To sum up this section, the ZANU PF electoral strategy in 2013 clearly moved away from its dominant reliance on violence in the June 2008 runoff, although selective coercion, intimidation and the memory of the 2008 events, were not absent in this round. A combination of coercion, consent and political blockages in the context of a reconstituted social base served to provide the MDCs with a formidable political challenge.62 Moreover the divisions and party disorganisation of ZANU PF’s 2008 campaign were dealt with through a much tighter party organization and election campaign, run as Tendi observes, by a ‘network of party officials, youth and retired military officers who fought in Zimbabwe’s liberation war.’63 The shock of the 2008 defeat in conditions of severe economic crisis and the lifeline thrown to the party by the GPA, provided a decisive jolt to Mugabe and his party, along with the realisation that they could not get away with another violent March‐June 2008 election campaign, whatever their continued reliance on the long memories of fear and violence in the Zimbabwean electorate. The Limitations of the MDCs When the MDC was formed in 1999 it grew from a broad‐based social movement that had emerged from a combination of trade union, constitutional reform and human rights based activism. It developed a language of democratization that combined the discourses of these different but connected threads of protest and struck at one of the weakest points of the politics of the party of liberation, ZANU PF. From the late 1990s into the 2000s this political formation brought together an alliance of movements and social forces and led the debate for political reform in the country. Thus, this party grew organically from emergent social forces that also provided strong intellectual arguments for developing a force capable of confronting and defeating the hegemony of the ruling party. As the novelist No Violet Bulawayo describes it, the word change was in the air and it felt like something you could ‘grab and put in your mouth and sink your teeth into.’64 However the united MDC also had its weaknesses, which included underdeveloped organizational structures, lack of leadership accountability, and a growing culture of intra‐party violence deployed within the context of a growing factionalism within the party. These issues and others led to a split                                                              62 As David Moore describes it, “The Zanu PF applied, Machiavelli style, a classic Gramscian combination of forceful power and sly persuasions‐the dialectic of coercion and consent‐ to confound the fourteen‐ year‐old MDC.” D. Moore, ‘In Zimbabwe, A Luta Continua.’www.africanarguments.org/2013/08/12/in‐zimbabwe‐a‐ luta‐continua‐…Accessed on 13/08/13. 63 M.B.Tendi, ‘Why Robert Mugabe scored a landslide victory in the Zimbabwean elections.’ www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/05/robert‐mugabe‐zimbabwe‐election‐zanu‐pf Accessed on 19/08/2013. 64 No Violet Bulawayo, We need new names, Chatto and Windus, London, p.29.   23