The Secretary-General of the opposition MDC Alliance, Chalton Hwende has said a businessman based in South Africa has offered to pay a membership fee for 3500 people.

This comes as the party recently announced that it was recruiting new members who upon registration need to pay a membership fee amounting to $60. Posting on Twitter, Hwende said:

One businessman based in SA has just called me to offer to pay membership fee for 35 branches in rural areas to help us with our rural penetration Strategy each branch has 100 members so he will pay for 3500 members @ $210 000rtgs. Let’s adopt rural branches and help the Party.

The opposition in the country has often been accused of neglecting the rural vote which has unfortunately been the difference between the opposition and the ruling party in each and every election.

The recruitment drive comes at the backdrop of a leadership crisis in the MDC that has seen some of the MDC Alliance leaders and members defecting to MDC-T led by Thokozani Khupe.