VETERAN journalist Sam Munyavi who died at Bradford Hospital had suffered a stroke which subsequently led to brain haemorrhage, NewsDay has established.
BY ROPAFADZO MAPIMHIDZE
As news filtered through yesterday, people could be seen in groups along the road towards his Harare home, some waving me down to stop to confirm.
Munyavi’s wife, Agnes, confirmed the death and explained how her husband ended up in hospital.
She said Munyavi was seated at his desk writing a book when he received a call from a relative and as he was speaking on the phone, she noticed that his speech was slurred.
“I immediately drove him to Bedford Hospital and then we went to Dunstable Hospital where a scan of his head was conducted. There was much bleeding in the brain. We then went to Cambridge Hospital where we were told that the area he was bleeding from was too complicated to operate and that they couldn’t do anything.
“His blood pressure was too high and continued to shoot upwards and that is what caused the stroke and bleeding. We were referred back to Bedford Hospital where doctors said they would try everything to save his life but his left side was completely paralysed,” Agnes said.
Munyavi, who turned 65 in March this year, had just retired from a local authority where he worked as a community relations officer and was receiving a pension.
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“It was so unexpected. He was fighting to get well. He had been a diabetic and hypertension patient for the better part of his adult life. I am devastated,” she said.
He will be buried in Rusape following a night vigil at his house near the Westgate area in Harare at a date yet to be announced.
With no formal journalism training, Munyavi started writing for the State media when he was working as a barman at a council tavern when he started sending his humorous articles to the newspaper for a column titled Laughin It Off.
He drew so many readers to his column as he tackled day to day issues in the most funny and hilarious way.
Those days, I did the letters page and feedback from readers would flood in commenting about his beautifully crafted stories. He was a master of the art.
I remember one article he once wrote that was titled “A dead man has no rest” where he chronicled how families and mourners bother a dead man as they sang songs asking the corpse to come back to life.
His literary works won him funding to publish articles he wrote for this column from the Culture Fund, a copy that I still hold today.
When news reached me on Sunday night about his death, I was so unsettled. Why Baba Bruce, as he was affectionately called after a character that he always portrayed in A Lighter Look.
Everything about Sam was laughter. He was such a humorous person, to the extent that sometimes he offended people who would then end up in stitches of laughter after he had cracked yet another joke.
There was never a dull moment with Sam.
A gifted writer, he wrote his stories with so much passion and ended up being Features and Supplements editor, a job he executed diligently despite his ups and downs with his health.
He was a diabetic who injected himself twice a day and when he parted with his first wife, his health somehow worsened.
He later married Agnes, who was a member of his church in Chitungwiza. He often bragged to his friends and colleagues that he was the most faithful man in the world.
“Ropafadzo and Ivy can confirm that,” he would say. Ivy and I would stare at each other and laugh our heads off.
When I broke the news to one of my neighbours yesterday morning that Sam had passed on, he started laughing. He then stopped suddenly and asked with a crackling voice asking if that was a joke. He said that which other person in Zimbabwe will entertain him like he did.
That guy was brilliant and would relay information in a comic way. He once confronted a known housebreaker in the area, asking him why he had stolen goods from his house. In his words he said ‘Surely how can you pilfer from Uncle Sam?’ and the thief just brushed him off and laughed,” the neighbour said.
Sam made his mark in the entertainment industry when he featured on television film series including one edition of the Gringo series alongside William Matenga, popularly known as Gweshegweshe.
He is survived by his wife Agnes and four daughters.
