ON the eve of the Southern African Political Economy Series (SAPES) Trust conference held in Harare last month, a plan to revive the faltering student activism in the country through pouring in hefty amounts of money to tertiary institution learners was hatched.
According to the plan, endorsed by principal regime change donors, ‘brave’ students will be identified and recruited mainly from two anti-Zimbabwe organisations, the Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) and the Student Solidarity Trust (SST), to take the Government of Zimbabwe ‘head on’ through massive demonstrations.
Following the SAPES meeting, students were identified as one of the major ‘disgruntled’ groups to spearhead demonstrations against the Government in order to create a crisis situation.
This, according to National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and Chatham House, was a prerequisite for external intervention.
The demonstrating students will be paid US$500 if they are detained and a staggering US$5 000 if they stand trial.
Already, the plan has been put in motion with the arrest on June 26 2017 of maverick activist, Evan Mawarire, over what his handlers claimed was a ‘prayer’ meeting with protesting University of Zimbabwe (UZ) medical students at the Mt Pleasant campus as a test case.
While a report by a local online publication on June 27 2017 sought to sanitise Mawarire’s misdeeds, it has since emerged that his provocation of UZ authorities was in fact a trial run of the mega students funding project.
Below is what the report says in part:
Police declined to comment on Mawarire’s arrest but protesting students said he was live streaming on facebook at the time they were staging the protest.
He is said to have prayed while the students were protesting and in his prayer he appealed for divine intervention to save Zimbabwe.
But a notice by the UZ, published on June 26 2017, unravels the intent of both Mawarire and the marauding medical students.
“The (UZ) security department has reported this morning that a gathering of medical students at the Students Union building had started throwing stones, a behaviour that the University of Zimbabwe does not tolerate,” reads the UZ notice in part.
“The University has now made a decision that all medical students should move out of halls of residence on campus and off campus with immediate effect. All medical students are therefore directed to vacate halls of residence with immediate effect and by no later than 13:15 hours, June 27 2017.”
On its part, ZINASU, through its secretary-general Makomborero Haruzivishe, lamented what he called ‘the brutal attack’ on medical students in order to galvanise other students.
“ZINASU is further warning the Border Gezi-trained green bombers from brutalising innocent students equipped with only books and pens is outright barbaric and criminal (sic).
“It’s terrorist behaviour that should never be condoned. We would like to furthermore warn the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education that we still demand education for all, grants and academic loans, not tuition fees hikes.”
This is why ZINASU’s profile is as interesting as it is revealing.
According to its website: “It is a conglomeration of tertiary students across Zimbabwe; provides national student representation plus demand-driven solidarity and support to the student movement and human rights defenders in Zimbabwe, has student victims of human rights abuse in terms of the privatisation of education and attack on academic freedoms as its primary target group for its initiatives and also thrives for female participation in defence of democracy and human rights as this has proved to be a major challenge for almost all mass movements in Zimbabwe.
Historically, the Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) has been at the centre of providing relevant, effective national student representation of Zimbabwean college students. This has been the history or trajectory of ZINASU since the turn of the new millennium from the glorious days of the late 1990s and early years of the new millennium, which saw our institution winning the prestigious International Students Peace Prize for Human Rights in Norway in 2003.
ZINASU has 44 member institutions who constitute its General Council and hence Congress. It brings together student representatives (SRCs) from these various institutions.”
But the continued funding of this organisation presents many questions on the sincerity of donors who have claimed they are not funding regime change activities in Zimbabwe despite being caught with hands in the cookie jar on several occasions.
In 2011, NED and one of the SAPES Trust Convention came under fire from Harare after intelligence which showed hefty amounts of money being given to NGOs operating in Zimbabwe was unearthed.
The NED was founded, as New York Times reporter John Broder explained in 1997, ‘to do in the open what the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has done surreptitiously for decades’.
