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Tag: Morgan Tsvangirai

  • Zimbabwe offers to pay for Tsvangirai funeral expenses

    Zimbabwe offers to pay for Tsvangirai funeral expenses

    Zimbabwe is ready to help foot the bill for the funeral arrangements of Morgan Tsvangirai in a tribute to the opposition leader who died after a long battle with cancer, a government spokesman said on Thursday.

    Tsvangirai’s death on Wednesday in a South African hospital cast his Movement for Democratic Change party into unknown territory less than three months after the army ousted Zimbabwe’s veteran ruler Robert Mugabe.

    Arguably Zimbabwe’s most popular politician, Tsvangirai’s career was ultimately defined by his tussles, bother literal and figurative, with 93-year-old Mugabe, who resigned after a de facto coup in December.

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    “The Zimbabwean Embassy in Pretoria has been instructed to help in any way appropriate in the circumstances, including assuming the costs that are attendant to the proper handling of the body of the late (Tsvangirai),” said George Charamba, who is also the presidential spokesman.

    Zimbabwe’s new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, has made no public statement yet on the former trade union leader’s death but postponed a trip to Bulawayo in the south of Zimbabwe due to other “pressing commitments”, the state-owned Herald newspaper said.

    Elections are due within the next six months in Zimbabwe and Tsvangirai’s illness and now death leaves his party in disarray, to the advantage of the ruling ZANU-PF party, now led by Mnangagwa, Mugabe’s former deputy.

    NAN

  • Zimbabwean opposition leaders to challenge Mugabe in election

    Two of Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe’s chief rivals said on Wednesday they were allying to deny the 93-year-old another term in office.

    Morgan Tsvangirai, 65, who was Zimbabwe’s prime minister in an uneasy coalition government with Mugabe from 2009 until 2013, said he and Joice Mujuru, who was Mugabe’s vice president for a decade until she was fired in 2014, would seek to form a coalition government to bring political change in the Southern African nation.

    “This is just the beginning of the building blocks towards establishing a broad alliance to confront ZANU PF between now and the next election in 2018,” Tsvangirai said, referring to the party led by Africa’s oldest leader.

    Mugabe, one of the last of the generation of African nationalists that sought the overthrow of white colonialists, has run Zimbabwe since 1980, Reuters reported.

    He was first prime minister then, in 1987, became president.

    In December his ZANU PF party confirmed him as its candidate for the next presidential election expected in mid-2018, when he will be 94.

    Tsvangirai, a three time loser to Mugabe, said he expected similar deals to the one with Mujuru would be struck with other political groups.

    Tsvangirai, who lost the 2013 presidential vote against Mugabe, is now leading MDC-T, a faction of the Movement for Democratic Change, that was formed after the party was weakened by splits over how to confront Mugabe.

     

     

  • Tsvangirai hints at anti-Mugabe protests

    Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, on Friday said his party could roll out protests against President Robert Mugabe’s government over its inability to improve a flagging economy.

    Tsvangirai has led the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) since 1999 and in April he sacked his secretary general who was calling for him to step down after losing a third election to Mugabe in 2013, which some Western observers said was rigged.

    Tsvangirai, a former trade union leader, said the country had an unsustainably high unemployment rate, estimated above 80 percent, which forced many people into informal employment.

    After posting strong growth during four years of Mugabe and Tsvangirai’s unity government between 2009-2013, the economy is suffering a dollar crunch due to lack of foreign investment, forcing many firms to shut down or keep workers without pay.

    “We are going to mobilise. The form and content is left to the MDC to plan and execute,” Tsvangirai told journalists.

    A senior MDC official told Reuters mass protests were “very much an option.”

    Previous anti-Mugabe protests, the last one in 2007, have been met by a heavy police and military resistance, but Tsvangirai said the veteran leader would be making a mistake by setting security forces against the public.

    “Let him be warned that if we cannot live as free men and women in our country of birth, we will rather die as free people,” said Tsvangirai.

  • Zimbabwe holds presidential election

    Zimbabwe holds presidential election

    Zimbabweans are voting in fiercely contested presidential and parliamentary elections which have already been hit by fraud allegations, BBC reports.

    President Robert Mugabe, 89, has said he will step down after 33 years in power if he and his Zanu-PF party lose.

    Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has accused Zanu-PF of doctoring the electoral roll, a charge it has denied.

    Campaigning was mostly peaceful, with few reports of intimidation.

    Zanu-PF and the MDC have shared an uneasy coalition government since 2009 under a deal brokered to end the deadly violence that erupted after a disputed presidential poll the previous year.

    Mr. Tsvangirai won the most votes in the first round, but pulled out of the run-off with Mr. Mugabe because of attacks on his supporters.

    The government has barred Western observers from monitoring Wednesday’s elections, but the African Union (AU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), as well as local organisations, have been accredited.

    Polls opened at 07:00 local time (05:00 GMT) and are due to close at 17:00 GMT.

    The turnout is expected to be high among the 6.4 million people registered to vote, with tens of thousands of people attending rallies in recent weeks. Results are expected within five days.

     

     

  • Zimbabwe gets new constitution

    Zimbabwe gets new constitution

    Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe signed a new constitution into law on Wednesday, replacing a 33-year-old document forged in the dying days of British colonial rule and paving the way for elections later this year.

    The constitution, approved overwhelmingly in a referendum in March, clips the powers of the president and imposes a two-term limit.

    However, it does not apply retroactively so the 89-year-old Mugabe could extend his 33 years in power by another decade, Reuters says.

    A beaming Mugabe, flanked by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, his main political rival, and deputy president Joice Mujuru, signed multiple copies of the charter at State House in the capital, Harare.

    Aides and other politicians present at the signing broke into applause the moment the veteran leader put down his pen.

    The constitution was formed as part of a power-sharing deal between Mugabe and Tsvangirai after disputed and violent elections in 2008.

    The five-year coalition parliament formed under the same agreement expires on June 29, and parliamentary and presidential elections should follow within 90 days of that date.