BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY Morgan Richard Tsvangirai (/ˈtʃæŋɡɪraɪ/, Shona: [ts͎aŋɡira.i];[need tone] born 10 March 1952) is a Zimbabwean politician who was Prime Minister of Zimbabwe from 2009 to 2013.[1] He is (suspended as of 26 April 2014) President of the Movement for Democratic Change – Tsvangirai (MDC-T) and a key figure in the opposition to President Robert Mugabe.
Tsvangirai was the MDC candidate in the controversial 2002 presidential election, losing to Mugabe. He later contested the first round of the 2008 presidential election as the MDC-T candidate, taking 47.8% of the vote according to official results, placing him ahead of Mugabe, who received 43.2%. Tsvangirai claimed to have won a majority and said that the results could have been altered in the month between the election and the reporting of official results.[2] Tsvangirai initially planned to run in the second round against Mugabe, but withdrew shortly before it was held, arguing that the election would not be free and fair due to widespread violence and intimidation by government supporters that led to the deaths of 200 people.
He sustained non-life-threatening injuries in a car crash on 6 March 2009 when heading towards his rural home in Buhera. His first wife, Susan Tsvangirai, was killed in the head-on collision.[3]
Early life and family
Morgan R. Tsvangirai was born in the Buhera area in then Southern Rhodesia, to Karanga parentage through his father Dzingirai-Chibwe Tsvangirai and mother Lydia Tsvangirai (née Lydia Zvaipa). He is the eldest of nine children, and the son of a communal farmer, mine worker, carpenter and bricklayer. He did his primary education at St. Marks Goneso Primary School Hwedza, and transferred by his father to Chikara Primary School Gutu then he went to Silveira. He did his secondary education at Gokomere High School. After leaving school with 8 Ordinary levels, in April 1972 he landed his first job as a trainee weaver for Elastics & Tapes textile factory in Mutare. In 1974 an old school mate from Silveira encouraged Morgan to apply for an advertised job as an apprentice for Anglo America's Bindura's Nickel Mine in Mashonaland Central. He spent ten years at the mine, rising from plant operator to plant supervisor. His current rural home is Buhera, which is 220 km south east of Harare.
Tsvangirai married his first wife, Susan, in 1978.[4] The couple had six children during their 31-year marriage, which ended with her death in the 2009 car crash.[4] In 2011 Locardia Karimatsenga (born 1970) claimed that Tsvangirai married her in a customary ceremony in 2010. She had been seeking maintenance payments of £10,000 a month to keep up the lifestyle to which, she said in court papers, she had become accustomed. A year later, his love life made headlines again after a 23-year-old woman bore him a child and he refused to support the baby until she threatened to take him to court.[5] He married his second wife, Elizabeth Macheka (born 1976) mother of three, on 15 September 2012.[6]
Political activism
At independence in 1980 Morgan Tsvangirai, who was then aged 28, joined the then popular and victorious ZANU-PF party led by the man who was later to become his biggest political rival, Robert Mugabe. Tsvangirai is reported to have been an ardent Mugabe supporter and to have risen "swiftly in the hierarchy",[7] eventually becoming one of the party's senior officials.[8] He is also known for his role in the Zimbabwean trade union movement, where he held the position of branch chairman of the Associated Mine Workers' Union and was later elected into the executive of the National Mine Workers' Union. In 1989 he became the Secretary-General of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, the umbrella trade union organisation of Zimbabwe.
Tsvangirai led the ZCTU away from the ruling ZANU-PF. As his power and that of the movement grew, his relationship with the Government deteriorated. He has survived at least three assassination attempts, including one in 1997 where unknown assailants burst into his tenth story office and tried to throw him out of the window. However, associating himself with Tony Blair's party's intentions towards Zimbabwe, Norway and other foreign governments in Europe, as well as BSMG in London (Britain's top PR and political consultancy firm, now merged with Weber Shandwick) Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change was caught on hidden camera agreeing to the "elimination-assassination" of President Robert Mugabe before he went to the polls in 2002[9][10]
Criticism of Operation Gukurahundi
Three years after coming to power, Robert Mugabe ordered the Fifth Brigade, a military unit specially trained by North Korea, to a massacre in Matabeleland in co-operation with the Minister of Defence Enos Nkala, led by Air Marshal Perence Shiri because of suspicion of an alleged counter-revolution being planned by Joshua Nkomo. The operation was code named Gukurahundi. Tsvangirai has periodically toured the mass graves of the victims in Tsholotsho, Kezi, Lupane, Nkayi and other places in rural Matabeleland. Addressing villagers in Maphisa in 2001 he said:
This was a barbaric operation by ZANU-PF. It should never have happened. It was a sad episode in our history and the MDC will obviously want to see justice being done if it comes to power. Such human rights abuses should be revisited and those responsible will have to account for their actions.[11][12]
National Constitutional Assembly
The National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), established in 1997, was chaired by a Moderator, and its day-to-day executive was run by a Task Force. Tsvangirai chaired the Task Force, as founding convener Tawanda Mutasah (succeeded by Bishop Nemapare) served as Moderator. Serving with Tsvangirai in the Task Force were activists that includedLovemore Madhuku, Welshman Ncube, Everjoice Win, Brian Kagoro, Tendai Biti and Priscilla Misihairabwi. The NCA gathered individual Zimbabwean citizens and civic organisations including labour movements, student and youth groups, women's groups, churches, business groups and human rights organisations. These individuals and groups formed the NCA to campaign for constitutional reform after realising that the political, social and economic problems affecting Zimbabwe were mainly a result of the defectiveLancaster House constitution and could only be resolved through a new and democratic constitution. Tsvangirai stepped down after being elected president of the MDC.[13]
The Solidar Silver Rose Award
In 2001 Morgan Tsvangirai was awarded the Solidar Silver Rose Award. The award was for outstanding achievement by an individual or organisation in the activities of civil society and in bringing about a fairer and more just society.
