Morgan Tsvangirai: At the Deep End

by Morgan Tsvangirai, T William Bango (Editor)

Overview

Morgan Tsvangirai's dramatic political battle with Zimbabwe’s dictatorial monolith Robert Mugabe stands as one of the most intriguing and important world events of recent times—this is his autobiography
 
From village life as the son of a humble carpenter to struggling for power with Mugabe as the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, this is Morgan Tsvangirai's amazing story. Once an avid supporter of Mugabe's party Zanu-PF, Tsvangirai grew to detest their violence and oppression, leading him to found the Movement for Democratic Change. Tsvangirai deployed basic but effective tools of national resistance with clear vision and exceptional courage, despite multiple arrests and severe beatings. His successful formation of a coalition government kept alive Zimbabwe's hopes of peace and democracy, establishing Tsvangirai as a luminary in a continent all too often known for bloody leadership.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781908646002
Publisher:	Eye Books
Publication date:	11/14/2011
Pages:	564
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.30(h) x 2.00(d)

About the Author

Morgan Tsvangirai was nominated for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize and is the first non-lawyer recipient of The 2009 International Bar Association human rights award International Lifetime Achievement Award 2009 from the Spanish Foundation Cristobal Gabarron. As his personal assistant, advisor, and spokesperson, T. William Bango spent 23 years in journalism which took him as an aide to Robert Mugabe, a founding editor for the banned Daily News, and a Masters in journalism from University of Cardiff, and a three-year stint as a journalism lecturer at the Institute for Advancement of Journalism. He has recently completed a sabbatical to complete an MPA from Harvard University in Cambridge, MA.

Read an Excerpt

Morgan Tsvangirai

At the Deep End

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By T. William, Bango, Graeme Addison

Eye Books Ltd

Copyright © 2011 Morgan Tsvangirai
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-908646-01-9

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CHAPTER 1

VILLAGE BOY

There is something unique about being the first child of a young Zimbabwean couple, especially a boy, largely because Zimbabwe is a patriarchal society. There is excitement in the home, within the community and beyond, as the first-born heralds a new era in the life of a black African family.

My father Dzingirai-Chibwe was ecstatic when he heard the news of my birth on 10 March 1952. A father naturally sees beyond the face of a baby boy; a son spins around a male African's mind and seeds wild dreams. A son stands for the perpetuity of the family line. A girl descendant will, one day, disappear to a different family and assume a new name. While this may sound like an unfair perception, to my young parents and to the entire Tsvangirai family, the arrival of a boy was a milestone marking a moment of unfettered celebration and joy.

My mother Lydia gave birth to me in the family's sooty, pole-and-mud kitchen, with the aid of traditional midwife. Mama had juggled her pregnancy with attending to the normal domestic chores associated with a young bride in a 'foreign' home. The home was not that foreign anyway: our culture dictated that unions be encouraged only among families that were familiar with one another within our communities. My father had followed the spirit of that cultural demand, stubbornly paying little amorous attention to the beauties he met travelling to and working in Johannesburg, 1 200 kilometres from our village of Buhera. He left his job in the South African mines for a courtship within the neighbourhood. Dzingirai-Chibwe Tsvangirai and Lydia Zvaipa had grown up together, knowing each other into their teens before settling down as husband and wife. That gave their respective families a chance to test their individual characters for suitability - an important factor that eventually nudged them into marriage.

Buhera in far western Manicaland, one of the ten administrative provinces of Zimbabwe, lies amid boulder-strewn hills and savannah thornbush. Its rural shops and government administrative centres and its remote hamlets are connected by narrow dusty roads. The wide open skies capture thunderheads billowing in from the Indian Ocean, but all too often the area is plagued by devastating drought and much of the surrounding area is low-lying and malarial. Although Buhera district is one of the poorest in the country it is still a wonderful place in which to grow up surrounded by the natural beauty of the African countryside. The nearby Nyazvidzi River cuts a rocky channel through terrain that is overlooked by rugged heights such as the Bedza and Dzapasi mountains.

The scattered villages maintain a strong sense of community and close family ties. At the time of my birth nearly all the land was communally owned and administered by chiefs and their headmen. Women still do much of the tilling and harvesting on subsistence plots, cultivating maize and the large-grained millet called sorghum, a staple food in dry areas of Africa - they have to, because many of the men are away working in urban areas.

