A RETIRING and diffident housewife, many who came into contact with Susan Tsvangirai -- the late wife of Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai -- were struck by her humility.
As the wife of a crusading trade unionist and later leader of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, she often had to juggle the double life of raising the couple’s six children and hosting the hordes who come to their house everyday.
“She was down to earth, a typical African woman,” says Yvonne Mahlunge, a family friend and Zimbabwean lawyer based in London.
“The thing about her was her consistency… not wanting to be involved in politics but remaining extremely supportive of her husband. She attended many MDC meetings and did slogans but she was not cut for the world of politics.”
Trudy Stevenson, a former MP and MDC founding member said: "The most warm, human, down-to-earth person. She was Morgan's anchor - and indeed the party's! She was always so welcoming, so much 'the mother', and encouraged women in particular to be involved and be part of the group and the process for change.
"To her, everyone in the process for change was part of her family, and we all felt that, and responded accordingly."
Susan Tsvangirai, who was in her early 50s when she died in a car crash on Friday, March 6, rarely gave interviews to reporters. Ahead of the 2002 presidential elections which her husband controversially lost, she said she hoped to be a “mother of the nation”.
"I am excited, but slightly daunted," she told the Sunday Telegraph. "There is a lot of work to do. I am looking forward to being not only the mother of my own children but the mother of the nation as well.
"Despite all the intimidation and the security, there is no need to live in fear, because we are all going to die one day, violently or otherwise. There is nothing any of us can do about that.”
She met her husband in 1977 when Tsvangirai was working for Trojan Nickel Mine, and they discovered that they shared the same hometown of Buhera.
They eventually had six children, and she tended to prefer her privacy over the political spotlight.
"I will have to get used to it," she said of public life in a 2000 interview with the Daily News. "How will I avoid it? There will be no place to hide.”
Every Sunday, if couple were in Harare, she went to worship at the Methodist church in Malbereign.
Susan lived briefly in South Africa late last year after security concerns around Tsvangirai and his family were raised. She only returned when the MDC leader finally agreed to join a power sharing with long time rival, President Robert Mugabe.
NewZimbabwe.com
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