Morgan Tsvangirai owes the wave of national adoration and the votes he won at the polls in part, at least, to the cruelty of President Mugabe’s regime.

People cite the “ABM factor” — Anybody but Mugabe could stand against the President in a free and fair election and win. But Mr Tsvangirai has established redeeming credentials. Even before the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was founded in 1999, the executive leader of the national labour movement had begun to be seen as the one to break Mr Mugabe’s hold on the state of Zimbabwe.

He was a Lech Walesa and a Frederick Chiluba — who brought the end of Zambia’s one-party state rule in 1991 — combined. He was lively, assertive and with a knack of leadership from more than a decade as the secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. More than that, he was the polar opposite of Mr Mugabe — amiable, approachable, brave, gregarious, quick to laugh and with an irreverently witty streak.

He had no basic education to speak of, leaving school at the age of 16. But he caught up with studies in middle- age, graduating in 2001 from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University with a diploma in the Executive Leaders In Development Program.

Mr Tsvangirai was the natural choice for the inaugural leadership of the MDC when it was founded in 1999. In 2000 he mobilised a movement against a draft constitution contrived by Mr Mugabe, posing the first credible threat to the Mugabe Government for 20 years.

He went on to propel the MDC in the next three elections to the point where Mr Mugabe could beat him only by murdering and maiming the movement’s supporters, and by vote-fixing.

But Morgan the Redeemer is unlikely to convert to Morgan the Fixer, able to restore the economy, rebuild infrastructure and take tough decisions on exchange rates and World Trade Organisation protocols.

Mr Tsvangirai’s record inside the party is poor. Party workers who have been with him for years describe him as vacillating, indecisive and, unlike Mr Mugabe, easily persuaded to change his views.

Three years after the party was founded he was reportedly being ruled by “the kitchen cabinet”, an informal clique of aides by whom party policy was decided, while the national executive committee was ignored.

In 2004 thugs loyal to the “kitchen cabinet” were assaulting their opponents, seizing their party vehicles and, on occasions, forcibly driving people out of the party headquarters and occupying the premises for several weeks. Mr Tsvangirai ignored appeals to stop the violence that was fouling his party’s reputation.

In 2005 the MDC split into two factions. The national executive committee was voting on whether to participate in elections for the new senate. The vote went against Mr Tsvangirai, who walked out in a fit of pique. In an astonishing act of dishonesty he told the waiting press that the committee had supported his position.

In January, during the last of numerous attempts to reunite the two factions, Mr Tsvangirai held out for only one more candidate than he has been offered in the elections; it was part of a pact jointly to field candidates with the other faction, led by Arthur Mutambara.

The plan was to avoid the obvious trap of splitting the opposition vote. The next morning Mr Tsvangirai, pressed by militants, was demanding 20 more seats. The pact collapsed.

The effect has been painfully apparent in the elections, with Mr Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) party taking about six seats that were needlessly contested by both MDC factions.

Morgan Tsvangirai

— Born in Gutu, Central Zimbabwe, the son of a bricklayer and the eldest of nine children

— Left school at 16 without qualifications. From 1974 worked in Bindura Nickel Mine, rising up through trade unions

— In 1984 he spent nine months in Britain, witnessed the miners strike and met Arthur Scargill

— In 1988 elected secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU). He transformed it into a powerful opposition force

— In 1997 he organised a series of nationwide strikes against tax increases, provoking an attempt on his life

— In 1999 he formed the Movement for Democratic Change party and in 2002 narrowly lost the elections to Mugabe, inflicting an unprecedented blow to the Zanu-PF’s grip on power In the same year, he was secretly filmed allegedly discussing the president's 'elimination', leading to a treason charges of which he was finally acquitted in 2004

— The party split in two in 2005, key leaders charging Tsvangirai with poor leadership and inability to plan ahead

— He suffered a suspected fractured skull, brain injury and internal bleeding after police arrest last year for taking part in an allegedly illegal prayer meeting

Sources: Times archives

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