Q&A with Morgan Tsvangirai

Morgan Tsvangirai's route to power has been long and tortuous. Shortly after he broke with Robert Mugabe's regime as head of the country's trade union movement in 1997, a group of men thought to be from Zimbabwe's secret service burst into his 10th-floor offices in Harare and tried to hurl him through a window. Since then, he has faced three more attempts on his life, been repeatedly beaten and arrested, and has seen Mugabe steal two elections from him, in 2002 and 2008. On March 6, less than a month after he became Prime Minister, his wife of 31 years, Susan, was killed when a car in which he was also traveling collided with a truck. He spoke to TIME's Africa bureau chief Alex Perry at the central Harare offices of his party, the Movement for Democratic Change.

TIME: How real is the transition?
Tsvangirai: This transitional inclusive government can already record some significant progress, in critical areas like education, health, water and sanitation and food. Inflation has gone from around 500 million percent to 3%. But there are very serious challenges, and there is accumulated frustration at the slow implementation of the Global Political Agreement [the power-sharing deal with Mugabe]. But the challenges are not insurmountable. Zimbabwe is changing. It's on an irreversible path of transition. The reforms we have implemented, democratic and economic, are building the foundations for a prosperous future, for a democratic future. In five years, this will be a totally different place. Africa isn't just an opportunity continent. This is an opportunity country. Its potential is huge. The reconstruction will be much faster than anticipated.

TIME: You often sound more optimistic than your people, many of whom question sharing power with Mugabe.
Tsvangirai: This arises out of a lack of change of paradigm, among all the people. It is sometimes very difficult to change mindsets. But our people were experiencing struggle fatigue because of the economic and social pressures they were facing. At some point we had to define a roadmap to resolve our national crisis: a transition, a new constitution. If we had not gone into government, what would have happened? Collapse? When we came into government in February, we found $4 million in the state coffers. What government can survive on that? Anything but political cohabitation was suicidal. We are moving from being an opposition movement to positioning ourselves as a party that is trying to change the power matrix of the country. It's not a gamble. It's brave, but it's something calculated. This is not a revolution. This is an evolution, and evolutions are sometimes slow and frustrating. If we had been looking for a revolution, then we would have had it, but with all the consequences of that, all the chaos and conflict. There were people looking for more immediate change, but that was not going to happen. One of the subtler questions facing us is: how do you have national healing without retribution? How do you do that? Each country has its own experience, but we were trying to craft a soft-landing for this crisis. We do not ignore the cries of the victims, but at the same time we do not punish the perpetrators. That's the balance we are trying to manage. And these are hard choices, you have to navigate through conflicting positions, but we were not going to be authors of our own chaos. Zanu-PF [Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front] has entrenched itself in power for 30 years. To prise off those tentacles is going to be a hard slog.

TIME: How much of your success depends on how Zanu can change itself?
Tsvangirai: I don't think Zanu has ever transformed itself. It was a liberation movement based on a military-political power structure, and it just moved straight into government. There was no distinction between the party that came out of liberation and the party in government, and that has cost them over the years. They did not move with the times. And it is the highest of irony that a government that invested so much in education became a victim of people's increasing sophistication. Today, there is no cohesion in Zanu. And Mugabe, to all intents and purposes, is institutionalized in Zanu – and a party that is not able to exist outside an individual is not a party with much to talk about. I don't want an MDC that is not able to fight on if I am not there. Their support has dwindled to 10-20%. They know we beat them last time. They heavily relied on state institutions to back them up – the courts, the police, the army, the electoral mechanisms, all there to serve Zanu. This is the reason why the transition is important – to create the necessary institutional reforms so that the next election is credible.

TIME: How is your personal relationship with Mugabe?
Tsvangirai: It's been a difficult adjustment. I can't hide from the fact that the animosity between us is legendary. We have begun to have some personal chemistry. We are business-like. We are respectful even if we disagree. I am hopeful that can move to trust, but we have not reached that yet. Don't get me wrong. You cannot defend Mugabe's past, especially since 2000, especially the violence, the election rigging, the refusal to give a voice to the people. That part is totally indefensible. But the most interesting part, to me, is how he moved from national hero to national villain. That transformation was quite dramatic. To me, Mugabe in 1980 was totally different to Mugabe in 2000. That transformation is something that preoccupies Western countries. And I can't explain it.

TIME: How is it that so many people can have so many disparate views, and such extreme ones, of the same country?
Tsvangirai: Some extremists have understandable concerns. If I had grown up in privileged society because of my race, I would probably like to protect that. You feel nostalgia for the past and forget the reality of the present. And there's the other extreme: let's burn down the buildings to cross out the past. That's unacceptable. It's self-destructive. The middle ground is where the majority is. The majority of people are not ideological. They want prosperity and to look after their children.

TIME: How do you try to steer this very vexed transition when, at the same time, you lose your wife?
Tsvangirai: And my grandson.

TIME: I heard. I'm sorry.
Tsvangirai: It has been a terrible personal loss. It has an effect on your personal stability. I lived with somebody for 31 years, someone who was a pillar through all the trials and tribulations. It [the loss] is not something you can explain. You just live on a daily basis. You experience daily loss. The fount of grief has been lessened by the amount of support and grieving by the whole nation. It relieves you. It is not only your loss. And you throw yourself into your work hoping that you are able to suppress these emotions. But they keep returning.

TIME: When will the transition be complete?
Tsvangirai: The agreement does not mention when an election will be held. We left it out deliberately because our elections are characterized by violence. If you have set a date, you will have a situation of election mode from day one. A constitutional referendum will be conducted in the next 18 months, and at the end of that, the President and the Prime Minister will sit down and set a date for elections.

TIME: Do you worry about a repeat of last year's violence?
Tsvangirai: In Zanu, the hardliners are just a dwindling minority. They are not able to mobilize support. People have seen the light at the end of the tunnel. No one wants Zimbabwe to slide back to where it was in November or December last year. You have to give it to Zimbabweans. Their resolve, their choice of the ballot over the bullet. Their commitment is amazing.