Morgan Tsvangirai — Zimbabwean led nation’s opposition, challenged Mugabe
JOHANNESBURG — Zimbabwe’s veteran opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has died at age 65, bringing an end to his long campaign to lead his country. He had been seeking treatment in neighboring South Africa after announcing in 2016 that he had colon cancer.
Tsvangirai for years was the most potent challenger to longtime ruler Robert Mugabe and even became prime minister in an uncomfortable coalition government for a few years. Mugabe resigned in November after pressure from the military and ruling party, and this year’s election will be the first without the man who led the southern African nation for 37 years.
In January, Tsvangirai suggested that he would be stepping down, saying he was “looking at the imminent prospects of us as the older generation leaving the levers of leadership to allow the younger generation to take forward this huge task.”
Tsvangirai came tantalizingly close to the presidency in 2008 when he won the most votes in the election. But the results, delayed nearly a month as Mugabe’s officials “verified” the count, gave him just 47 percent, shy of the more than 50 percent majority needed to win outright. Tsvangirai boycotted the runoff, citing widespread violence against his supporters, handing Mugabe the victory.
Negotiations then led to the coalition government, an uneasy alliance that ended in 2013 when Mugabe won elections amid charges of intimidation and rigging.
Being Mugabe’s most prominent opponent brought Tsvangirai considerable hardship. He was jailed several times and charged with treason. He was severely beaten by Zimbabwean authorities, suffering a fractured skull and internal bleeding, in 2007 when he and more than a dozen other leaders of his party, the Movement for Democratic Change, were arrested and beaten with gun butts, belts and whips. In an earlier incident, Tsvangirai was almost thrown from his office window by a government agent.
Born March 10, 1952, in the rural Buhera area southeast of the capital, Harare, Tsvangirai was the oldest of nine children. After graduation from secondary school, he worked at the Bindura Nickel Mine for 10 years, eventually becoming plant supervisor. It was during the years of the nationalist war against white minority-ruled Rhodesia. Tsvangirai later said he did not join the guerrilla fighters because his salary supported the education of his younger siblings.
When Zimbabwe became independent in 1980, Tsvangirai joined Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party and became active in trade unions, rising to become secretary general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. The labor organization had been a rubber stamp supporter of Mugabe and ZANU-PF, but under Tsvangirai’s leadership it became a vocal critic of Mugabe’s government.
In 1999 he founded the MDC, which attracted support from blacks and whites and in rural and urban areas. The party quickly became a serious challenge to Mugabe’s party.
Tsvangirai was also leader of the National Constitutional Assembly, a coalition of civil society groups that successfully campaigned in a 2000 referendum against a new constitution they alleged gave Mugabe too many powers. Most of the organization’s leaders joined Tsvangirai’s MDC.
Nine months after its formation, the MDC won 57 seats in parliament, five short of the ruling party’s 62, the first time Mugabe’s party came close to losing its parliamentary majority.
During his time as prime minister, Tsvangirai was credited with bringing stability and international goodwill. His long struggle as Mugabe’s main challenger was credited with helping to keep a measure of democratic space open in Zimbabwe.
“Thank you for making it possible for people like me to find the courage to say enough is enough,” said pastor Evan Mawarire, who led large antigovernment protests in 2016. “Zimbabwe owes you a great debt.”