed to pneumonia in August 2007 that his family and friends discovered that he was battling HIV. Zakeus was 30 years old.