At a crucial period for world stability, the Solidar Silver Rose Award winners "show the positive change that can be brought about by determined individuals and organizations", the citation read.[14]
Movement for Democratic Change
In 1999 Tsvangirai founded and organised the Movement for Democratic Change, an opposition party opposed to President Robert Mugabe and the ZANU-PF ruling party. He helped to defeat the February 2000 constitutional referendum, successfully campaigning against it along with the National Constitutional Assembly.
Tsvangirai lost the March 2002 presidential election to Mugabe. The election provoked widespread allegations[by whom?] that Mugabe had rigged the election through the use of violence, media bias, and manipulation of the voters' roll leading to abnormally high pro-Mugabe turnout in some areas.[citation needed]
Arrests and political intimidation
Tsvangirai was arrested after the 2000 elections and charged with treason; this charge was later dismissed.[15][16] In 2004, Tsvangirai was acquitted of treason for an alleged plot to assassinate Mugabe in the run-up to the 2002 presidential elections. George Bizos, a South African human rights lawyer who was part of the team that defended Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu in the famous South African Rivonia Trial in 1964, headed Morgan Tsvangirai's defence team.
October 2000 arrest
Tsvangirai was arrested after the government alleged that he had threatened President Robert Mugabe. The Movement for Democratic Change leader had told 40,000 supporters at a rally in Harare that if Mr Mugabe did not want to step down before the next elections scheduled for 2002 "we will remove you violently." However, Tsvangirai said that he was giving a warning to President Mugabe to consider history. "There is a long line of dictators who have refused to go peacefully – and the people have removed them violently," he said.
The courts dismissed the charges.[17]
June 2003 arrest
In May 2003 Tsvangirai was arrested on a Friday afternoon shortly after giving a press conference, the government alleged he had incited violence. In the press conference he had said:
From Monday, 2 June, up to today, 6 June, Mugabe was not in charge of this country. He was busy marshaling his forces of repression against the sovereign will of the people of Zimbabwe. However, even in the context of the brutalities inflicted upon them, the people's spirit of resistance was not broken. The sound of gunfire will never silence their demand for change and freedom.[18]
March 2007 arrest and beating
On 11 March 2007 a day after his 55th birthday, Tsvangirai was arrested on his way to a prayer rally in the Harare township of Highfield.[19]
His wife was allowed to see him in prison, after which she reported that he had been heavily tortured by police, resulting in deep gashes on his head and a badly swollen eye.[20]The event garnered an international outcry.
He was allegedly tortured by a Special Forces of Zimbabwe unit based at the army's Cranborne Barracks on 12 March 2007 after being arrested and held at Machipisa Police Station in the Highfield suburb of Harare.
| “ | Using sjamboks, army belts and gun butts, the soldiers attacked Tsvangirai until he passed out. One of the soldiers poured cold water all over Tsvangirai to resuscitate him. Tsvangirai regained consciousness again at around 1:30 am... One vicious woman was left to work on him. She removed an army belt from her waist and used it to assault Tsvangirai until he passed out again. | ” |
— Police Officer, Mail and Guardian[21]
|
"He was in bad shape, he was swollen very badly. He was bandaged on the head. You couldn't distinguish between the head and the face and he could not see properly," Innocent Chagonda, an attorney, told Reuters after visiting a Harare police station where Tsvangirai was being held.[22]
A Zimbabwean freelance cameraman, Edward Chikombo, smuggled television pictures of Morgan Tsvangirai's injuries following the beating.
Chikombo was later abducted from his home in the Glenview township outside Harare. His body was discovered the next weekend near the village of Darwendale, 50 miles (80 km) west of Harare.
There has been a pattern of abductions and punishment beatings where scores of opposition activists and their relatives have been attacked by government-sanctioned gangs using unmarked cars and police-issue weapons.[23]
According to lawyer Tendai Biti, the Secretary-General of the MDC and an MP for Harare East, who was arrested along with Tsvangirai, Tsvangirai suffered a cracked skull and "must have passed out at least three times." Tsvangirai was subsequently admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) at a local hospital.[24] Reports from BBC News indicate that Tsvangirai suffered from a fractured skull and received blood transfusions for internal bleeding. Although the incident was a clear case of political violence, Tsvangirai has since had very little political support from surrounding African countries.[25]
Raid at MDC headquarters
Tsvangirai was released, but on 28 March 2007, Zimbabwean police stormed the Movement for Democratic Change, 44 Harvest House, national headquarters and once again arrested him, hours before he was to speak with the media about recent political violence in the country.[26]
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