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Morgan Tsvangirai obituary
Founder and leader of Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change party
who battled Mugabe for years
Stephen Chan
Wed 14 Feb 2018 22.57 GMT
Last modified on Thu 15 Feb 2018 10.38 GMT
With the death of Morgan Tsvangirai at the age of 65 from cancer,
Zimbabwe has lost a man of conspicuous courage. He took the country’s political scene by storm, becoming president Robert Mugabe’s only
serious rival for the better part of two decades, and campaigned until
the end for a better country with greater democracy and transparency.
Tsvangirai became prime minister of Zimbabwe in September 2008 as part
of a power-sharing agreement with Mugabe. He was sworn in the
following year, and remained in office till 2013, but the path to get
there had been long and vexed.
Tsvangirai’s decision to help found, then lead, the Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) in 1999 decisively tilted the political
struggle in Zimbabwe from one between civil society and government to
one that was based on a contest between political parties. He was
arrested in both 2000 and 2003 on unsuccessful treason charges and, in
2007, was badly beaten while in custody. Even his bitterest enemies
and detractors acknowledged his courage and determination.
Born in Gutu, Masvingo, in the south-east of the country, Tsvangirai
grew up in a poor family, one of nine children of Chibwe, a
bricklayer, and his wife, Lydia, and never attained the educational qualifications required for university study. Much later, when already
in political life, he attended Harvard’s Kennedy School programme for executive leadership, and tried to make up for his lack of extended
education by assiduous reading. He had a liking for political
biographies, and his hero was Nelson Mandela.
Mugabe had been a hero too, but when Tsvangirai began his career as a
union official, first as vice president of the Associated Mine Workers
Union in the late 1980s, and particularly as secretary-general of the
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions from 1988 to 2000, he began
disputing Mugabe’s decision to implement economic structural
adjustment programmes that badly affected his members. He was beaten
by Mugabe’s thugs at this time, most spectacularly in 1997 when
assailants tried to throw him out of a skyscraper window. However,
they failed to intimidate him and, by the second half of the 1990s, he
had become a formidable opponent of Mugabe and his Zanu-PF government.
Morgan Tsvangirai addresses an election rally in 2005
Tsvangirai played a leading part in the formation of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) and was its chair in 1997-98. This was a convention of the major civil society groups in Zimbabwe which fought
for constitutional liberalism.
Once the MDC was in operation, its rapid growth and capacity shook
Zanu-PF, and Mugabe lost a referendum on constitutional reform in 2000
because of MDC opposition. His response was to immediately launch
invasions of farms held by white landowners, both to assert his
authority and to fulfil his life’s dream of a completed nationalism.
However, this began the precipitate decline of the Zimbabwean economy.
As Mugabe became more repressive of dissent, Tsvangirai’s star rose
among the disaffected of Zimbabwe and as a darling of the west.
Mugabe accused Tsvangirai of being a puppet of the west, a clone of
Tony Blair, and fought his electoral campaigns on the negative
platform of avoiding the return of colonialism with Tsvangirai as the
frontman of the old powers. But he also cheated, and the rigging of
the 2002 presidential elections was sufficient to deny Tsvangirai
victory.
The extent of rigging in the 2005 parliamentary elections is disputed,
but the MDC retained a powerful voice in parliament. However, it was
the intensity of events surrounding the two electoral rounds in 2008
that saw crisis, stalemate and finally a compromise breakthrough in
Zimbabwe. Mugabe and Zanu-PF had been certain they would win, and the
extent of MDC support surprised even Tsvangirai. Most objective
commentators agreed that he took sufficient votes to become president,
but the protracted process of counting allowed the government to
ensure sufficient scaling down of the figures to force a runoff. The
build-up to it was one of greatly increased state violence, forcing
Tsvangirai to withdraw and for Mugabe to claim victory.
That “victory” convinced no one, and even the previously tolerant presidents in other southern African countries began turning against
Mugabe. Against this backdrop, South African president Thabo Mbeki’s mediation led finally to the sort of compromise achieved at the
beginning of 2008 in Kenya, with a murky share of the spoils between
both a president and a prime minister.
Tsvangirai negotiated well in the face of pressure from Mbeki to come
to an early agreement, and immediately afterwards offered olive
branches to a glum Mugabe. The challenges of economic recovery facing Tsvangirai were immense and he confronted them, knowing also that many
in Zimbabwe, even among his own supporters, questioned whether the man
who had been the fully courageous opposition leader could muster the
capacity to restore a complex, broken nation. Many had blamed the
split in the MDC in 2006 on his heavy-handed and maladroit handling of
internal dissatisfactions with his leadership; and it was also thought
that, had he been more generous by way of political concessions to the breakaway group, he would have won the 2008 election by a large enough
margin to make subsequent scaling down of the figures far more
difficult, if not impossible.
He became the prime minister in an uneasy coalition. Zanu-PF threw a
multitude of obstacles in Tsvangirai’s way. The core triumph of his
party’s role in government was the stabilisation of an economy hit by mega-inflation. Much of this was due to the work of the MDC finance
minister, Tendai Biti, and his adoption of the US dollar as the
national currency. Money could no longer be printed at will or on a
whim. The role of the prime minister, however, was less clearcut.