Curiously, most of the organisations were youths and students-oriented and the following exposé explains in detail the nature of funding and activities of recipients.
l Student Christian Movement of Zimbabwe (SCMZ) got US$47 000 for organising youths in tertiary institutions and communities throughout Zimbabwe to campaign for change.
l Students Solidarity Trust (SST) received US$34 700 for promoting regime change through the education system and targeting students, parents, teachers and elected officials.
l Youth Agenda Trust (YAT) got US$43 070 for agitating the youth in ‘marginalised communities’ to be active in programmes promoting the regime change agenda.
“ZINASU is funded by many donor organisations. The idea is to fund violent radicalism with some degree of perceived intellectual justification. These organisations include, among others, Konrad Adeneur and Stiftung of the Czech Republic, USAID and SIDA, while some of the money comes through OSISA,” said an impeccable source this week.
ZINASU and SST are also funded by Norwegian organisation NORAD.
A May 2015 report by Nordic Consulting Group titled Students Leading Change: Evaluating the SAIH Support for Zimbabwe and the Norway Campaign of 2009-2014 (Project number: QZA-12/0822-36) confirms funding of SST to promote regime change in Zimbabwe.
The report identifies SST, ZINASU, Female Student Network (FSN) and the Youth Empowerment Transformation

“At that time the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change was formed, in which the student movement Zimbabwe National Student Union (ZINASU) was instrumental in setting up. In order to respond to the great number of arrested and expelled students, ZINASU set up a desk to respond to the needs of the affected students. In 2002 an organisation called Student Solidarity Trust (SST) was formed to work full time on support to victimized students. During the Unity Government (2009-2013), attacks on students were relatively low compared to previous years under the ZANU-PF government. SAIH has supported ZINASU in the late nineties, and occasionally up till 2010. However, since 2010 SAIH has given financial support to ZINASU on yearly basis.  SAIH has supported SST since its inception in 2002 (sic),” reads the report in part.
It goes on: “Few female students participate in student activism in Zimbabwe. The male students, especially at national level, mainly dominate student politics. The male students believe that the confrontational manner of ZINASU does not appeal to female students hence the female students do not participate in activism. Female Student Network (FSN) has existed for some time as a loosely network, but was formally established in 2011. SAIH started to support the initiative (in) 2010. The financial support to all three organisations (ZINASU, SST and FSN) have been channelled through the Youth Empowerment Transformation Trust (YETT). In 2011 and 2012, SAIH information campaign in Norway focused on students’ rights. The long-term relationship with SST and ZINASU and their knowledge and data on violations of students’ rights were key when SAIH formulated and designed the objective for the campaign.”
SST’s objectives are revealing.
Among other things, the organisation claims to defend and promote what it says are human rights abuses of students at tertiary institutions.
Consider the following.
Objectives
1. To implement Support programs for students victims of human rights abuses
2. Monitoring and Reporting on Human Rights Abuses in the Students Movement.
3. Promoting popular participation and social dialogue.
4. Develop strategic partnerships and networks at a national, regional and international level.
5. To carry out research and analysis on issues of strategic importance to the students’ community in the country as a way of bringing the issues into the public domain, and for advocacy and social mobilisation purposes.
Mission statement
SST seeks to provide solidarity and support to the students’ community in Zimbabwe through support programmes for student victims of human rights abuses, monitoring and reporting on human rights abuses of students, promoting popular participation and dialogue through policy research and analysis and engagement.
Vision
To promote and provide solidarity and support to the student movement towards a democratic Zimbabwe.
Sectors
Advocacy; Children/Youth; Civil Activism; Democracy & Good Governance; Education/Training; Human Rights; Political Activism; Victim Support
But ZINASU is blunt in its resentment of President Robert Mugabe and his ZANU PF Party.
ZINASU was one of the groups that took part in the so-called Working People’s Convention (WPC) that gave birth to the MDC on September 11 1999.
This resulted in the ascendency of some student leaders like Learnmore Jongwe, Job Sikhala, Charlton Hwende and Nelson Chamisa, among others, into senior positions of the new party.
In the civil society, it has produced the likes of Philani Zamchiya and Promise Mkwananzi, a spokesperson of the regime change outfit #Tajamuka/ Sesijikile campaign .
