Tsvangirai, Morgan

(born March 10, 1952, Gutu, Southern Rhodesia [now Zimbabwe]) Zimbabwean opposition leader and trade union activist who became prime minister of Zimbabwe in 2009. He became an active labour union member after he began working at Trojan Nickel Mine in 1974, and in 1988 he became secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. In 1999 Tsvangirai formed a political party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), to challenge Zimbabwe's longtime president Robert Mugabe. In 2008 long-simmering political tensions between Mugabe's ruling party and Tsvangirai's MDC led to a hotly contested presidential election and a protracted political crisis. An agreement for a power-sharing government was reached in September 2008 and implemented in February 2009, with Mugabe remaining president and Tsvangirai assuming the position of prime minister.

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