4 the effects of colonial policies. Since 1980, education, at least for primary school, has largely been free, but the promises of an education have not been matched in the aspirations of most young Zimbabweans. During the 1900s, under the economic structural adjustment programme voluntarily adopted by the Mugabe regime, the situation worsened considerably, especially for the young and the rural. The proportion of school leavers obtaining jobs has shrunk annually, as has the economy. The reality for most young Zimbabweans is the prospect of leaving school without a job, and little likelihood of getting one. In effect, there has been a huge disaffected population, without any basic allegiance to the philosophy of “liberation”, and amenable to the persuasions of any opposition group. And certainly, since the government of the day always bears the responsibility for the misfortunes of the country, this was a group that might well turn against ZanuPF. Thus, there was a careful process of engaging the youth, and then of incorporating them into the political campaigning machine6, as well as using them for other areas of political control 7. This involved at least three distinct phases, as summarised below:  The First Phase: using the “War Veterans” The first phase of the militia programme involved the use of the “war veterans”. This first phase may have only been intended to last as long as the Parliamentary Election which ZanuPF considered they could win overwhelmingly, but the results of the election clearly indicated that the Presidential Election would be exceedingly difficult for Mugabe. Furthermore, the very large number of election petitions (39), with the possibility of a losing a large number of bye-elections if the MDC petitions were successful, meant that the hold on political power was still threatened seriously.  The Second Phase: Training and Recruiting The second phase was mostly a formal consolidation of the processes involved in the first phase. It was evident from the scanty information available that a degree of training had been given to the young men recruited into the militia groups during the Parliamentary elections. This training was mainly in the nature of modelling through exposure: that is, the youth were exposed to methods of torture, running pungwes and rallies, carrying out military-type actions in the community, using mass psychological techniques such as slogans and songs. From the reports this exposure strongly resembled the types of tactics seen both in the Liberation War and also in the Gukurahundi period in the 1980s. 6 A recent report shows strongly the link between the organized violence and torture and political campaigning for elections. Here see REDRESS (2004), ZIMBABWE. TORTUOUS PATTERNS DESTINED TO REPEAT THEMSELVES IN UPCOMING ELECTION CAMPAIGN. Preliminary Study of Trends and Associations in the Pattern of Torture and Organised Violence in Zimbabwe, July 2001 - December 2003, LONDON: REDRESS TRUST. See REELER, A.P. (2003), The Perpetrators of Gross Human Rights Violations in Zimbabwe from February 2000 to March 2003, Paper presented to “Civil Society and Justice in Zimbabwe: A Symposium”, organised by the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, Themba Le Sizwe and the International Bar Association, Holiday Inn, Johannesburg, 11-13 August 2003. 7