Malawi Congress Party (MCP) President Dr. Lazarus Chakwera has expressed shock over the death of Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
Tsvangirai died on Wednesday evening in South Africa after a long illness.
Writing on his official facebook page Chakwera described Tsvangirai as an immense figure who made immeasurable contributions to Africa’s second struggle for independence from the corrupt governments that hijacked most of its nations in the aftermath of independence from foreign powers.
“For a whole generation of Africans, it shall forever be impossible to whisper the word “opposition” in the Zimbabwean context without in the same breath invoking Tsvangirai as the name that became synonymous with it. It was a cause for which he not only fought, but for which he suffered greatly, enduring beatings, imprisonment, multiple assisination attempts, and multiple trumped up allegations of treason. But in the wake of every adversity designed to deter him, Tsvangirai was a man would “get up and stand up for your rights”.
“It would not be too unreasonable or unfitting an honor for his name to one day be transfigured into common usage until “a tsvangirai” comes to mean any person who suffers greatly in their courageous and consistent quest for justice and opposition to government corruption and oppression,” wrote Chakwera.
He added: “Though his death means a great beacon of light has gone out, it shouldn’t mean that Africa is now a darker place, for he lived a life of such inspiring luminosity that a new generation of freedom fighters now already carries that torch. Rather, Zimbabwe’s future is bright because Tsvangirai shined his light on it, and so he has not gone quietly into that good night.
“What a great son of Africa and what an incalculable loss!”
Mr Tsvangirai’s career was marked by a long political struggle against former President Robert Mugabe.
He had been beaten and imprisoned numerous times.
