Despite this, he continually found himself out-manoeuvred by Robert Mugabe who refused to cede any power. Tsvangirai was eventually sworn in as prime minister but found it impossible to achieve any meaningful reforms. However he played a part in paving the way for the overthrow of Mugabe in 2017.
Morgan Richard Tsvangirai was born on 10 March 1952 in the Gutu area of Southern Rhodesia, one of nine children of a carpenter. He died on 14 February 2018 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Tsvangirai married his first wife, Susan, in 1978. The couple had six children during their 31-year marriage, which ended with her death in the 2009 car crash. 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.
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. 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.
When Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980 he joined Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and rose to become a senior official. He was then aged 28. In December 1997 and early 1998, he led a series of strikes, known as "stayaways", against tax increases, which brought the country to a standstill. These forced Mugabe's government to cancel two tax rises and to abandon a promised tax to help fund war veterans' pensions.
In apparent revenge for his part in defeating Mugabe and the war veterans, a group of men burst into Tsvangirai's office, hit him on the head with a metal bar and attempted to throw him out of his 10th floor office window.
REST IN PEACE SIR.
GUYS, PAY YOUR TRIBUTES.
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