Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Tsvangerai receives praise that eluded him in life
WHAT a week it was after Morgan Tsvangirai died. There were daily church services, prayers at his home, rallies, singing and orchestrated chants after the MDC president died in Johannesburg following a two-year battle with colon cancer.
Crowds in red T- shirts, caps, gowns and head dresses holding huge posters of Tsvangirai above their heads wept, laughed, sang, praised his life and expressed gratitude for leading them against Zanu-PF.
They escorted his hearse to their party headquarters at 44 Nelson Mandela Street. Traffic was blocked for hours by thousands of supporters in the city centre. Although people were mourning Tsvangirai’s death, it was also a celebration of his life.
Tsvangirai led the largest revolt in modern Zimbabwe’s history, first by reviving the trade union movement with his old pal Gibson Sibanda, from Bulawayo.
The two led strikes and anti- government demonstrations against then- president Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party.
They initiated the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and ensured it was independent of Zanu-PF and then realised a political party was needed and so the MDC was born.
The MDC was the first political party since independence with enough muscle to seriously challenge Zanu-PF in its stronghold within the majority Shona tribe and came within a whisker of winning the first elections it fought in 2000.
The new Zanu-PF government paid his final hospital bill in Johannesburg, flew his body home on SAA, honoured his coffin at military headquarters, supported his family emotionally and financially and ensured all rallies and crowded church services took place securely and without interruption.
Some at the final rally last Sunday said they remembered that terrible night in 2007 when Tsvangirai arrived outside the Harare Magistrate’s Court on a 30-ton truck with about 50 MDC colleagues including young and old women.
All had been beaten. Some were bleeding. They had been arrested at a prayer meeting which the police said was an illegal gathering.
Tsvangirai, 65, was buried in his village 200km south of Harare alongside his wife, Susan, who died instantly, next to him in a traffic accident in 2009.
Trade unionists and opposition politicians from Zambia and Namibia were at the burial, and there was a message of condolence from Cyril Ramaphosa.
One prominent mourner at the burial was South African analyst Moeletsi Mbeki, who supported Tsvangirai politically for years.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was officiating at a key business event in Bulawayo, was represented by cabinet minister Oppah Muchinguri, who sang Tsvangirai’s praises.