Zimbabwe prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai injured, wife killed

Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was injured and his wife killed in a car accident Friday. Movement for Democratic Change spokesman Nelson Chamisa said Tsvangirai was taken to hospital in non-critical condition.

The driver of the oncoming truck had crossed into the oncoming lane and 'appeared to be sleeping', according to police witnesses. Tsvangirai's wife Susan died in hospital after the head-on collision with a large truck. His driver and an aide were also slightly injured in the head-on crash in Manicaland. Tsvangirai's wife Susan was taken to Harare in a critical condition, but subsequently died of her injuries. All three were taken to the Avenues Clinic in Harare. An aide said the medical response at the scene of the accident and the transfer of the injured to Harare had been “first class and rapid”. The accident occurred on the Harare-Masvingo road as Tsvangirai was travelling to his home area of Buhera. The car in which they were travelling was involved in a head-on collision with a truck which was travelling on the wrong side of the road. Tsvangirai, who suffered head injuries, was apparently lucid and talking to rescuers when he was pulled from the wreckage. Chamisa said he spoke to Tsvangirai in hospital, and told him he was 'not seriously" injured. Chamisa would not divulge exactly what Tsvangirai said to him, however. The Tsvangirai couple have six children. He was sworn in on February 13 in a new 'unity-government 'with long-time ruler Robert Mugabe. Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena was quoted by state television as saying that the truck had crossed into the oncoming lane and side-swiped Tsvangirai's vehicle. "The 4x4 Toyota Landcruiser is understood to have overturned and rolled thrice," the report said. Two others hurt ""The driver of the truck appeared to be sleeping," an MDC minister told AFP. President Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace went to the hospital to visit him, but did not speak to reporters as they entered. Ministers from both Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and Mugabe's Zanu-PF were seen entering the hospital to visit him. However, the crash raised new concerns about the success of the government that has already been been shaken by the arrest of Roy Bennett, a one-time white farmer who became a top aide to Tsvangirai, and rows over Mugabe's illegal overloading of the cabinet with his own top officials. Mistrust between parties "Tensions are still high and there is a lot of mistrust going on between the two political divides," Sydney Masamvu, a Zimbabwe analyst at the International Crisis Group, told AFP. "So really there is a lot of grey areas and this tragedy coming against this background raises a lot of questions. That's not to say that we are pointing any fingers," he added. Dirk Kotze of the University of South Africa said with the cause of the accident still unclear, any perception of foul play could have serious consequences. "If it was just an accident and there was no foul play...then it will not have direct political consequences for Zimbabwe," he told AFP in Johannesburg. "But it will bring a major crisis if there is any suggestion that it was not just an accident." Mother for the nation Susan Tsvangirai was not active in her husband's party, but before the 2002 presidential elections - which Tsvangirai controversially lost - she said she hoped to become a mother for the nation. "I am excited, but slightly daunted," she told the Sunday Telegraph in 2002. "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 said at the time. She met her future 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 says of public life in a 2000 interview with Zimbabwe's Daily News. "How will I avoid it? There will be no place to hide." The new 'unity government' faces an array of problems: famine, a cholera epidemic which has already killed 4,000 people since November last year, the world's most serious hyperinflation. Tensions were created immediately on the day of the swearing-in ceremony, over the arrest of MDC deputy-agricultural minister-designate Roy Bennett. see Zimbabwean police on Friday also arrested a magistrate who tried to release Bennett twice on bail. And the MDC's security chief Eddie Cross said that they would be demanding an 'independent investigation' into the crash. "We will not trust any police reports,' he said.