Youths promised projects after Mugabe bash

Zanu PF has promised youths more projects in line with Zim Asset to commence after President Robert Mugabe’s 90th birthday bash.

Khumbulani Mpofu, the chairperson of the Zanu-PF Bulawayo Province Youth league said more projects to benefit youths were in the pipeline and he said through the projects the party seeks to mobilise as many youths as they can ahead of the 2018 elections.

Mpofu said youths are not conversant with indigenisation but after 21st February Movement birthday celebrations will unfurl more projects.

He said they want to instill a sense of innovation, dynamism and universality to the youths.

Meanwhile, Zanu-PF has centralised this year's fundraising campaigns for the 21st February Movement in a desperate bid to curb the increasing extortion of companies and individuals by its members using the party's name.

Some Zanu PF youths in Bulawayo were fingered for trying to extort money from some non-black-owned companies they approached to pay some form of "protection fee" soon after the elections, threatening those that did not comply with expropriation.

Bulawayo provincial youth chairperson Khumbulani Mpofu said the new fundraising arrangement was communicated to all provincial youth chairpersons at a recent meeting in Harare.

He said some youths were taking advantage of the party and soliciting donations from companies and unsuspecting individuals and not handing over proceeds to the leadership.

However, sources within the party's structures in Bulawayo said the new approach had irked a section of the youth league that was eyeing to cash in on Mugabe's birthday.

"After the executive meeting, some comrades, especially those not gainfully employed, openly expressed disappointment at the announcement.

"They were used to just writing a letter on a Zanu PF letterhead and moving around industries demanding donations which were never handed over.

"So it's a huge blow to some comrades," the source said.

Several high profile party members have in the past been fingered for converting funds and gifts meant for Mugabe's birthday bash to their personal use.

Last year, former Zanu PF Manicaland chairperson Mike Madiro was taken to court on charges of not handing over 10 beasts donated by a Chipinge farmer for Mugabe's birthday celebrations.

Most companies and other well-to-do individuals are expected to cough up huge sums of cash to celebrate a private occasion which the ruling Zanu PF party has nevertheless elevated to a national event.