President Tsvangirais condolence message

I am grievously pained by the death of three MDC officials on their way from our 11th anniversary celebrations which were held in Gokwe on Saturday. It is painful that barely an hour after the carnival atmosphere in Gokwe, the party was once again plunged into mourning and deep sorrow.

The three party cadres, Alex Magunda, the district chairperson for St Marys, Loveless Sango, the vice chairperson of the district and Innocent Muzuva, the secretary for ward 1, died while in the course of pursuing their dream of bringing about real change in Zimbabwe. I was deeply pained when I saw the lifeless bodies near the Empress Mine turn-off barely 20 minutes after the tragic accident. I followed to Kwekwe hospital and was again deeply touched by the sombre moment and the pains of the injured, especially after we had just celebrated, together, the 11th anniversary of our great peoples movement.

As leadership, we again travelled to Chitungwiza to pay our respects to the dearly departed party cadres who had left their homes early in the morning to attend a special party occasion more than 300 kilometres away. But then fate is capricious. Our colleagues were tragically taken away from us in our moment of celebration.

Their death embodies the sad story of the MDC in the last 11 years; the story of body blow after body blow, the story of tears planted on our cheeks even on those joyous occasions meant to celebrate our great achievements in only 11 years. Many Zimbabweans have lost life and limb on our roads. While we all need to take due care and caution on our roads, a lot needs to be done to dualise these roads so that we can mitigate the carnage on our highways.

I wish a speedy recovery to the injured. To the bereaved, I say our prayers and thoughts are with you in this moment of grief. The loss is not yours alone. The party, and indeed the country, has lost true heroes of real change.