Morgan Tsvangirai

Morgan Richard Tsvangirai (/ˈtʃæŋɡɪraɪ/; Shona pronunciation: [ts͎a.ᵑɡi.ra.i]; 10 March 1952 – 14 February 2018) was a Zimbabwean politician who was Prime Minister of Zimbabwe from 2009 to 2013. He was president of the Movement for Democratic Change, and later the Movement for Democratic Change – Tsvangirai (MDC–T), and a key figure in the opposition to then-president Robert Mugabe.

Tsvangirai was the MDC candidate in the controversial 2002 Zimbawean presidential election, losing to Mugabe. He later contested the first round of the 2008 Zimbawean 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. 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.

Tsvangirai 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. As the 2017 Zimbabwean coup d'état occurred, Tsvangirai asked Mugabe to step down. He hoped that an all-inclusive stakeholders' meeting to chart the country's future and an internationally supervised process for the forthcoming elections would create a process that would take the country towards a legitimate regime. On 14 February 2018, Tsvangirai died at the age of 65 after reportedly suffering from colorectal cancer.