Mnangagwa pays tribute to late ‘son of the soil’
ZIMBABWEAN President Emmerson Mnangagwa has sent his condolences to the family of Morgan Tsvangirai.
He said the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) had dedicated his life to trying to ensure free and fair elections.
Mnangagwa’s Zanu-PF and its security sector arrested, beat, tortured Tsvangirai and harassed him regularly from 1989 onwards. But the new Zimbabwean president, who emerged after a coup in November to replace Robert Mugabe, has changed the political vocabulary in Zimbabwe.
And hate speech appears, so far, to have disappeared, even from the subservient state media, such as the main daily paper The Herald and the nation’s only TV station.
Mnangagwa, reaching out to the international community time and again since he came into office, said the MDC leader, who died in Joburg on Wednesday, was a politician who “reached out across the political divide”.
Tsvangirai had agreed to enter into a government of national unity in 2009, which rescued bankrupt Zimbabwe from collapse after the Zanu-PF administration wrecked the local currency, which had to be abandoned when it became worthless.
“We will all remember him for his insistence on free, fair and peaceful elections, which we must validate in the forthcoming 2018 elections… In a tribute to him and our democracy,” Mnangagwa wrote on his Facebook page.
He said the government would look to help with funeral arrangements to suit the family. Mnangagwa went to visit Tsvangirai last month, at the MDC leader’s request, just before he returned to South Africa for further medical treatment for colon cancer that he developed two years ago.
At the meeting, Mnangagwa said the government would honour any and all financial obligations to Tsvangirai from when he served as prime minister of the inclusive government from 2009 to 2013.
Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga, who retired as head of the armed forces after the coup, sent a Twitter feed tribute to Tsvangirai, calling him a “great son of the soil”.
Stuart Doran, whose recently published Kingdom, Power, Glory, which tells the story of how Mugabe began his pursuit of power, paid tribute to the MDC leader.
“Morgan Tsvangirai was the symbol and front man of a generation that dared to stand up to Mugabe, armed only with dreams of a better life.” – Foreign Service