This is so sad. I remember traveling in Zimbabwe in about 1990, thinking that it showed a possible path for South Africa out of apartheid. It had issues with foreign exchange, and therefore some shortages, but on the whole the country seemed optimistic and vibrant. Ian Smith had been replaced by the revolution in 1980, but he and many others from his regime still lived in the country peacefully.
Racism still raised it's head sometimes. I stayed on a white owned farm, several thousand hectares, that was growing peppers and other vegetables for export. The farmer told me with confidence that blacks were only interested in football and sex, and you could never trust them. One night there was plenty.
This was ironic, because I had just come from a few days staying with a Zimbabwean university professor in Harare. He and his Canadian wife were charming and gracious, and I remember at the time thinking he might be the smartest person I've ever met. Recently I searched him on Google, and discovered that he had been nominated for a Nobel prize in science. I guess he was the smartest person I've ever met!
I traveled by bus from Bulawayo to Harare, and a young woman sat in the seat beside me. It turned out that she was a university student, studying agriculture at a university close to my Ontario home.
This was before the worst of Robert Mugabe's insanity. There was still tension between the two major tribes (Shona and Ndebele), clearly stoked by political actors, but it looked like the country was reaching to reclaim some of the greatness of the lost Empire of Great Zimbabwe (fun fact: when the country was Rhodesia and ruled by whites, it was illegal to teach that blacks had created Great Zimbabwe and it's impressive ruins, because that was clearly impossible and they would forget their place).
I wonder if he was allowed to kill himself, as an alternative to something much worse (e.g. being killed in a much more painful or gruesome way). It's clear that the truly powerful people couldn't let him testify against them.