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Instead, he is doting on a parade of girlfriends — some young enough to be his daughters — at home and exotic destinations across the globe, risking scandals such as the one engulfing him now.
As a result, the little leadership credentials he had are in tatters at a wrong time for him and his party as we are already in an election season.
Given the ongoing scandal pitting him against three women, it appears Mr Tsvangirai spends a considerable amount of his and national time and money chasing after women or just having fun, rendering his obligation to serve his country a mere pastime.
It can be asserted that since his wife died in March 2009, he has had relationships with at least half a dozen women — a US-based Zimbabwean doctor, Dr Arikana Chihombori, Bulawayo businesswoman Aquilina Pamberi, 24-year-old Loreta Nyathi from Bulawayo, Locardia Karimatsenga, Nozipho Regina Shilubane and Elizabeth Macheka. Theoretically therefore, over the three years he has lived as a widower, he has had a new woman in his life in every six months, if he did not have them concurrently. These are the women we know to be in his sexual network. There could be more that we do not know.
Reports have also linked him to one of his late wife’s sisters and former Spain Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Pilar Ferragut, who died in a car accident early this year. He has denied the reports but his fulsome eulogy of the Spaniard shortly after her death suggests otherwise. Nonetheless, the turnover of women he has had is the sort a single, virile 23-year-old young man would be proud to achieve. What sets Mr Tsvangirai’s relationships from most is not only their adolescent spontaneity but also their carefreeness. He met Nyathi one day in late 2009, a few months after his wife had died, took her to a Bulawayo hotel, had sex with her and a love child came out of that encounter.
They did not use protection.
As for South African ghetto girl Shilubane, he was introduced to her by his aide, Lazarus Muriritirwa in his room at Pallazio Hotel in Fourways, in Monte Casino Mall in South Africa on 5 September 2009.
Thirteen days later, he called her on an all-expenses-paid trip to Harare and on the 14th day of their love affair, and six months after his wife Susan had died, Mr Tsvangirai had sex with Shilubane, promising that he wanted “kumukanda pakitchen”. They did not use protection.
On 6 March 2009, his wife died in a car crash which he survived. Exactly 64 days later, he was pictured smiling, walking on the red carpet side-by-side with US-based Zimbabwean medical doctor, Arikana Chiyedzo Chihombori at President Jacob Zuma’s inauguration in Pretoria. News spread that they were in love. His party said they were not.
Official statistics say one in every four people in Zimbabwe is HIV positive, so people are encouraged to be faithful to their only sexual partner. If they doubt their faithfulness, they simply have to abstain or insist on the condom. The statistics get more worrying when it goes to South Africa, which has the world’s highest HIV prevalence rate. In that country, HIV is more prevalent among female adults under the age of 40, according to official figures.
These statistics are terrifying enough to everyone with a mind, but shockingly Mr Tsvangirai routinely decides to throw himself in the “deep end”. Still, in a country whose people have the status of being the world’s highest condom users, it’s a shame that its prime minister apparently has a strong aversion to them. He is actually brave, if not foolhardy that in this age when HIV is causing havoc, he chooses a life of recklessness sustaining multiple concurrent relationships with at least six women in three years. That is unbecoming of a prime minister and leader of a significant political party, who is held as a role model by some. He has an obligation to behave responsibly.
You have to be blessed (for lack of a better word) to engage in unprotected sex with so many women in so short a period, and still be HIV negative.
Mr Tsvangirai’s behaviour is causing a lot of discomfort to those around him. Publicly, his lieutenants portray an image of unity and collective desire to defend a behaviour that is clearly indefensible; but privately they fear the damage caused by his misbehaviour could be too much politically.
“It is embarrassing, plain and simple,” a top official in the MDC told Reuters. “It is an unwanted distraction which we would rather not have.”
Since reports on his private life started to come out with his farcical marriage to Ms Karimatsenga last November, Mr Tsvangirai has sought to deflect criticism by blaming his political opponents. That is debatable, but if it is indeed true that his opponents are scheming around him, the PM must know the rule of the game that your opponents mobilise around your weaknesses. It is not clever politics to work around your opponent’s strengths, so if his opponents did as he says, then they were able to spot an existing weakness and exploited it. The point is Mr Tsvangirai has a weakness for women so his political rivals are taking advantage.
They are not proposing women on his behalf, impregnating them and then parading them as his. He goes out to do that himself, quite efficiently sometimes. But his worries could actually worsen. For allegedly lying under oath that he was unmarried when in fact he knew he was customarily married to Ms Karimatsenga since last November, Mr Tsvangirai could be charged for perjury. And perjury is a criminal offence punishable by a fine or five years in jail.
The comedy of errors, which exposes his defence team, extends to his attempt to attach a $1 note to his court papers last week as a divorce token to Ms Karimatsenga. Mr Tsvangirai and his team are old enough to know that the token, in terms of our culture, is not given through third parties; it is given directly to the person being divorced. In his case, he should have given it to Ms Karimatsenga directly and publicly. What he and his lawyers tried to do is like a court handing summons to a third party and then seeking to punish a suspect for absconding court.
This brings us to another point. He and his team have worked to have the world believe that he was never married to Ms Karimatsenga, but only paid damages. Now, if he never married her, but only paid damages, how did it make sense to them that he needed to give her the divorce token?
The manner in which he and his advisers handled this issue is comical, but hardly surprising. It reminds us of the shoddy, reckless and shallow kind of man we have as our prime minister; one who aspires to be president of the republic.
At least he is only an aspirant to the top job!
Online Reporter