HARARE – A memorial service was held for Vimbai Tsvangirai-Java in Harare’s Glen View suburb on Wednesday in front of thousands of people.
The Glen View South MP and daughter of the late former Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, died aged 35 on Monday, nearly a month after a horrific car crash near Kwekwe which killed two other party activists including Tafadzwa Mhundwa, her maternal uncle.
Vimbai, coming from a party event in Bulawayo and returning home to Harare, was a left back-seat passenger when a car drifted into their lane at high speed, causing a head-on collision on May 14. She suffered head injuries but doctors were hopeful she would pull through.
MDC leader Nelson Chamisa, addressing mourners, said he was one of the first people at the accident scene. He described the desperate scenes as motorists tried to rescue the political activists.
Chamisa said his convoy had stopped in Kwekwe when a vehicle driven by Philda Muringani, with Vimbai as a passenger, sped past. Mhundwa was a front passenger while Paul Rukanda, Vimbai’s constituency manager, sat on the right back seat.
Rukanda died at the scene while Mhundwa was trapped at the knees. Vimbai was trapped in her seat and Muringani survived with minor injuries. Mhundwa, Chamisa said, was not rescued until three hours after the crash. He later died at a local hospital which Chamisa said had no medications.
MDC vice president Tendai Biti told mourners that Vimbai’s death was a “dispossession which we cannot explain.”
“It’s a very sad indeed that we gather here to say goodbye to pastor, evangelist, Honourable Vimbai Tsvangirai. She was a young girl, only 35 years of age. At funerals we usually say ‘condolences’, but when a young, promising flower like Vimbai is plucked away from us it’s a disaster, it’s a pain, it’s a loss, it’s a dispossession which we cannot explain,” Biti said.
“We have no words because we are arrested and covered with pain. This young woman knew pain throughout her life. When your father does what we do, and serves the public, it affects the family. Children become orphans while their parents are alive. She was an orphan, together with her brothers and sisters. The dad she had, she lost him spiritually on the day the MDC was formed.
“We have to carry the pain of this loss. We say to God we can’t question you, but we can’t help saying: Why? Why? Why? We have no answers, but we take comfort from the letter from Paul to the Corinthians that says, ‘I can’t give you a load that you can’t carry’. So we have to carry the pain of this loss, we have to carry her pain. What’s her pain? She wants, like her dad, to see Zimbabwe liberated.”
Vimbai will be laid to rest at Glen Forest in Harare on Thursday, June 13, following a church service at the City Sports Centre.
