Luke-ing the Beast in the Eye Friday, 14 February 2025 *Morgan Tsvangirai in memoriam---The tears shall never dry* By Luke Tamborinyoka https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaJEcyNDTkK81mXyWB0s Today marks the seventh anniversary of the death of Morgan Richard Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe’s democracy doyen who I had the privilege to serve as his spokesperson for almost 10 years until his death on 14 February 2018. Tsvangirai just loved his country and in fact, in more ways than one, he was a man of love and it may have been epiphanic that he died on St Valentine’s Day; on the day that the power of love is celebrated worldwide. Throughout our working relationship we became so close that he would come unannounced to my rural village in Domboshava to mourn with me when I lost a close relative, as he did in May 2014 when he came for the funeral and burial of my beloved grandmother, Martha Gatawa Tamborenyoka Gombera. In fact, so close had we become in our 10-year working relationship that he ordered the medical staff at the infirmary in Johannesburg where he eventually met his demise that apart from his wife and family, they were supposed to call and inform me as well should anything untoward happen to him. That is why the medical authorities who attended to him in South Africa felt duty-bound to call and inform me of his passing on at exactly 1737 hours on Wednesday, 14 February 2018. I felt numb when I heard the news, my mind musing and reminiscing over shared moments in a tenuous democratic struggle. Not only did I drive with my entire family to Buhera to bury this icon who had entrusted me with his voice, but I also hired a bus and took along with me about 100 fellow change champions from all the wards in my rural hood. I deemed it prudent that my beloved Domboshava should also add her own stream to the ocean of tears that were shed at the death of this undisputed hero of our time. We parked nine kilometers away from Humanikwa village in Buhera and walked the rest of the journey to his homestead to bury this patriot who to me was not just a boss but a friend and a father as well. A long line of vehicles stretched for almost 20 kilometers as the world descended on this village in Buhera West, some 242 kilometers south-east of Harare. The human and vehicular traffic left one in rapt wonderment, leaving no doubt whatsoever that this could only be a national hero’s burial. Political parties were represented from Kenya to Namibia, from South Africa to Zambia while leaders of at least 13 political parties in Zimbabwe came to bury him. The wider world too was represented as diplomats came in droves while ordinary people streamed from all over the country to pay their last respects to this doyen of our time; this undisputed idol of our democratic struggle. That the leaders of almost all political parties in Zimbabwe came to bury him, including ZANU PF that was represented by its chairperson Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri, spoke to the kaleidoscopic nature of Tsvangirai’s politics and the cosmopolitan appeal his brand enthused to the diverse spectrum of our society. And the fact that his personal friend Oliver Mtukudzi turned up too and could afford to belch to bemused mourners a few lyrics from the legendary song “Neria” spoke to the broad magnetic field to which brand Tsvangirai appealed. I remembered one afternoon in 2015 as I walked with him along some street in Brentford in West London in the United Kingdom. A motorist of Asian descent stopped his car and parked abruptly by the side of the road, came out and said with a beaming smile on his face: “I reckon you are Mr. Tsvangirai. I just want a selfie with you. Your unstinting courage has always inspired me.” The man ignored irate motorists he had inconvenienced as he had partially straddled over the parking lines in his haste to meet and take a picture with this icon whose renown was well spread across the globe. Such was the magical global appeal of brand Tsvangirai. As they lowered his coffin at his final resting place in Buhera that sunny afternoon in February 2018, I felt that a part of me was being buried as well, for the mouth that speaketh had always been in many ways a part of the body that was now being interred. We had worked together for many years, travelled the world and across the continent and the country together. We spent many hours talking about the country and the people he so much loved. Indeed, we had travelled many places across the world together---Tokyo, Washington, Lisbon, London, Canberra, Beijing, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, the Swiss Alps in Davos and many other world capitals where I had the privilege of accompanying him as his spokesperson. During those trips across the globe, he often charmed the world and gave revered speeches to bemused audiences, especially during his stint as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe and leader of the country’s main opposition. We had travelled across Africa together; Windhoek, Pretoria, Luanda, Maputo, Nairobi, Accra, Dar es Salaam, Abuja, Rabat, Lusaka, Abidjan and many other African capitals. Even across the continent, I saw for myself the respect African citizens gave to this courageous African who had chosen to confront—with nothing but his bare hands and an unstinting tenacity—the murderous regime of one of one of Africa’s most feared tyrants. In the country, we had travelled together from Plumtree to Chipinge, from Nyanga to Chirundu and from Mt. Darwin to Binga down in the Zambezi escarpment as he engaged in his favourite pastime—-meeting ordinary people and getting their input into how the democratic struggle ought to be prosecuted. The last time we had traversed the country together, sometimes