A few weeks ago, we lost veteran business journalist Jerry Bungu who died in his sleep on August 2, 2012 in Marua-Pula suburb, Gaborone.
Bungu, who was 42 at the time of his death, was buried in Nyahunda Farms, Bikita, Masvingo Province, in his native Zimbabwe.
Bungu’s final journey of approximately 1 000 kilometres to his final resting place at the family cemetery, where his late father, uncles and close family are also buried, started on Wednesday, August 8, after living in Botswana for nearly a decade and half.
According to his first cousin, Cresta Hotels Managing Director Tawanda Makaya, Bungu is survived by his mother, younger sister, spouse Barbara, and 17-year old daughter, Thuso, who live in their native Zimbabwe.
Makaya, who is still yet to come to terms with Bungu’s sudden passing away said he knew little about the terminal health condition although they had maintained communication for the past four months, including the time when Bungu was in the United Kingdom during a six-month western media business stint. (Bungu was in the UK from December 2011 to May 2012.)
“Jerry kept his illness behind an impenetrable curtain of silence without intimating either to me or immediate family or peers. I still have to come to terms with his passing on. May his soul rest in God’s eternal peace!”
I remember meeting the then 29-year old Bungu soon after his arrival from Zimbabwe in early 1999 when he was writing for a quarterly full colour magazine, SATCOMS. As this was a few years before the Zimbabwe Government initiated a blanket ban on private media, Bungu mentioned that he hoped to build a successful journalism career in Botswana, where there was freedom of speech and expression.
However, during his familiarization stint he had to migrate at short notice from one quarterly or bi-monthly to another as the majority turned out to be barren pickings.
Through hard work and perseverance, Jerry freelanced for the Botswana Guardian and Midweek Sun till the mid 2000’s.
The rest is history.
Before his trip to the United Kingdom, Bungu was the local correspondent for Bloomberg, an American multinational mass media corporation based in New York City, New York, which “makes up one third of the $16 billion global financial data market”.
On his return from the United Kingdom, Bungu had just become business correspondent for the Sunday Standard and its sister publication, The Telegraph.
“Jerry was a professional newsman,” said Tanonoka Whande, the papers’ Sub Editor. “He only came to the newsroom for a few minutes at a time, usually to drop off stories but otherwise he spent most of his time on the streets and in offices coaxing information from movers and shakers in the business community.”
Whande said Bungu’s passing away took everybody by surprise so much that most of his colleagues knew about his demise well after he had been buried in Zimbabwe.
“It is sad. He was such a quiet person yet laughed as loud as everyone. He was everybody’s friend,” said Whande.
On my part, I shall always remember the times we lived in Gaborone’s Block 8 and the trips we took to socialize with a beer or two. He was very helpful even when he himself was facing serious problems of his own.
May his soul rest in peace!