Tsvangirai: Fighting for Zimbabwe to the end

Life in pictures. Tsvangirai (left) on his way to vote in parliamentary elections in June 2000. FILE PHOTO

What you need to know:

  • Icon. For all his struggles, Tsvangirai’s death leaves Zimbabwe’s opposition without a popular champion but with numerous lessons for those in struggle against dictatorship beyond the southern African country’s boarders writes Stephen Kafeero.
  • Morgan dared to dream of democracy, freedom and justice for his country and his people despite the firm hands of dictatorship that held sway. Until his death Mr Tsvangirai remained a source of inspiration to a generation of leaders across the continent for his courage in the face of monumental odds,” Kenya’s Opposition chief Raila Odinga
  • Morgan Tsvangirai: a courageous fighter for democracy and a winner that wasn’t allowed to be. Run a good race and had a great impact on Zimbabwe. Adios amigo! Condolences to the family and people of Zimbabwe,”
    Opposition Leader Dr Kizza Besigye

The death of Morgan Tsvangirai signals a beginning to a gradual end of an era of political leaders and activists that rose up in the late ‘70s, the ‘80s and ‘90s to dedicate their lives in opposition to once African liberators who had come to power on the promise of “liberating” their countries only to propagate the same things that they had once stood in opposition to.

For nearly two decades, Mr Tsvangirai, who died February 14 aged 65 at a hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa, was the embodiment of Zimbabwe’s opposition movement against president Robert Mugabe who ruled the country since 1980 until late last year. He fought to the end.

While life may not have provided Mr Tsvangirai, a man hailed for his bravery, charisma, pro-democracy credentials, with an opportunity to prevail over a Zimbabwe in which Mr Mugabe is no longer king, but in his last days he was able to witness the overthrow of the man he had opposed for so long.
In the face of wanton state repression and fragmented oppositions, Mr Tsvangirai and others across the continent have somehow managed to keep the opposition flame burning, sometimes with their character and endurance being the only remaining defence from the total subjugation of their countrymen and women.

Whether it is in Daniel arap Moi’s Kenya that produced Raila Odinga, Museveni’s Uganda which has produced Dr Kizza Besigye, Mobutu Sese Seko’s Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) that produced Étienne Tshisekedi, Paul Kagame’s Rwanda which has produced Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza and lately Diane Shima Rwigara (both women are behind bars) to mention but a few, people have always emerged to challenge repressive regimes but few shine, endure and even survive.

The objective is usually to capture state power and implement the ideas and ideals they espouse but even if it eludes them by their own shortcomings or by other factors they soldier on in the hope of making things betters. The lessons in Tsvangiri’s case are numerous and are embedded in both his failures and successes

The man
Born on March 10, 1952, in the Gutu area of then British colony of Southern Rhodesia, Morgan Richard Tsvangirai was one of nine children of a carpenter.
He dropped out of school to support his siblings, taking on different roles as a textile factory worker and then at a mine in Bindura, north-east of capital Harare.
It was here that his political career gained ground when he was elected to the executive of the National Mine Workers Union.

After Zimbabwe achieved Black majority rule in 1980, he joined the Mugabe led Zanu-PF party and rose through the ranks to take a prominent role as a senior official.
He would also rise to become head of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. The group offered him major political capital when it severed ties with the ruling Zanu-PF.
His first major showdown with the Mugabe regime started late 1997 when he led strikes known as “stayaways” against tax increases, compelling government to cancel two tax raises and to abandon a promised tax to help fund war veterans’ pensions.

In what is widely believed to have been revenge for his role in the strikes, a group of men stormed into Tsvangirai’s office, clobbered him and attempted to throw him out of his 10th floor office window. He was not broken.
He founded the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the same year Dr Besigye issued a scathing dossier against the Movement government in 1999. MDC under Tsvangirai’s leadership, its shortcomings notwithstanding, was until last year’s ouster of Mr Mugabe by the military, the only realistic symbol and hope for Zimbabwe to take the much cherished democratic path.

So impactful was the MDC formation that it nearly swept Zanu-PF out of power in 2000. While the ruling party did not lose, its firm hold on power was, however, loosened when Zanu-PF gained 57 of the constituency-based seats, against 62 held by Zanu-PF.
The party, within months of its formation, had earlier helped to defeat the government over its referendum on constitutional reform, which included clauses allowing the seizure of White-owned farms without compensation. From opposition parties previously having little significance, the message was sent as it would play out later.

