Man who took on tyrant
MORGAN Tsvangirai was arguably Zimbabwe’s most popular politician and came within a whisker of unseating Robert Mugabe for the presidency.
But in the end, he was outmanoeuvred and ultimately outlived by his long- time nemesis.
At the peak of his career, he served as prime minister in a 2009- 13 unity government with Mugabe, cobbled together after a disputed and violent election.
However, Mugabe reneged on pledges to overhaul Zimbabwe’s security forces and Tsvangirai was soon shunted back into his familiar role in opposition.
A hefty electoral defeat in 2013, blamed in part on Tsvangirai’s involvement in two sex scandals, put paid to his dreams of one day leading the country and three years later he revealed he was being treated for colon cancer.
He died on Wednesday aged 65, after 18 months of treatment in neighbouring South Africa.
Despite their rivalry, 93year- old Mugabe harboured grudging respect for an opponent who suffered multiple abuses at the hands of security forces, including a police beating in 2007 that left him with deep gashes in his head.
As a young man, Tsvangirai worked in a rural mine to support his family – he had six children with his first wife, Susan – and cut his political teeth in the labour movement as a mine foreman.
In 1988, he became fulltime secretary- general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, which broke ranks under his leadership with Mugabe’s ZANU- PF.
Tsvangirai led paralysing strikes against tax increases in 1997 and twice forced Mugabe to withdraw announced hikes.
Buoyed by his union successes, Tsvangirai helped found the labour- backed Movement for Democratic Change ( MDC) in 1999.
In February 2000 the MDC engineered Mugabe’s first poll defeat: the rejection in a national referendum of a draft constitution that would have entrenched his presidential powers.
In March 2008 Tsvangirai beat Mugabe in a first round vote but was forced to pull out of a run- off due to a campaign of violence against his supporters.
Former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard once likened him in 2012 to prodemocracy figureheads such as South Africa’s Nelson Mandela or Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi.
But former US ambassador Christopher Dell said in a diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks in 2009: “Tsvangirai is a flawed figure, not readily open to advice, indecisive and with questionable judgment.”