Barry Bearak
The New York Times


Celia Dugger
The New York Times

Citation
Lawlessness reigned in Zimbabwe as the government of Robert Mugabe terrorized residents last year in a desperate, and ultimately successful, attempt to stay in power after disputed elections in March. New York Times reporters (and husband and wife) Barry Bearak and Celia Dugger chronicled Zimbabwe's disintegration at great personal risk. Bearak was imprisoned by authorities in Zimbabwe for several days for the crime of "committing journalism." As one of Bearak's captors told him, "You've been gathering, processing and disseminating the news." After Bearak's release, he was spirited out of the country and unable to return because he was too well known. But Dugger decided to risk her own arrest and imprisonment by traveling to Zimbabwe to continuing reporting the story. Their dozens of gripping and first-hand accounts ensured that the government's campaign of violence and intimidation did not go unnoticed.

Excerpt
In Crisis, Zimbabwe Asks: Could Mugabe Lose?
March 7, 2008

HARARE, Zimbabwe — Robert G. Mugabe has run this country for so long that his presence is like some common particulate in the air, taken in with every breath. Gladys Sithole can barely recall a Zimbabwe without him, this inescapable "old man," as she calls him, with godlike powers and all-too-human failings. A mother of three, Ms. Sithole was once a bookkeeper in a dry cleaning store, but jobs like that have mostly vanished. She is a street peddler now in a collapsed society, where a surreal annual inflation rate of 100,000 percent speedily melts money into nothing, and essential commodities are so scarce that bars of soap are sliced up to be sold by the chunk and cooking oil is traded by the tablespoon. A presidential election is scheduled here for March 29, and Ms. Sithole said she hoped this time Mr. Mugabe would finally lose. Now 84, he is a former guerrilla fighter who has led the nation since independence in 1980. "Mugabe was a hero of the liberation struggle, sure," she said. "But now there is an even bigger struggle, the struggle to survive, and he is killing us."

She may conceivably get her wish. Mr. Mugabe is burdened not only by Zimbabwe's persevering misery, but also by two formidable rivals. One is Morgan Tsvangirai, a well-known opponent with trade union support; he won 42 percent of the official vote in 2002, when inflation was a mere 139 percent. The other is Simba Makoni, a onetime cabinet member backed by influential figures in the governing party itself; these dissidents are no longer willing to wait for Mr. Mugabe's death to initiate the succession.

Could this actually be the end for one of the world's most enduring and complicated political figures, by most accounts a ruthless, vengeful man, revered and reviled, who has presided over one of Africa's most epic economic debacles? If Mr. Mugabe did somehow lose, would he withdraw quietly? Would disputed elections propel Zimbabwe, like Kenya, into chaos and killing?

Biography
Barry Bearak became co-bureau chief of the Johannesburg bureau of The New York Times in January 2008. Mr. Bearak joined The Times in 1997. He was the newspaper's co-bureau chief in South Asia from 1998 until 2002. He then joined The Magazine as a staff writer.
Before coming to The Times, Mr. Bearak worked for The Los Angeles Times as a roving national correspondent from 1982 until 1997. He was a reporter on the metro staff of The Miami Herald from 1976 until 1982.
Mr. Bearak was the co-recipient, along with his wife Celia Dugger, of the 2009 George Polk Foreign Reporting Award for coverage of the violence in Zimbabwe surrounding the disputed re-election of the authoritarian president. He won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for his work in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He won the 2001 George Polk Award for the same body of work. In 1987, Mr. Bearak was a Pulitzer finalist in the category of feature writing. He has won numerous other awards, including the Mike Berger Award for reporting about New York City, from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism.
Born in Chicago on Aug. 31, 1949, Mr. Bearak received an undergraduate degree from Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., and a master's degree in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He lives in Pelham, N.Y., with his wife, Celia W. Dugger, and their two sons Max and Sam.

Celia W. Dugger became co-bureau chief of the Johannesburg bureau of The New York Times in January 2008. Previously, Ms. Dugger was a foreign correspondent, based in New York and assigned to cover global poverty issues. She was an Edward R. Murrow Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations from 2002 to 2003. Ms. Dugger was a co-chief of the New Delhi bureau from August 1998 to July 2002, after joining The Times as a metropolitan news reporter in March 1991.
Before that, she was a reporter for The Miami Herald from 1984 and was a reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution from 1980 to 1984. She interned at The Washington Post in 1979 and 1980.
Born in Austin, Tex., on July 3, 1958, Ms. Dugger received a B.A. degree in history, magna cum laude, from Harvard College in 1980.
Ms. Dugger was the co-recipient, along with her husband Barry Bearak, of the 2009 George Polk Foreign Reporting Award for coverage of the violence in Zimbabwe surrounding the disputed re-election of the authoritarian president. In 2007 Ms. Dugger was the co-recipient, along with Donald McNeil, of an Overseas Press Club Award and the grand prize from the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards. They received both awards for their series "Diseases on the Brink," which documented how tens of millions of the world's poorest people continue to be subject to diseases that could be inexpensively cured or prevented. She also won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for international reporting in 2005. She was awarded the Livingston Award for local reporting in 1992, and in 1983 she received the George Polk Award.
Ms. Dugger is married to Barry Bearak, who was co-bureau chief with her in India and will now serve as co-bureau chief with her in Johannesburg. They have two children.