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Morgan Tsvangirai, was reportedly thrown out of the couple’s Land Cruiser as it overturned off the road after being hit by a USAID truck on a potholed road along the Harare-Masvingo Road.
Her husband Morgan suffered neck and head injuries and went through a terrible ordeal while coming to grips with what had happened.
President Mugabe, visibly devastated by the tragedy visited the country’s new Prime Minister on the Friday Tsvangirai was admitted to hospital as well as on the next day. During a memorial service held the following week, the President said, “I plead with you to accept it. It’s the hand of God. We are sincerely saddened by the death of Susan and we hope that Morgan will remain strong.”
Based on the above information, the Sunday Times newspaper from South Africa published a political cartoon on March 14, 2009 that even President Mugabe’s fiercest critics would consider to be in bad taste.
The cartoon showed on the left side Morgan Tsvangirai, bandaged and sad, standing next to a casket and above it a portrait of his late wife surrounded by flowers. On the right of the composition is a heavily caricatured President Mugabe, teary and gesturing with his right hand while stating that it was the hand of God that had taken the Prime Minister’s wife.
A tag pinned on the President’s chest is written “I am the Lord”, thereby suggesting that he was responsible for the tragedy. It is important to note the President’s facial expression. The raised eyebrows, tears and half-opened eyes suggest a genuine emotional response to the tragedy, but the mouth, appearing to frown in some areas but giving away a smile on the President’s left side contradicts the message presented on the rest of the face.
The cartoon suggests that President Mugabe has elevated his status to that of a deity that has the ability to take life at will. The face can then be interpreted as shedding crocodile tears, suggesting that he is a brutal man lacking the ability to feel sorry during this colleague’s darkest hour.
A “choke” inscribed within the President’s speech bubble links with the tears to give an impression of a man desperately faking empathy. The cartoonist ties the speech to the tag on the President’s suit to make it all too apparent that foul play was involved.   
This was despite the fact that even Morgan Tsvangirai himself had ruled out foul play. He said, “When something happens, there is always speculation but I want to say in this case, if there was any foul play, it was one in a thousand. It was an accident and unfortunately it took her life.”
The cartoonist intentionally omitted this and chose to fit his cartoon in what appears to be an unwritten editorial policy for most South African newspapers.
They choose to paint President Mugabe as an all bad, ruthless dictator with no moral or ethical fortitude. On the other hand, Tsvangirai is depicted as a defenceless victim, and a symbol for hope, courage and democracy.
The Sunday Times cartoonist opted to walk a familiar route. This time it was distasteful because it was a piece of art that capitalised on a tragic event that just about all Zimbabweans conceded was caused by a traffic accident and all together mourned the death of an important political figure.
Certainly, whenever any form of misfortune befalls a political figure, several theories are thrown into the air. The accident that claimed the Prime Minister’s wife was no different.
The cartoonist developed the political piece based on paper thin conspiracy theories that became obsolete the moment details about the accident were made public.
The cartoon may have been enough daily dosage to a South African reading public long sold the image of a brutal President loved by no one in Zimbabwe. But to people in Zimbabwe, it was as much in bad taste as it was embarrassingly false.
In 2009, the entire country was in mourning due to a mishap caused solely by human error but the Sunday Times ignored Zimbabwe public sentiments, ignored Tsvangirai’s own testimony, ignored political commentators and used its editorial page to lay blame to a person that was as shocked by the incident as everyone else.
Perhaps one cartoon best describes the South African media’s stance on President Mugabe. It was developed by the same cartoonist while the world anxiously waited for Zimbabwe’s presidential election. It showed South African cartoonists sitting in a circle with their tools of their trade, and looking up.
They wait for President Mugabe to fall to the ground. If the objective is neither being informative nor being a watchdog for the public but a ploy to get the guy out of office, then brutal blows legal and illegal would be most welcome.
Independent media my foot!