So your job can be at risk if you demonstrate. We are afraid to say anything for the sake of my job and my livelihood. The educated populace will not throw stones, and if you are older than 18 you would not want to throw stones. You would want to get a job, and certainly you will not throw stones because you do not want to go to jail. For the uneducated, it’s no problem to throw stones. According to some respondents, the educated people are risk averse because they are detached from the harsh conditions which the uneducated poor people have to contend with on a daily basis. Respondents holding this view argued that the educated elites never took to the battlefields during Zimbabwe’s liberation war, and some respondents claimed that it was mostly the poor peasants who “stayed in Maputo and Dar es Salam…who fought and died in their numbers”. Respondents asserted that the educated people are risk averse since they held jobs or had sources of income from which they derived an existence they were reasonably satisfied with. Hence, they have less motivation to be risk takers than those who are unemployed. Unemployment causes a higher level of discontentment and desperation hence unemployed and “desperate” people readily join protests. However, this views held by respondents is in disagreement with the findings in the paper which showed no differences between the employed and the unemployed. The shifts in the kinds of viable economic activities that are accessible to different sections of the population that impact on a person’s decision whether or not to be risk taking and analyses of these shifts will lead to a better understanding of people’s risk taking behaviour. 3.6 Blurred lines between ZANU-PF and the Government Another factor shaping citizens’ risk taking behaviour was the ever-decreasing demarcation between ZANU-PF and the government. Several respondents indicated that this demarcation was increasingly becoming blurred and this was more pronounced for people employed by the government. ZANU-PF, through senior civil servants and the different ministries, was accused by participants, of employing excessive rent-seeking behaviour and patronage networks. According to respondents, their risk aversion stemmed from the lack of separation of ZANUPF issues and government issues. For civil servants, this untenable scenario made them more self-aware and over-cautious about what they say especially in the workplace. Given the workers’ penurious conditions the State capture of government institutions enabled ZANUPF to buy votes within the civil service’ formal working space through patron-client negotiated access to stands, agricultural inputs and cattle. The civil service was thus viewed as a tactic for pushing ZANU-PF interests by manipulating workers and embedding political affairs alongside workers’ official government responsibilities and duties: There is code of conduct for civil servants and one of the requirements is that you should be apolitical, yet the police etc. were taken to Matopo for 21st February movement, If the MDC has a function and as a civil servant you are seen there you will be in trouble. 8