Morgan Tsvangirai

Morgan Richard Tsvangirai (ˈtʃæŋɡɪraɪ; ts͎aŋ.ɡi.ra.i; born 10 March 1952) is a Zimbabwean politician who was Prime Minister of Zimbabwe from 2009 to 2013. He is President of the Movement for Democratic Change – Tsvangirai (MDC-T) and a key figure in the opposition to former President Robert Mugabe. 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. He sustained non-life-threatening injuries in a car crash on 6 March 2009 when heading towards his rural home in Buhera. His first wife, Susan Tsvangirai, was killed in the head-on collision. As the 2017 Zimbabwean coup d'état occurred, Tsvangirai asked Mugabe to step down. He also called for an all-stakeholders meeting to chart the country’s future and an internationally supervised process for the forthcoming elections. He said an all-inclusive process to take the country to legitimacy was the only way forward.