Second tragedy for Morgan Tsvangirai

Less than a month after his wife Susan was killed in a road accident, Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai suffered another family tragedy on Saturday when his youngest grandchild, two-and-and-a-half year-old Sean, drowned at the family home in Harare. Sean and his father, Garikai Tsvangirai, were only in Zimbabwe to attend Susan's funeral and were due to return to Canada where they live.

Morgan Tsvangirai had just returned to work after mourning his wife's death and was in Victoria Falls for a government conference when the tragedy occurred. "It is just beyond belief," a colleague of the Prime Minister's said on Sunday after learning of the child's death.

Susan Tsvangirai, 50, died when a US-sponsored aid vehicle side-swiped her husband's car on a dangerous stretch of road on the outskirts of Harare.

Many Zimbabweans have been convinced that it was an assassination plot that went wrong, but Tsvangarai himself has insisted that it was an accident and has been at pains to ensure the tragedy does not derail the fragile new unity government which Tsvangirai heads as PM while his once deadly rival Robert Mugabe continues as President.

The conference at Victoria Falls had been organised to draw up an action plan for the next 100 days in an attempt to drag Zimbabwe out of recession and help cement the new political system. Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara was due to make the closing statement at the conference while Tsvangirai returned to Harare to be with his grieving son. ·