Figure 8: Sponsor of Survey, Elite versus Non-elite
[%]
As can be seen from Figure 8,
this is not supported by the data.
Rather, the data suggest that
seeing the government as
sponsor, which the Non-elite do,
and must have included many
supporters of the MDC-T, has not
deterred them from expressing a
wide range or political views and
attitudes as seen in the other
measures. The Elite, on the other
hand, were much more likely to
believe the enumerators and
accept that the survey was in fact
being carried out by AB.
45
40
41
40
38
35
35
30
25
20
20
17
Non-elite
15
Elite
10
5 4
5
0
This does suggest that the “fear factor” had little effect on responding, and, furthermore, the
large number of people refusing to express a political affiliation (51%) may be expressing a
genuine loss of faith in political parties and political leadership by being unwilling to disclose
their any allegiance.
The “Rural” factor
One nagging issue in this analysis must be about what is the contribution of rural or urban
residence, since so much research on Zimbabwe has implicated residence as a variable
determining the direction of responding (Masunungure et al. 2017). Table 10 shows this
clearly: rural respondents report higher frequencies on every single variable except Elitism.
Table 2: Rural versus Urban, Mean scores
Urban Rural
df
t
Voice
Community Participation
Political Participation
Activism
Support for Democracy
Political Trust
Elitism
2.24
.96
1.25
.33
.40
3.44
3.05
2.86
1.51
1.90
.92
.47
4.39
.64
1198
1198
1198
1198
1198
1198
1198
-4.417
-6.516
-9.267
-8.726
-2.252
-6.320
23.821
Sig
.000
.000
.000
.000
.024
.000
.000
Hence, Elitism is strongly associated with urban residence, which is expected, and once again
analysis reveals the polarised nature of Zimbabwe’s polity. This further extends the finding
that the notion that the responding was not biased by the perception about who was carrying
out the survey: 40% of non-elite respondents believed the government was the sponsor, were
mostly rural by residence, and yet were a group that evinced much greater voice and
participation.
13