Word: tsvangirai
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...Morgan Tsvangirai has been this close before. In 2002 he was widely thought to have won Zimbabwe's presidential election, beating the country's tyrannical leader, Robert Mugabe. But according to most independent observers, Mugabe had the results fixed, extending his tenure as Zimbabwe's only ruler since independence in 1980. Now Tsvangirai is trying to avoid being robbed again. Results of the March 29 general election have not yet been announced, but the Zimbabwe Election Commission indicates that his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has seized the parliamentary majority from Mugabe's Zanu-PF. Tsvangirai is sure...
...Tsvangirai is trying to fight Mugabe in the courts and persuade other African countries to pressure one of the continent's last Big Men--powerful figures who, like Mugabe, led their nations to independence from colonial rule but then turned into despots--to go quietly into the night. Zimbabwe's turn, says Tsvangirai, is long overdue. Speaking to TIME by phone from an undisclosed location in Zimbabwe, he said, "We need to shift from focusing on our independence and start focusing on our prosperity and freedom...
...misrule have turned Zimbabwe into an economic basket case. Inflation is 100,000%, unemployment 80%, and up to 1 million people (out of a population of 12 million) have fled to neighboring South Africa. "We are very conscious that it's very difficult to fight dictatorship with democratic means," Tsvangirai says. "We're taking on the whole edifice, a dictatorship that has been institutionalized into all the organs of state. It's a very big mountain we have to climb." If replacing Mugabe isn't hard enough, ruling the country he leaves behind will be a herculean task...
...Tsvangirai, 56, became accustomed to responsibility at an early age. The son of a carpenter and bricklayer from Gutu, south of the capital, Harare, and the eldest of nine, he quit school early to work the nickel mines of Mashonaland in northern Zimbabwe. In 10 years, he rose from plant operator to general foreman. Under the white government of the time, there was more than one way for a political aspirant to agitate for change. Mugabe fought for freedom; Tsvangirai chose the mine-workers union. In 1980, Mugabe, then 56, inaugurated a free Zimbabwe. Eight years later, Tsvangirai became secretary...
...move earned him admirers and enemies. In 1997 a group of men thought to be from Mugabe's secret service, the Central Intelligence Organization, burst into Tsvangirai's 10th-floor offices in Harare and tried to hurl him through a window, but Tsvangirai fought off his attackers. He formed the opposition MDC in 1999. Despite at least three other attempts on his life and, according to the MDC, four arrests, he has fought Mugabe in every election since...