Veteran journalist Conway Tutani was a rare breed: Masunda

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THE late veteran Alpha Media Holdings (AMH) journalist Conway Tutani’s family yesterday said a post-mortem to ascertain the cause of the scribe’s death would be done today, while burial arrangements would be disclosed after the results.

Tutani, whose death was described by fellow journalists and Information minister Monica Mutsvangwa as a blow to the profession, died at his Houghton Park home in Harare on Monday afternoon.

“There is no proper programme yet. COVID-19 tests results were a bit late, but they came out negative, so a post-mortem will be done tomorrow (today). We will have a proper programme after that,” family spokesperson Ndumiso Tutani told NewsDay yesterday.

His wife, Isabel said Tutani died on Monday with his phone in his hand, an indication that he was working on something.

AMH Editorial Advisory Board of Trustees chairperson Muchadeyi Masunda, who is also former Harare mayor, described Tutani as a rare breed of a journalist.

“On behalf of the AMH Editorial Advisory Board of Trustees, and on behalf of my family, I would like to extend our heartfelt and deepest condolences to his wife, Isabel, and their four children, especially Nonhlanhla, who is affectionately known as “Miss V Candy” or “uMaDhlamini”.

“He was a rare breed of a journalist, who was endowed with a keen eye for detail as well as a phenomenally retentive memory. It was in no small measure because of these attributes that he became a proof-reader and sub-editor par excellence,” Masunda said.

He added: “During his 40-year stint as an integral part of the proverbial Fourth Estate, one of the allowed pillars of good governance, he carved out a niche for himself as a respected columnist with an enviably large contingent of followers on the leader page of the Friday editions of NewsDay.”

“On a more personal note, I first met him just over 52 years ago in Gweru when I was doing my A-Levels at Fletcher High School. He was my junior by two or three years. He also went to school with my wife, Fikile, at Thekwane Mission near Plumtree. I later linked up with him again in July 1998 when I served as the inaugural chairman of Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe, the publishers of the original Daily News; whose founding editor-in-chief was the legendary and irrepressible Geoffrey Nyarota,” Masunda said.