Tsvangirai succumbs to cancer
MDC leader was the face of Zimbabwe’s powerless
Harare – Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai died yesterday after a long battle with cancer, casting his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party into the unknown less than three months after the army ousted longtime ruler Robert Mugabe.
Tsvangirai, who died in South Africa, was 65.
“I can confirm that he died this evening [last night]. The family communicated this to me,” MDC vice-president Elias Mudzuri told Reuters.
Arguably Zimbabwe’s most popular politician, the mining union leader’s career was ultimately defined by his tussles – bother literal and figurative – with 93-year-old Mugabe, who resigned after a de facto coup in December.
Elections are due within the next six months and Tsvangirai’s illness and now death leaves his party in disarray, to the advantage of the ruling Zanu-PF party, now led by former Mugabe deputy Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Although Tsvangirai suffered serious physical abuse at the hands of security forces, including serious head injuries in police custody in 2007, he went on to form an uneasy working relationship with Mugabe in a 2009/2013 coalition government.
Tsvangirai was the face of Zimbabwe’s downtrodden opposition for decades.
Jail, beatings by pro-regime police and perennial disappointment at the ballot box never dented Tsvangirai’s desire to move the country past the decades of autocratic rule by Mugabe and his acolytes.
He went on to form a unity government with Mugabe after disputed elections in 2008 in which he beat the veteran autocrat in the first round of the vote.
But violence against Tsvangirai’s supporters, which he claimed cost 200 lives, prompted him to pull out of the runoff.