Word: tsvangirai
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...State House in Harare, Zimbabwe, the unthinkable will happen. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai (pronounced CHANG-guh-rye) will officially join president Robert Mugabe as the country's prime minister - a move that comes less than a month after a spokesman for Tsvangirai's party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), likened joining Mugabe's administration to committing "political suicide." Though Tsvangirai captured 5% more votes than Mugabe in the Mar. 29 presidential election, a campaign of violence against MDC supporters and Mugabe's stark refusal to relinquish power after nearly 30 years of uninterrupted rule has brought the Zimbabwean government...
...With more than a quarter of Zimbabwe's population living as refugees outside of the country, a national unemployment rate of 94%, a cholera epidemic that has already killed 3,000 people and a currency rendered nearly useless by hyperinflation, Tsvangirai says the time for negotiation has passed. Explaining his decision to join Mugabe's government, the former mine worker compared the nation's humanitarian crisis to a bus hanging over a cliff: "If you allow it to tip over, we will all tip with it." (See pictures of political tension in Zimbabwe...
...eldest of nine children, Tsvangirai was born in 1952 in eastern Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was then known. His father was a bricklayer...
...Survived a brutal attack by Zimbabwean police in March 2007 that drew worldwide condemnation and made Tsvangirai the face of Zimbabwean resistance; he has already survived 3 assassination attempts. After Mugabe called for a June 2008 runoff election, Tsvangirai fled the country amid police attacks against his supporters. According to Amnesty International, at least 100 MDC members have been killed since the election. Citing the bloodshed, Tsvangirai later withdrew his name from the ballot, though Mugabe proceeded with the election anyways and declared himself the winner...
...been imprisoned, humiliated and accused of being a puppet of the West, but I believe he is a Zimbabwean patriot in touch with the vast majority of his people. He has shown he has stamina." - George Bizos, a South African lawyer who was Mr. Tsvangirai's advocate during his treason trial in 2004, on critics who call Tsvangirai too naive or cowardly to address Zimbabwe's political and social ills (International Herald Tribune...