THE Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), better known as the Chatham House, is a para-politics organisation which directs London’s foreign policy.
It presents itself as an independent policy institution.
But it is in fact a British foreign intelligence arm.
Chatham House has written a number of papers on Zimbabwe, all calling for regime change.
Its latest report is The Domestic and External implications of Zimbabwe’s Economic Reform and Re-engagement Agenda co-authored by Dr Knox Chitiyo, Alex Vines and Christopher Vandome.
The report claims to know everything that is wrong with Zimbabwe, in all spheres, from the social to the political arena.
However, this report will be better understood in the context of what Chatham House is.
In 2015 it was ranked the world’s second most influential think tank after the Brookings Institution.
But its formation is shrouded in secrecy.
According to notable historian Edward Griffin and Professor Carrol Quigley, a Brookings researcher, Defence Department consultant and Bill Clinton mentor, Chatham House is a product of the ‘secret society’ called The Round Table.
The Round Table was established by Cecil John Rhodes and Lord Alfred Milner in 1891.
Rhodes called for the formation of a ‘secret society’ to oversee re-establishment of a British Empire that would incorporate most of the developing world and re-capture the United States.
It was from this Rhodes-created secret society that the RIIA and its various branches, including the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), emerged.
The Round Table group installed its members into high places in governments and private industry news sources in different nations to control them.
Its goal was to influence the political and economic situations of nations from behind the scenes by controlling journalism, educational and propaganda agencies, something Chatham House has done up to date.
Professor Quigley notes, the genesis of Rhodes’ Round Table Group emerged from a meeting in February 1891 between Rhodes, journalist William Stead and the future Lord Esher, Reginald Baliol Brett.
It was decided that the group would be divided into an inner circle, called ‘The Society of the Elect’ and an outer circle, known as ‘The Association of Helpers’.
Within The Society of the Elect would be a core group, including Rhodes himself and a so-called ‘Junta of Three’, who would in fact exercise authority within the overall organisation.
The Junta was to consist of Stead, Lord Esher and Alfred Milner.
Milner was a journalist who was plucked from obscurity by Stead, who made him assistant editor at the Pall Mall Gazette.
After a series of political appointments, Milner was appointed High Commissioner for Southern Africa in 1897, an important and influential position in the years leading up to the Boer War.
Milner mentored a group of young lawyers and administrators, mostly affiliated to Oxford University, who became known as Milner’s Kindergarten.
These people went on to become some of the most influential figures in the foreign affairs of the early 20th Century British Empire, including Lord Lothian, Philip Henry Karr, Robert Henry Brand of Lazard Brothers, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir and Lionel Curtis, the founder of the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
As one historian observed: “Chatham House is nothing, but the Milner Group ‘writ large’.”
In a recorded interview, Professor Quigley described in detail how this Rhodes-founded Round Table Group exerted power in international affairs in the first half of the 20th Century through organisations like Chatham House.
According to Quigley, the group was responsible for the Boer War, the establishment of the Rhodes Trust, the control of The Times, the formation of the League of Nations, the formation of the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the appeasement of Nazi Germany, among other events.
For decades, Chatham House has been responsible for covertly manipulating, shaping and controlling British foreign policy.
Zimbabwe has been under Chatham House radar since 1999 when Britain took the decision that President Robert Mugabe must be removed from power.
A Chatham House meeting of 1999, chaired by Richard Dowden, met to map out a strategy to destroy the ZANU PF Government and President Mugabe.
Since then, they have formed and sponsored the opposition party, the MDC.
However, to the chagrin of the West, the MDC and other surrogates of the West have been repeatedly walloped at the polls, thereby failing to perform to expectations.
The institute is funded by partners, patrons and corporate members who read like a Who’s Who of the Fortune 500, including Chevron, AIG, Bloomberg, Toshiba, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Lockheed Martin, Royal Dutch Shell, the European Commission and dozens of other corporations, institutions and foreign governments.
Although the majority of its activities are publicly accessible, some of its policy meetings are private, accessed only by a select few.
The Chatham House Rule states that: “When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.”
In some ways, perhaps this is its greatest accomplishment; to hide its enormous influence and its ongoing role in steering global geopolitics, not by hiding under a blanket of secrecy like the Bilderberg Group, Skull and Bones, or other secret societies, but by putting itself in the public spotlight so that it looks ordinary.
It should be noted, after all, that this is precisely the way Rhodes envisioned the organisation to function, and the continued existence and influence of that idea, manifested most openly in Chatham House, the CFR and their brethren think tanks around the world, might serve as the perfect example of how some of the world’s biggest secrets are hidden in plain sight.
The authors of the current 2016 Chatham House Report on the country, Dr Knox Chitiyo, Alex Vines and Christopher Vandome make interesting reading.
Dr Chitiyo is currently the Africa fellow with the Royal Institute for International Affairs at Chatham House.
Prior to joining Chatham House in 2012, Dr Chitiyo was the Africa fellow and Head of the Africa Programme at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, from 2007 to 2011.
He is particularly involved in calls for ‘Security Sector Reform’ in Zimbabwe.
He authored a RUSI Whitehall report, Making the Case for Security Sector Reform in Zimbabwe in September 2009.
Before he went to the UK in 2005, Dr Chitiyo, a Zimbabwean, was senior lecturer in War Studies and History at the University of Zimbabwe from 1992-2003.
During this time, he also co-founded the Centre for Defence Studies (CDS) at the University of Zimbabwe and was the Deputy Director of the CDS from 1995-2003.
Dr Chitiyo has also taught on the Joint Command and Staff Course (JCSC) at the Staff College in Zimbabwe and at the Gweru Military Academy.
He has been heavily involved in the non-governmental organisation (NGO) sector as he holds numerous positions.
He is the chairman of the Britain — Zimbabwe Society (BZS), board member of the global NGO Mines Advisory Group (MAG).
Dr Chitiyo is also on the SADC-affiliated Southern Africa Defence and Security Network (SADSEM) and a board member of the African Diaspora Group, an advisory group to UK policy-makers.
Since he went to the UK, Chitiyo has been attacking the Zimbabwean Government calling for the removal of President Mugabe and in 2008 called for a military intervention in Zimbabwe from its neighbours, particularly Botswana.
As a security expert, he should have known better that this would never happen.
Alex Vines also makes interesting reading.
Of his 65 papers, this report is his first paper on Zimbabwe.
His knowledge on Zimbabwe stems from a one-year stay in 1989 when he was research assistant at the National Museums and Monuments in Masvingo.
Yet he has become an authoritative voice on what is wrong with Zimbabwe.
Lastly, there is Christopher Vandome, research assistant of African Programme at Chatham House as well as a member of George Soros’ Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA).
There is no doubt Chatham House is an organisation with a sinister agenda.