sleeping in the car, was the one-and-a-half months in the period between January and February 2017 when he sought the ordinary people’s input into the MDC Congress resolution to enter into a formidable alliance with other political players. We sat together until late into the night after that tour as we penned his feedback piece to the people of Zimbabwe after that highly inspiring jaunt. The piece, in keeping with his natural disposition as a listening leader, was entitled “I heard You.” In that one-and-half months tour across the country, Zimbabweans had unanimously and unequivocally endorsed the formation of an Alliance. That is how the MDC Alliance was birthed, which Alliance was later tenaciously fought and undermined by Zanu PF through a treacherous lot of mercenaries that was bought to betray not only Tsvangirai’s legacy but the collective hope of the people of Zimbabwe as well.. As they lowered his coffin into the loamy soils of Buhera on a blazing February afternoon, my mind raced through all these events along a tumultuous journey travelled together and I could not help but feel a swelling wetness in my eyes. As his spokesperson for a decade, here was a man I knew so well, a man whose inner thoughts I had come to know as if they were my own. So intricate was our relationship that he would entrust me to speak for him even on filial matters that would otherwise be entrusted to a family spokesperson. He would tell his brothers and family members to deflect and defer even intimate personal issues to my attention, as he did in 2012 when he was deemed to have married one Locadia Karimatsenga Tembo. Such was the trust and the nature of my working relationship with this man. At his burial in Buhera that Tuesday in February 2018, veteran Kenyan political leader Raila Odinga wowed the crowd and spoke of his long-standing friendship with Dr Tsvangirai. A representative of the Democratic Alliance of South Africa said Tsvangirai was an icon of democracy not only in Zimbabwe but in Africa and the world. In his speech, Professor Arthur Mutambara bemoaned why ZANU PF, some of whose leaders attended the burial, would fake love by attending the burial of a man they had brutalized during a long political career spanning almost 30 years. Joyce Mujuru told the crowd that she felt it was time to further strengthen the alliance ties with the MDC following a Memorandum of Understanding she signed with the late people’s hero. And then Nelson Chamisa, rose to the dais. With his famed oratory laced with humorous banter, Chamisa charmed the assorted crowd of 20 000 mourners. He thanked the Tsvangirai family for bequeathing a hero to the nation and referred to the huge turnout of diplomats as a mark of the icon’s global appeal. Chamisa spoke about the MDC “character” which he said encapsulated values such as tolerance, inclusivity and non-violence. He had to intervene to allow Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri to finish her speech. The mourners, most of them victims of ZANU PF violence, had not taken kindly to being addressed by a representative of a party that had killed, maimed, raped and tortured them over the years. As I mused over the mammoth crowd in attendance, I was reminded of how my boss was convinced that mourners at his own death would not surpass the huge crowd that had turned up at the funeral of his late wife, Susan Nyaradzo in 2009. In my forthcoming book—Service and Sacrifice—president Tsvangirai dedicates a whole chapter to the woman he loved, his wife for 31 years and mother to his children. In the forthcoming book, he had looked back at the huge turn-out at his late wife’s funeral in March 2009 and reckoned that his own death, whenever it would come, would not muster the same crowd. “Even I, when I finally depart to meet my maker, do not think I will ever evoke the same massive outpouring of love and grief that I witnessed in Buhera in March 2009, ” he had said when I interviewed him for the book. But he had been wrong, I thought as I looked at the crowd that turned up for his funeral. Morgan Tsvangirai’s funeral, just like that of Nelson Mandela, proved that hero status is never conferred. Hero status is earned and can never be conferred by a motley crowd calling itself the politburo or some such fancy name. Just as we had said in a piece we wrote together after we had joined the world in the small village of Qunu to bury Mandela in 2013, hero status is never conferred. It is earned during one’s lifetime. Just as Mandela’s death brought the world to a tiny and remote village, the huge turnout at Tsvangirai’s burial showed the futility of sitting in our motley political groups and purporting to “confer” or “give” hero status to individuals. Tsvangirai’s death showed that heroism is earned in one’s lifetime and never “conferred” posthumously. Tsvangirai’s life touched souls just as his death broke many hearts. That even those who imprisoned and brutally assaulted him over the years could not afford to ignore him at his death spoke to the vastness of his character and the ineradicability of his huge impact on the national narrative. As the solemn church chorus soothed hearts and reverberated in the tent where his huge ornate casket markedly and starkly lay in arrogant valediction, I remembered him telling me that mother fate had always thrown him at the deep end. But as they lowered his body into the bowels of the loamy soils besides his late wife Susan, I knew that mother fate was yet again throwing him to the deep end, this time literally. Rest in power, Pakuru. Thanks for the trust and for the memories. Luke Tamborinyoka is a citizen from Domboshava. He is by profession a journalist and a political scientist. You can interact with him via his facebook page or via his X handle @luke_tambo.