Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, has returned to his country from Botswana, where he was receiving medical treatment, in order to arrange a funeral for his wife, Susan, who was killed in a car crash in which Tsvangirai was also injured. The crash raised red flags late last week, leading many to insinuate that Tsvangirai’s political rivals might be to blame. However, new details and more recent reports seem to demonstrate that this is not the case. Tsvangirai himself told mourners, “It (the crash) was an accident. When something happens there is always speculation, but I want to say in this case, if there was any foul play, it was (a likelihood of) one in a thousand.”
The New York Times, which last week reported that officials from Tsvangirai’s party, the Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, were highly suspicious, said yesterday that both MDC and American officials believe “that the initial evidence suggested that the collision had been accidental.” In fact, an American Embassy official in Harare has confirmed that the truck that collided with the Tsvangirais was purchased by the United States for use by the United States Agency for International Development to transport American antiretroviral AIDS medication.
Despite the evidence, many are still skeptical that the crash was not purposeful. Tsvangirai was forced to flee Zimbabwe for his safety earlier this year, and there have been several attempts on his life in the past. As Britain’s the Telegraph notes, events demonstrate that “There is still huge mistrust on both sides of the fledgling coalition.”