As is always the case with the first boy child, there seemed to be a silent but taut competition within the couple's home to raise a clone, a mirror-image of either parent. Sometimes my parents' expectations and demands came into conflict. Like all Zimbabwean rural fathers, Dzingirai-Chibwe sought to imbue manly responsibility, fearlessness and moral worthiness so that I would be ready to claim space and show leadership and resilience. My mother centred her early advice on survival skills, independence, empathy, passion, kindness and communal solidarity. I felt it all, as I grew up; I can feel it even to this day.

I was born a few months before the white settler administration formed the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland comprising the self-governing territory of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and the British protectorates of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi). Within the federation, Southern Rhodesia's white tribe dominated political activity and decision making. The period coincided with the rise of African nationalism across the continent and decolonisation which led to independence for many new African states, beginning with Ghana in 1957.

My life was destined to be closely interwoven with political, economic and social changes in Zimbabwe. As a youngster, of course, I was at first barely conscious of the realities of white supremacy and the unfolding drama of our liberation as a people. In my formative years, though, I suffered experiences that would leave a deep and lasting impression throughout my subsequent private and public life. Indeed, millions of Zimbabweans were subjected to similar experiences, so I can claim no distinction for myself.

At the raw end of injustices, we learnt that our humanity counted for very little in the eyes of those who had seized the country, exploited us, held power over us and exercised it in their own narrow interests. Our craving for human dignity, fairness, equity and the freedom to be ourselves was not something that arose out of the liberation struggle: it was the underlying force that drove people to demand what was rightfully theirs. So in telling my personal story I track the historical background at the same time. Zimbabwe's story is that background: it ultimately became, for me, the foreground of my life. Trade unionism and then national politics thrust me to prominence, with all the responsibilities and risks that come with leadership.

In our village there was both hope and anxiety: people sensed that freedom and independence, however desirable, might not be all that easy to attain. Dreams of liberation were especially strong among community leaders and a few literate officials, including teachers and low-level state bureaucrats who had experienced inequality and racial discrimination. They had access to information on global political trends through newspapers and local and external radio broadcasts and could foresee the struggle ahead. Migrant workers returning from South Africa told of the world of forced labour and poorly paid work, and brought news of the rise of African nationalism across the continent.

The political climate that shaped my young mind was a melting pot of sorts, where values and world views came into conflict. Resident, largely rural black African laypeople were confronted by a relatively advanced and sophisticated white immigrant group looking for space and opportunities away from a crowded, volatile Europe. Here were two sets of human beings brought up under vastly different conditions, living in different areas with different religious creeds. Their behaviour and mannerisms set them apart, let alone their skin colour, hairstyles, languages and even diets. A clash of cultures was inevitable.

It has taken me decades to fathom and follow the complex interplay of events, personalities and parties that delivered Zimbabwe as an independent state. It is important to sketch this background even though at the time I was only a child and understood nothing of any of it and could not have foreseen where it would lead me.

The capital city of the federation was Salisbury (now Harare) in Southern Rhodesia. The federation, also called the Central African Federation (CAF), was Britain's imperial exercise in state-building which turned out to be a serious mistake. Under an appointed governor general, the federal government handled external affairs, defence, currency, intercolonial relations, and federal taxes. The larger vision was to create a decolonised, semi-independent state in the British Commonwealth by handing over power to white settlers, allowing for the gradual inclusion of blacks into the political system. The grand plan collapsed after a mere decade as African nationalists challenged the vision, demanding that the majority, not the minority, gain power.

Although blacks in Southern Rhodesia were by 1940 loosely organised in various protest, interest and trade union groups, it was not until 1957 that they formally created a purely political organisation, the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC). SRANC followed a moderate line calling for fairness, an end to racial discrimination, and economic opportunities for blacks. The federal government banned SRANC in 1959 and briefly detained many of its leaders in a forlorn bid to contain dissent. Arising from the calls for decolonisation and independence, Africans resisted the federation, leading to demonstrations in 1960 and 1961. Several nationalists from Zambia and Malawi were arrested and detained in Southern Rhodesia for organising the mass protests. Upon their release, the nationalists continued their pursuit of a strong reformist agenda and seem to have expected Britain to hand over Zimbabwe to black majority rule through a constitutional conference.

