MUTARE: Zanu PF should find new strategies of mobilizing resources to sustain its operations as the party is now experiencing serious donor fatigue, a senior official has said.

Manicaland party chairperson, Mike Madiro, said this during an extra ordinary Provincial Coordination Committee meeting held at Mutare Polytechnic College recently.

Madiro told Zanu PF national chairperson, Oppah Muchinguri, that regular party benefactors were now dragging their feet an indicator that it was about time the party came up with income generating projects to bankroll its activities.

“The party should come up with new strategies to mobilize its own resources and bankroll its activities. People we always ask for resources are now getting tired. We should not behave as if individual business people and companies work for Zanu PF,” said Madiro.

Zanu PF is known to be bankrolled by the private sector and individual business people. Diamond firms which use to operate in Marange such as Mbada Diamonds and Chinese-owned Anjin Investments also bankrolled the party during the peak of their mining activities in the province.

However, the consolidation of mining firms by government saw funds from Marange to the party shrinking.

Madiro told Zanu PF members that the honeymoon was over and the party should think outside the box.

“We should have our funding and a vision to be self-financing. We should come up with income generating projects so that we don’t become beggars,” Madiro said.

In her response, Muchinguri pledged $1 000 every month to bankroll party activities in the province.

Muchinguri told party leaders who attended the meeting to “loosen the strings of their purses” to bankroll party activities.

“If you are a leader you have to sacrifice. We have business people in the party and they must sponsor party activities. Let’s have other activities to raise money for the party,” said Muchinguri.

She claimed that former provincial chairperson and ex-Energy minister, Samuel Undenge, got his funding from Intratek Zimbabwe director, Wicknell Chivayo, through their “shady” deals at Zesa.

“Some people used to bankroll the party with funds they acquired dubiously from Wicknell Chivayo. Some of us we don’t have that kind of money,” she said.

After Muchinguri’s pledge, a flood gate of pledges opened as politicians tried to outclass each other in front of their superiors.