Movement for Democratic Change

Throughout the 1980s and ’90s the government continued to struggle with the issue of land reform. Some 4,000 white farmers collectively controlled about one-third of Zimbabwe’s arable land, and hundreds of white-owned farms were either officially redistributed by the government or…

…Mugabe’s government came from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), formed in September 1999 and led by trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai. In the parliamentary elections of 2000, the MDC won about half of the contested seats, but ZANU-PF won or controlled most of the remaining seats and thus maintained firm…

…form an opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), to challenge President Mugabe and his ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF); this was done with the support of the ZCTU—formerly an ally of ZANU-PF. The nascent MDC soon demonstrated its influence: in a February 2000 nationwide…