$500 to have an intimate moment with Tsvangirai

Zimbabweans willing to share dinner and mingle with the country's former Prime Minister and main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai will have to fork out $500 to enjoy such an intimate moment.

Radio VOP can exclusively reveal that Tsvangirai will on Thursday host a fundraising dinner for his MDC-T party's presidential campaign fund, where guests who will share a table and interact with the former trade union leader and his wife Elizabeth will fork out $500 per head at the top presidential table where 10 chairs have been reserved.

Political tension has been rising in Zimbabwe as the country heads towards a high-stakes general election scheduled for 2018.

Dubbed the presidential annual dinner, the banquet will be hosted at Nomads Garden in Harare under the theme "embracing tradition as we enhance our health in fighting poverty" where organisers indicated that guests will served with "typical Zimbabwean food".

Guests who will occupy the VVIP chairs will pay $100 per head to sit on the 130 chairs reserved for this table where they will be in the company of the opposition's party's top leadership known as the Standing Committee.

210 chairs have been reserved for the VIP section where guests are being asked to part with $50 per head.

Organisers said the meet and greet dinner is a fundraising initiative to boost the opposition leader's presidential campaign fund. President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party recently hosted a dinner to fundraise $3 million to host its annual conference scheduled for December in Victoria Falls.

The former trade union leader in 2008 handed Mugabe his first humiliating electoral defeat since independence from Britain in 1980. He then formed a coalition government with the Zanu-PF leader after officials at the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission maintained that he had failed to win enough votes to declare outright victory in the historic general elections.

Tsvangirai has in recent months been reaching out to his former allies to rejoin his MDC-T party and forge a united alliance in fighting to wrestle political power from Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party. His charm offensive has begun yielding some results as former allies such as Job Sikhala, Joubert Mudzumwe and Edward Mkhosi have returned to rejoin and lend him support.

Zimbabweans are currently enduring daily struggles for survival in a country crippled with food shortages, high unemployment levels, company closures and grinding poverty.