Mkwananzi was the MDC-T Youth Assembly secretary before he was expelled for calling for the leader’s resignation in April 2014, according to his internet profile.
Other ZINASU civil society activists are Nixon Nyikadzino (National Constitutional Assembly and Crisis in Zimbabwe South Africa chapter), Philip Pasirayi (Crisis in Zimbabwe), Pedzisai Ruhanya (CiZC and now Zimbabwe Democracy Institute), Gabriel Shumba (Zimbabwe Exiles Forum) and Mfundo Mlilo (executive director of the Combined Harare Residents Association, an amalgamation of residents’ associations in the capital city).
CHRA was identified as a key player in the implementation of the Citizen Manifesto project launched a fortnight ago in Harare.
There is also Brian Kagoro who was instrumental in the formation of CiZC.
Kagoro has been exposed as one of the brains behind the Citizen Manifesto initiative.
ZINASU is also funded by the International Student Festival in Trondheim (ISFiT).
After winning the 2003 Peace Award, ISFiT issued the following statement:
“ZINASU was founded in the late 1980s and is one of the key actors in the fight against President Robert Mugabe’s oppressive regime.

Replacing his regime with a democratically elected government is one of their major visions.
Mugabe’s increasing restrictions on human rights is reflected in the country’s education policy and has caused major obstacles for students and opposition to this policy has met with severe repression (sic).
Tuition-fees have doubled 30 times (sic), prices on student accommodation have risen and ‘patriotic’ subjects have been implemented as part of a compulsory program for education. The students of ZINASU have been victims of torture, violence and other sanctions imposed by the political authorities of Zimbabwe.
Before the election in 2002 many student demonstrators who were part of the opposition were arrested.”
From the above, it is not difficult to understand why ZINASU is instrumental to the regime change agenda.
“For ZINASU, the interests of students come before everything else: at this particular juncture in time those interests require ZINASU to align itself with all progressive forces fighting to end ZANU PF misrule in the 2018 elections be they fellow civic society organisations or political parties (sic),” said ZINASU spokesperson Zivai Mhetu, in a recent statement on 2018 elections.
In 2008 ZINASU joined hands with the NCA for the November 11 2008 demonstration to push for a transitional arrangement it said would ‘urgently work towards addressing the desperate humanitarian catastrophe in the country’.
“We wish to reiterate and emphasize our position that a transitional arrangement respecting the will of the people is the only way forward. Any arrangement must respect the aspirations and decision of the people as reflected on March 29 2008.
We urge Zimbabweans, especially noting what transpired at the ‘legitimacy-deficit’ SADC summit on the 9th of November, to get back to trenches and shape our destiny. Nothing for us without us (sic),” said ZINASU in a statement.
In June 2011 ZINASU confirmed for the first time that it survived on donor funding.
In a statement, the organisation which had split into two factions explained how this came about.
They traced the factionalism back to 2006 and accused the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition of seeking to control the union. When a decision was made to wean the union from Crisis, the decision was popular with the students but ‘had no sympathy from some funding partners and other friends of ZINASU’, they said.
On June 18 2012, speaking at ZINASU’s main celebrations held in Masvingo, the organisation’s National Representative Council leader Joram Chikwadze urged students ‘to take decisive actions and play their role as the vanguards of democracy and safeguard a democratic future of the nations for their own good and for the betterment of the nation at large (sic)’. 
“As students, we have always played a crucial role as the vanguards of democracy and that role has never been so important as it is now and in the following months as we enter the final lap in the race for democracy that we have been running alongside a dedicated dictator who is so allergic to democracy and good governance. We should be motivated by the memories of such June atrocities and inhumane acts by dubious bloodthirsty charlatans to champion and scale up the struggle in pursuit of democracy. Let’s Champion Democracy and Good Governance in our lifetime (sic),” Chikwadze said.
On the eve of the July 31 2013 harmonised elections, ZINASU labelled ZANU PF ‘an enemy beyond conciliation’.
With new money coming in, there is no doubt there will be increased regime change agenda activities at tertiary institutions.