Zimbabwe opposition leader
Morgan Tsvangirai has died after a long battle with cancer on Wednesday in
South Africa.
His death was announced by
the vice president of his Movement for Democratic Change party Elias Mudzuri.
“I can confirm that he died
this evening. The family communicated this to me,” Mudzuri said.
Tsvangirai, 65, was the MDC
candidate in the controversial 2002 presidential, losing to Mugabe. He later
contested the first round of the 2008 presidential election as the MDC-T
candidate, taking 47.8 per cent of the vote according to official results, placing
him ahead of Mugabe, who received 43.2 per cent.
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.
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 March 6, 2009 when heading towards his rural home in
Buhera.
His first wife, Susan, was
killed in the head-on collision. As the 2017 Zimbawean coup d’etat occurred ,
Tsvangirai asked Mugabe to step down.
He also called for an
all-stakeholders meeting to chart the country’s future and an internationally
supervised process for the forthcoming elections.
He said an all-inclusive
process to take the country to legitimacy was the only way forward. On Feb.6,
it was announced that Tsvangirai was critically ill in hospital in South
Africa.
An MDC spokesperson said
that “we should brace for the worst”.
He died eight days later.
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