But immediate majority rule for Southern Rhodesia was not to be. In 1961, Britain convened a conference in Salisbury to which Joshua Nkomo, Ndabaningi Sithole and other nationalists were invited. A new constitution was agreed to but it allowed for a complicated, racially discriminatory voting system in which two separate voters' rolls were introduced: an 'A' roll for the whites and a 'B' roll for blacks. The 1961 constitution meant different things to whites and blacks: whites understood it as a way to pave the road for their independence from Britain while the black nationalists saw hardly any sign of progress towards their goal of majority rule. Britain retained its authority over the country. Although Nkomo signed the agreement on 7 February 1961, he changed his mind soon afterwards and instructed his supporters to boycott a referendum on the new constitution.

Under a new party hastily formed after the SRANC was banned, the National Democratic Party (NDP), headed by Michael Mawema, the nationalists tried to disrupt the referendum. Three days before the referendum, blacks mounted widespread protests and police shot two people dead in Salisbury's African townships, heightening the tension further. The vote was taken on 26 July 1961, opposed by a strange mixture of bedfellows: prominent white liberals led by former prime minister Garfield Todd and ex-chief justice Robert Tredgold; conservatives Winston Field of the Dominion Party and Selukwe farmer Ian Smith; and nationalists Joshua Nkomo and Ndabaningi Sithole. Despite - or because of - this combination of opponents, the government won approval for the proposed constitution. The premier of Southern Rhodesia, Edgar Whitehead, relied on the support of Roy Welensky, prime minister of the federation, and Humphrey Gibbs, the British governor of Southern Rhodesia, to gain the backing of the white majority. After the referendum, Whitehead banned the NDP.

White politicians who had rejected the constitution, including Field, the leader of the federal opposition Dominion Party, and farmer and MP Ian Smith, immediately began to campaign against the Whitehead government in preparation for the Southern Rhodesian elections in 1962.

When Sir Roy Welensky dissolved the federal parliament to make way for the elections, the situation in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland had taken a different turn. Britain seemed ready to allow for majority rule in the two countries, paving the way for the birth of Zambia and Malawi which became fully independent in 1964. But the picture in Southern Rhodesia was different. The British were unclear about the future, apart from the fierce resistance they faced from the settler administration. In the circumstances it seemed the best they could do was as little as possible.

In December 1961, Joshua Nkomo and the former NDP nationalists formed the Zimbabwe African People's Union (Zapu) and maintained a similar political line to that of the banned NDP, continuing to press Britain for democratic reforms. When it became clear to Nkomo and his leadership that they were making no progress, Zapu changed its tone and began to focus on the regime in Salisbury. This led to a rise in black militancy which attracted a hardline response from the white settler population.

The deteriorating situation in the Congo added to the anxieties of the white community. In 1960 Belgium had suddenly abandoned the enormous Belgian Congo (which became the Republic of Congo, later Zaire, and is now the Democratic Republic of Congo). In the ensuing chaos, Congo's colonial settlers stampeded for refuge and almost all trekked to the two Rhodesias where emergency committees received them with food packs, temporary shelters and medicines. Instability in the Congo persisted for decades with civil war, rebellions, massive corruption and the brutal tyranny of Mobutu Sese Seko who came to power in 1965. To white Rhodesians the Congo illustrated what Ian Smith later described as the danger of capitulating to metropolitan powers that seemed ready 'to cut and run at the drop of a hat'.

Whitehead banned Zapu, reacting to the growing anti-black sentiment in his constituency and to shore up his fortunes. But his power base was crumbling. Field and Smith, backed by wealthy white businessmen, industrialists, miners and commercial farmers, formed a new party, the Rhodesian Front (RF). Whitehead narrowly scraped through the election in April 1962 but his administration remained strongly challenged by both the black nationalists, who boycotted the polls, and the RF. He was forced to call an early all-white election in December 1962. In that poll, the RF won 35 of the 50 'A' roll seats; another went to Dr Ahrn Palley, a white independent, leaving the hardliners, Field and Smith, with a working majority of five parliamentary seats. Field took over as the new prime minister and appointed Smith as his deputy and minister of finance.