Subject to the president, Tsvangirai’s scope for radical change was
limited. However, since the MDC commanded a slim parliamentary
majority, there was the possibility of a raft of legislative reform.
None, however was forthcoming, and it must be said that Tsvangirai
missed one of the few golden chances available to him.
President Robert Mugabe and MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai pictured in 2008
He had a core support in Zimbabwe’s cities. Even though often
despairing of Mugabe and Zanu-PF, the rural poor were never fully won
over by Tsvangirai. The influx of food aid to a hungry and
malnourished rural population was exploited by Zanu-PF, and Tsvangirai
never attempted to plan or argue for the genuine land reform and
restoration of rural infrastructure that Mugabe’s rushed efforts let
fall by the wayside. Above all, the presidents of the southern African
region were never persuaded to give unstinting support to Tsvangirai,
and his diplomatic overtures to them were under-thought and
unsuccessful.
The death of his wife, Susan Mhundwa, in 2009 – in a suspicious car
accident – robbed him of close emotional support. She was extremely
popular with the MDC rank and file as a person of immense personal
compassion. Tsvangirai’s succession of subsequent affairs and
involvements robbed him of some of his patina as a man uncorrupted by
personal needs and vanities. The slide into the benefits of office
afflicted the MDC parliamentarians, many of whom did not fulfil their
roles as MPs with diligence – without any programme of discipline from
the prime minister. Above all, however, the fall from power of Mbeki
in South Africa meant that there was no regional enforcer of the terms
and conditions of the coalition, some of which concerned electoral
reform in time for the 2013 elections. As a result, Tsvangirai and the
MDC entered those elections with bravado but without assurances of a
properly level playing field. As it was, his lacklustre performance as
prime minister probably acted against him as much as any electoral irregularities benefited Zanu-PF.
Having resumed his role as leader of the opposition in 2013,
Tsvangirai was powerless or unwilling to prevent the splits that
developed within the MDC. The weakened MDC was not therefore the standard-bearer of revolt against Mugabe. That was left to informal
civil society groups such as This Flag, and, above all, to elements
within Zanu-PF itself, as ambitious members began to seek out the
succession from an ailing and ageing president. The power struggle
within Zanu-PF resulted first in the conspicuous casualty of
vice-president Joice Mujuru, but Tsvangirai was unable to accommodate
her and her followers in an opposition he led. When, finally, Mugabe’s ambitious wife, Grace, engineered the overthrow of vice president
Emmerson Mnangagwa, using the same tactics she had used against
Mujuru, it was the army – with support from a broad cross-section of
Zanu-PF – that finally removed Mugabe from office. It was an
indictment of the opposition that they had been ineffectual in their
primary aim.
By this stage, Tsvangirai was clearly suffering from cancer. He did
not move to appoint or nominate or even suggest a successor, so that a
divided opposition – even one seeking to plaster over its cracks –
will contest the 2018 elections. And it will be one without the
charisma he never lost. The sight of Tsvangirai on the hustings was
always an inspirational one. He could move huge crowds and his message
was always one of reform, democracy and empowerment. As the figurehead
of aspiration in the politics of Zimbabwe he was beyond compare.
Morgan Tsvangirai addresses supporters at an MDC rally in April 2000
All who met him in those early days of opposition were also struck by
a fundamental decency and gentleness. In 2005, when he was facing
treason charges and the prospect of a rigged election, I wrote a book
with him which was subsequently distributed to international
observers. After our last writing session we relaxed in his garden and
he pointed at a beautiful tree that, every year, when it flowered,
gave him terrible hay fever with its copious pollen. He intuited
immediately the unspoken question. “But cut it down? No no ... no. How
does one cut down something of such beauty?”
It is not a usual thing to write about political figures anywhere,
never mind in the murky world of Zimbabwean politics, but Tsvangirai
aspired to build a beautiful Zimbabwe when all around him were those
lopping off its branches. His idealism was counterpointed by his
naivety in office. His determination and courage were counterpointed
by his stubbornness and inability to sustain coalitions of those
opposed to Mugabe. He never learned to tame his impulsiveness and
learn the protracted arts of tip-toeing through a minefield of
different agendas in governmental or opposition coalitions with checks
and balances and vexed conditionalities that, without goodwill, made
any progress impossible.
His legacy is that he stood up to face Mugabe and his huge securitised machinery of control and patronage. He was a David figure who, in the
shadow of Goliath, did not break and run. His immense courage as the
first opposition leader of stature in Zimbabwean history will be
forever a testament to him, but not his accomplishments as a
beleaguered prime minister.
Tsvangirai is survived by the six children he had with his first wife,
Susan, whom he married in 1978. After her death in 2009, Locardia
Karimatsenga claimed he had married her in a traditional ceremony in
2010. He formally married Elizabeth Macheka in 2012 and is survived by
her.
Morgan Richard Tsvangirai, trade unionist and politician, born 10
March 1952; died 14 February 2018
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Steve Hayes
http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
http://khanya.wordpress.com
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