Civil Society Organisations on Wednesday declared the late academic and late former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s advisor, Alex Tawanda Magaisa, a people’s national hero.
Magaisa died on Sunday at Margate Hospital in the United Kingdom after suffering a cardiac arrest.
Addressing journalists in Harare, the Secretary for the Constitutional Law Centre (CLC), Dzikamai Bere, said they have set aside five days of mourning in honour of Magaisa. Bere said:
Magaisa chose to live his life in the public square with the ordinary struggling masses of Zimbabwe. For that, he deserves to become a people’s hero.
In his own words, he said, “Heroes are not decided in boardrooms. They are decided by the work they do during their lifetime” and in that regard, on behalf of the millions of Zimbabweans whose lives were touched by Alex Magaisa, today we declare Dr Alex Tawanda Magaisa the people of Zimbabwe’s national hero.
In line with this declaration and in consultation with the family and friends, we are declaring from today five days of mourning.
Bere said they have a lot of activities lined up for the five day mourning period. He said:
During these days, starting from today, a series of activities have been lined up to give Dr Magaisa a befitting send-off.
As tribute to the late intellectual, CLC has lined up a lot of activities for the next five days.
On Wednesday at 7pm, we will host a memorial space to honour the hero, an inaugural memorial lecture on Thursday at 5pm which will be hosted by top human rights lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, a virtual memorial service on zoom and Facebook livestreaming on Friday, a big Saturday march in memory of the famous big Saturday Read (BSR), which will start from Africa Unity Square at 11 am and the fifth event will be confirmed as we await repatriation.
Magaisa worked at the University of Warwick, the University of Nottingham and since 2007, he was based at Kent Law School, the University of Kent at the time of his death on 5 June 2022.
His main area of teaching and research was company and financial services law.