"We're talking about real critical life and death issues here," said Morgan Tsvangirai, head of the Movement for Democratic Change. Tsvangirai, the chief rival to President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, was visiting Houston to address a forum at the University of St. Thomas at 7:30 p.m. today. He will be accompanied by fellow party member Roy Bennett.

Both men have been persecuted by Mugabe's government. Tsvangirai, 55, was thrust into the international spotlight in March after he was beaten unconscious at a police station. Bennett, 50, was sentenced to one year in prison for getting into a shoving match with a government official who had insulted his family.

The two men will speak about Zimbabwe's hyperinflation — the country's annual inflation rate now exceeds 1,700 percent — and the chronic shortages of medicine, fuel and other basic necessities now gripping the southern African nation.

"Today, an ordinary Zimbabwean has to struggle for survival," said Tsvangirai, who spoke to the Chronicle at the university, which is hosting his first trip to Houston. "There's no meat, there's no fruit, there's no milk — the basics that any family would live on, it doesn't exist."

Under the authoritarian 27-year-rule of Mugabe, who led the country to independence in 1980, Zimbabwe has gone from being the breadbasket of Africa to a country unable to feed itself.

The World Food Program recently called for $118 million in donations to help feed 3.3 million Zimbabweans, about a quarter of the population, now facing severe food shortages.

The economy continues to crumble even though there is no war.

"Both the economic and social conditions in this country (have) been destroyed by one man," said Tsvangirai. "Of course, that's what dictatorship is all about."

leslie.casimir@chron.com