The psalmist is right – There is a time to live, a time to fight and a time to die. Morgan Tsvangirai, the veteran Zimbabwean opposition leader, lived and fought till the end. After fighting the regime of the ousted dictator, Robert Mugabe, for many years, Mr. Tsvangirai died on Wednesday, aged 65, after battling against cancer for over two years.
Mr. Tsvangirai, who founded the Movement for Democratic Change, MDC, in 1999, was among the most prominent critics of former President Mugabe, who held sway in Zimbabwe for close to forty years.
A top official of the MDC, Elias Mudzuri, who announced the demise of his boss on Twitter, wrote, “It is sad for me to announce that we have lost our icon and fighter for democracy, Morgan Tsvangirai”.
As a measure of his political clout, the MDC forced the Mugabe government to agree to share political power with Mr. Tsvangirai after the 2008 election in which neither side secured the required majority.
Mr. Tsvangirai had claimed to have been the target of four assassination attempts — including one in 1997 in which he said attackers attempted to throw him out of his office window. But he lived long enough to witness the downfall of the Mugabe regime last November.
