ON December 3 2023, the Zimbabwe Human Rights (ZimRights) director, Dzikamai Bere, left the country to attend a summit: ‘Shift the Power Global Summit’ where over 700 activists from across the globe assembled in Bogota, Colombia.

The Summit took place from between December 5-7.

It was organised by the Global Fund for Community Foundations. 

Shift the Power is a movement whose aim is to ‘change the behaviour of governments’. 

Two central pillars constitute the movement; one of them is a dissatisfaction with ‘…top-down approaches that fail to deliver for the people they are meant to serve and champions the redistribution of power and resources, advocating fervently for a more equitable and people-centric approach to development’. 

To put it simply, the movement trains and strategises on ways to topple one’s own government. 

The modus operandi for unseating the government would include aggressive use of social media to circulate videos and messages inciting people to remove their government, civil disobedience and demonstrations, all the while using terms such as ‘human rights, democracy and transparency’.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) channels millions of dollars to projects like these through commercial contractors and through the US government–financed NGOs, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute.

These funds are meant to subvert constitutionally elected governments.

The Shift the Power manifesto reads: “…embrace a vision of a good society built around core values of equality, democracy and sustainability and a set of organising principles based on global solidarity and distributed leadership.”

But remember the Centre for Applied Non-violent Action and Strategies (CANVAS)! This is an organisation that has been involved in the mobilisation of small groups of Zimbabweans to lead Zimbabweans in a mass uprising to remove ZANU PF from power since 2003. 

It has been involved in regime change push in more than 50 countries, including Iran, North Korea, Burma, Georgia, Tunisia and Egypt. 

All these countries have borne the brunt of the regime change push from Washington.

In 2018, 25 civil society and opposition party members from Zimbabwe trained in subversion at a week-long CANVAS workshop where strategies were formulated to be implemented before and after the elections. 

Shift the power movement is very similar to CANVAS. 

ZimRights and Bere

Now, ZimRights is an organisation that purports to ‘engage in governance issues in the country’. 

But this publication has since exposed the shenanigans by the organisation that has, time and again, openly displayed their romp with the US in its regime change putsch in Zimbabwe.  

The organisation plays a pivotal role in destabilising the country.

Observing it more closely, it was founded in 1992 and the organisation is also a member of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum whose founding chair was the notorious Anthony Reeler of the Research and Advocacy Unit (RAU), also a former agent of the British government. 

Dzikamai Bere was the programmes co-ordinator at ZimRights Forum. 

Reeler is also a member of the founding committee of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition in 2001, previously a committee member of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) and also a member of the National Transitional Justice Working Group Zimbabwe (NTJWG) 

Again Bere worked as a coordinator there. 

The NTJWG is a group of people that led over 40 NGOs, working together to document evidence that would be used to send ZANU PF officials to jail in the event the opposition came into power.

In 2017, Bere participated in the Young African Leaders Initiatives Mandela Washington Fellowship (MWF) sponsored by the US Department of State. 

There, young African leaders are trained to push for regime change in Africa.   

Bere replaced former ZimRights national director Okay Machisa following an audit that implicated the latter in the abuse of funds from USAID.  

At this point, Bere’s presence at the Shift the Power Summit is hardly surprising.

But all these organisations have unrealistic expectations — the Government of Zimbabwe cannot be toppled due to a three day workshop by some activists in a foreign land. 

Their plans are in complete disarray as their preferred opposition puppet has since lost his footing in the political arena.

Meanwhile, everything that can possibly go wrong is going wrong in the opposition CCC camp at this point. 

Zimbabweans have mostly rejected the CCC and now, members of the party itself are jumping ship to prop up their political careers.

On December 18, Starman Chamisa, the outgoing Mbare MP, attempted to open the closed Mupedzanhamo market with help of CCC councillors to gain cheap political mileage. 

The city council closed Mupedzanhamo nearly three years ago and have not officially opened the market. 

However, CCC youths who have been collecting US$5 bribes from traders selling their goods just outside Mupedzanhamo market could not stomach this move and almost violently chased out those who had already gained access to the market.

The same CCC youths, who have become unruly from lack of proper leadership, have been trying to grab an opportunity to harm and harass interim secretary-general Sengezo Tshabangu. 

They tried to do so on Saturday, December 16 and ended up having to be dispersed by the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP). 

So disgruntled are they that many of them are defecting to the ‘Solidarity for Sikhala’ led by Obert Masaraure in the hope that when, and if, Sikhala gets out of prison, he will lead them.

Through all this, Chamisa, who they now call the emperor, is not saying a thing!

To add salt to the wound, on Saturday night, again the party held a presidential dinner in Newlands, where attendees were to pay a staggering US$1 000 to grace the event. 

But the star of the show failed to appear. 

Instead, according to inside sources, the ‘emperor’ drove into the car park where he called Amos Chibaya to inquire how many people had showed up to this sham event. 

A rather embarrassing figure was given to Chamisa who chose to give Chibaya his speech to read on his behalf and left in a huff.

The following day, he went on to cancel a rally at Chibuku Stadium in Chitungwiza slated for the next day, fearing another embarrassing turn out. All is not well in CCC.