In response to Mr Tsvangiri’s rising star, president Mugabe was no exception taking the option most African leaders have taken whether in Ethiopia, Egypt, Cameroon, Togo or Uganda when faced with an imminent threaten to their stranglehold on power. Violence and brutality.
One, sadly, is not a “typical” African opposition politician without intimidation, brutal arrests, imprisonment and trumped-upcharges among other things. The journey is, to say the least, lined with thorns.
Shortly after the elections, Mr Mugabe cracked the whip. Tsvangirai was arrested shortly after the election and charged with making threats against the president.

Court dismissed the allegations but was just the start. But more arrests would follow.
In 2001 Tsvangirai made a speech condemning the Gukurahundi, a series of massacres of Ndebele civilians carried out by the Zimbabwe National Army from early 1983 to late 1987 when an estimated 20,000 people died. Tsvangirai promised to bring those responsible to justice should the MDC come to power.
He would be arrested again in 2003 after using a press conference to accuse Mugabe of using violence and intimidation to maintain his hold on government.

Fractured opposition
In 2005, the MDC was faced with the reality that many political movements and groups that pursue an objective in vain for a long time suffer.
Tsvangirai had backed boycotting the 2005 elections but a split over whether to engage or not was disastrous for his political career and the organisation he had helped to found. In the senate elections, for example, MDC candidates won only five of the 60 seats. The Tsvangirai threat was, however, far from over for Mr Mugabe and his colleagues.

In 2007, Tsvangirai was again arrested. He was taken to a special forces barracks, where he was badly beaten, causing a fractured skull and internal bleeding. A freelance cameraman, Edward Chikomba, who managed to take his photos and smuggle them out of Zimbabwe was later abducted and killed.
Still recovering from the earlier ordeal, police raided the MDC headquarters and again arrested Tsvangirai.
Denied presidency?

Tsvangirai’s supporters and observers in and out of Zimbabwe to date believe he won the first round of the 2008 presidential election against Mugabe and was only denied an opportunity to take up his seat.
The results of the presidential election were withheld for more than a month amid allegations that the government was attempting to rig the ballot.

After a recount, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission declared that none of the candidates had achieved the required 50 per cent and ordered a second round of voting.
The run-off election was marked by widespread violence. Many of Tsvangirai’s supporters were killed while thousands more were brutalised with iron bars, and machetes.

The end
The violence in no doubt eminent, Tsvangirai dropped out of the race, describing it as an illegitimate process. Many of his supporters who had endured the brutality felt betrayed. A deal brokered by then South Africa’s president Thabo Mbeki made Mr Tsvangirai prime minister and his rival Arthur Mutambara deputy prime minister.

While the deal saved Zimbabwe from a possible civil war and political violence, it did not save Mr Tsvangirai’s political career and the post deal period was marked with personal tragedies.
Days after he was sworn in, his wife, Susan Mhundwa, was killed in a car crash. The head-on collision was rumoured to be an attempt to assassinate Mr Tsvangirai, who was injured.

Mr Tsvangirai was also unable to implement considerable reforms. Then came the controversy about his romantic life with several women coming forward to say they were having affairs with Mr Tsvangirai.
The most controversial was his refusal to pay child support to one of the women. A settlement was later reached. His lavish wedding to Elizabeth Macheka in 2012 did not help matters with accusing fingers of possible corruption pointed at the politician who once lived like those he wanted to liberate.
His party was also accused of corruption and while there could have been fraud as he alleged, the loss of the 2013 elections was expected.

The once influential role Tsvangirai had played had substantially diminished that by the time the military moved against Mr Mugabe, few if any imagined him rising up and taking leadership of the country.
But for his struggle, a Zimbabwean journalist and lawyer, Gilbert Nyambabvu, in a tribute attempted to summarise, Mr Tsvangiri’s role.

“Tsvangirai teaches us this impeccable and enduring truth - it requires no perfection of character, no genius or professorial scholarship to inspire, to give hope, to lead and to serve. Zim [Zimbabwe] politics is poorer without him and yet richer for the lessons of his sacrifice.”