Community-based experiences of reasons and responsibility for violence The survey explored Zimbabweans’ perceptions of the reasons for the widespread violence and intimidation, as well as their own community-based experiences as to who are responsible for the acts of violence (in open-ended questions). The Zimbabweans are frank about the links between violence and politics. The reasons for the violence include political immaturity and intolerance, greed for power, disregard of electoral choice, misuse of party loyalists to perpetrate violence on political opponents, and, in general, resistance to political change (Figure 2). In more detail: The reasons: The reasons were solidly in the realm of conflict between political interests of the main political parties [Q49]. Since the answers were unprompted, the categories of answers overlap. Yet, the responses are valuable because they offer the respondents’ spontaneous identification of reasons. Conflicts of political interests and clashes between the supporters of the two main parties got 196 mentions; the ‘misuses’ of ZANU-PF supporters, war veterans the youth militia, and ZANU-PF politicians pulled in 147; disregard for freedom of electoral choice was mentioned by 130; the need for political power and politicians’ greed 119; lack of political maturity, along with forcing people into campaign and vote support 115; resistance to change 77; and intolerance of other parties 74 mentions. The level of occurrence, 2008-2010: A total of 58% of the survey respondents had experienced cases of politically motivated violence and intimidation in their own communities in the two years leading up to the survey [Q50]. 39% reported that they had not experienced such incidents. The perpetrators: In another open-ended question the respondents were given the chance, in their own words and unprompted, to specify who they had experienced as ‘most likely to be involved’ in political violence in the respondent’s own community. The question did not apply to those who had not experienced violence and intimidation in the period in their communities, and a further 164 said they did not know, could not identify the perpetrators, or refused to answer [Q51]. A total of 560 respondents offered the following identifications of the persons who are seen to be responsible for violence in the communities, 2008-2010: ZANU-PF youths and supporters 307 War veteran and militia 112 Both the MDC-T and ZANU-PF, ‘all political parties’, ‘the party leaders’ 79 MDC-T 31 Youths and ���idle youths’ 31 TOTAL 560 35