Britain had granted Nyasaland independence as Malawi three months earlier, further hardening the position of Southern Rhodesian whites who dreaded the wave of liberation heading southwards. Zambia was next. In March 1963, Britain gave in to pressure from Lusaka, sounding a clear death-knell to the federation. The RF wanted a different type of independence under white control; they aimed to thwart moves towards majority rule, arguing that the history and situation in Southern Rhodesia was different from that of its erstwhile federal neighbours. Unlike Zambia and Malawi, Southern Rhodesia was not a protectorate under direct control from London but was self-governing.

The RF maintained that from as far back as 1890, Southern Rhodesia was the property of a private company until well into the twentieth century. This meant that settlers had always enjoyed some form of freedom to run their own affairs without undue interference from a faraway colonial capital. In 1889 British businessman, mining magnate and empire builder Cecil John Rhodes had received a Royal Charter from Queen Victoria to form the British South Africa Company (BSAC) to move into modern-day Zimbabwe and exploit minerals. The following year, he put together a team of 500 men to invade the territory north of the Limpopo River where, after a few skirmishes with the local population, the company conquered the country and set up a base and a settler administration outpost. No official British colonial administrators moved in to qualify Zimbabwe as an official colony, until it acquired quasi dominion status in 1923 somewhat resembling that of Australia and New Zealand.

Subsequent generations of Rhodesians saw themselves as no less African than the black majority. They were outnumbered 20 to 1 by the people they found already resident there but felt they had as legitimate a claim to the territory as the indigenous people. As early as 1931, for example, the Southern Rhodesia government allowed for the seizure of 48 million acres of prime land which was allocated to a few whites. The black majority were left to share a mere 28 million acres in low rainfall and arid areas. Not surprisingly, the settlers felt relatively free to treat black Africans as second or third class citizens without any external sanction. While they remained loyal to Britain and to the Queen, they were determined to frustrate plans for the same decolonisation pattern as in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa. With the federation now terminally in the intensive care unit, the RF felt it was time to make a move towards their definition of independence.

In March 1963, the federation collapsed. I was just 11 years old but my life had stretched over the entire short history of the federation which had come and gone. Now the government of Field and Smith seized the initiative. To assert control and authority, the RF moved swiftly to crush nationalist activism and set up much harsher forms of public control, throwing Zimbabwe's nationalist leaders into a crisis over policy cohesion. As a result, the nationalist movements began to fragment, with consequences that would stretch far into the future. Facing a combination of state-sponsored brutality, enemy infiltration and political conflicts over strategy, ideology and tactics, Zapu inevitably split. In August 1963, Sithole, Leopold Takawira, Herbert Chitepo, Robert Mugabe, Enos Nkala, Edgar Tekere and others formed the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu). The divisions between Zapu and Zanu became so sharp that their supporters attacked one another, vying for political supremacy. The settler administration initially fanned black-on-black violence but later banned the two parties and threw their leadership into detention centres and jails without trial.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Morgan Tsvangirai by T. William, Bango, Graeme Addison. Copyright © 2011 Morgan Tsvangirai. Excerpted by permission of Eye Books Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

List of Acronyms,
Chapter 1 Village Boy,
Chapter 2 Working Life,
Chapter 3 War Zone,
Chapter 4 Mine Unionist,
Chapter 5 Mugabe Rules,
Chapter 6 Dictatorship,
Chapter 7 Economic Meltdown,
Chapter 8 False Starts,
Chapter 9 A Country Adrift,
Chapter 10 Battle Lines,
Chapter 11 Chinja!,
Chapter 12 New Millennium,
Chapter 13 Land, Votes, Food,
Chapter 14 President Tsvangirai?,
Chapter 15 Into Parliament,
Chapter 16 Against All Odds,
Chapter 17 The Treason Trap,
Chapter 18 Unfree and Unfair,
Chapter 19 Seeking Justice,
Chapter 20 Positioning,
Chapter 21 Tricky Tactics,
Chapter 22 Termites,
Chapter 23 Torture's Reward,
Chapter 24 Victory and Flight,
Chapter 25 Regime Change,
Chapter 26 Life and Death,
Chapter 27 Together to the End!,
Works Consulted,
Selected Index,

Editorial Reviews

"I obviously have extraordinary admiration for the courage and the tenacity that the Prime Minister has shown in navigating through some very difficult political times in Zimbabwe. . . . I'm grateful to him for his leadership, for his courage, and I'm looking forward to being a partner with him in the years to come."  —President Barack Obama, June 2009

From the Publisher