Posted on 03/08/2002 12:43:53 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
HARARE, Zimbabwe - From factory laborer and mine worker to trade union leader and presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai has risen from obscurity to pose the first real challenge to one of Africa's last and most resilient old-style rulers.
Tsvangirai, head of the labor-backed Movement for Democratic Change, who turns 50 on Sunday, is expected to benefit from a massive protest vote against the increasingly autocratic President Robert Mugabe in presidential elections this weekend.
He founded his party in 1999 after urban unrest in which Mugabe deployed troops for the first time to crush food riots triggered by soaring inflation.
Mugabe has ruled mostly unchallenged for 22 years since the former Rhodesia became independent Zimbabwe. But in February 2000, the new opposition and a coalition of labor and civic groups overwhelmingly defeated a constitutional referendum that would have given the president new powers. It was Mugabe's only electoral defeat.
Tsvangirai led the opposition in parliamentary elections later that year. Mugabe's party narrowly won, but the campaign was marred by violence and intimidation.
That vote handed Tsvangirai's party 57 seats to 62 seats for Mugabe's Zinbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front. The result dramatically changed the nation's political landscape. In the previous parliament, Mugabe had controlled all but three seats.
Mugabe's nickname is Jongwe, meaning cockerel, after his party's symbol. So youthful Tsvangirai supporters have taken to chanting "Jongwe mapoto," or "Into the cooking pot with him."
Short and thickset, with an ebullient manner, Morgan Richard Tsvangirai is an articulate speaker both in English and his native Mashona. His humble roots enhance his popularity. He used to drive himself by car between union meetings and political rallies.
"He is approachable, he doesn't live in an ivory tower," says Collen Gwiyo, who worked with Tsvangirai when he led the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.
The stooping, 78-year-old Mugabe, swept to the hustings by helicopter and a convoy of heavily guarded limousines, calls his opponent a stooge of the West bent on protecting the rights of the colonial-minded whites he fought in the struggle for independence.
Lucia Matibenga, head of the opposition Women's Assembly, said Mugabe repeatedly evokes colonial wrongs to distract voters from the worst economic crisis since independence.
"We can't feed our children on history. Mugabe is buried in history. Tsvangirai is for future hope," she said.
But opposition politics can be dangerous in Zimbabwe. In 1999, attackers suspected of being ruling party militants assaulted Tsvangirai and tried to hurl him out of a 10th floor window. But the screams of loyal staff forced the assailants to flee, said Gwiyo.
Tsvangirai now rides in an armor-plated car.
The trade union federation, which represents 90 percent of organized labor, was closely aligned to black nationalist forces fighting white domination in the colonial era, and remained in alliance with Mugabe's party after independence.
Tsvangirai broke that alliance, and "Once that was achieved, the labor movement had to redefine itself and concentrate on improving workers' lives and conditions," said Gibson Sibanda, former head of the railroad workers union, now an opposition lawmaker.
The federation under Tsvangirai became increasingly hostile to the government over economic policies and corruption that led to record unemployment, inflation and an aid and investment freeze.
"We were fighting to work, to earn a living and bring up our families," Sibanda said.
Tsvangirai spent six weeks in jail in 1989 on allegations he spied for apartheid-ruled South Africa against Mugabe's government.
Violent farm seizures and factory occupations by Mugabe loyalists that began after the defeat of the referendum drove thousands of people from homes and jobs, sealing the labor movement's schism with the government, Sibanda said.
Tsvangirai, who turns 50 on Sunday, began working as a laborer in a textile factory at age 20.
Two years later he joined a nickel mine, rising to general foreman and branch chairman of the Associated Mine workers union, the nation's largest labor group of which he became deputy head in 1985 before his election as federation secretary general in 1988.
He is married to his wife of 24 years, Susan, and has six children
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