prescribed or allowed by their churches.6 Thus, there is a need to look at the role of religion in order to understand risk aversion in Zimbabwe. 5.10 Xenophobia and the exit route According to some respondents, risk aversion is primarily shaped by individual assessments of the options available to them at any moment in time. With respondents expressing loss of confidence in the ZANU-PF government, the only other supposedly viable option is the main opposition party-the MDC. However, after failing to ascend to power since being launched in 1999, some people have lost faith in the MDC rising to power and improving on the governance issues that people are discontented with. For some the MDC-T cannot also failed to deliver when it into government through the Government of National Unity (GNU). Inevitably, for some, the only option is to leave the country. However, some people cannot access birth registration documents, passports and other identity documents and thus, cannot leave the country. Furthermore, some have left the country and gone to the diaspora and have returned with stories of difficulties they faced there. The diaspora is both attractive and inaccessible for different people depending on their particular circumstances and this shapes their risk perception and decisions of which risks to take. For some, going to the diaspora shows risk aversion, while, for some, but also means they are great risk takers because of the uncertainties of living in the diaspora. Thus, in analysing the risk taking behaviour of Zimbabweans, there is need to also look at the role of the diaspora, the exit route and how access or lack of access to this exit route shapes the risks that people are willing to take. 5.11 Political cultures and risk aversion According to respondents no one is free from fear of violence in Zimbabwe. The attainment of political independence for the country has not meant independence for the citizenry Within ZANU-PF, supporters must still be wary of what they say because of factionalism. At the higher echelons of power within ZANU-PF, no one can voice their desire to succeed the president and the ordinary supporters are told where to vote. The opposition sells their ideology, but, with the ruling party, you must vote ZANUPF because the party actually does voting audits. This ensures that the supporters are subjects of the leading figures and become passive recipients of the dictates of the party rather than active members who shape the direction of the party. This diminishes communities’ capacities for people to shift from parochial to subject, and, desirably, to participant political cultures.7 Thus, the parochial culture pervades even the ruling party and is actively engendered by the ruling party through structures and actors within the communities. The presentation raised further questions from participants who asked how the paper took into consideration the role of history and past violence in conditioning the political culture that we have today in Zimbabwe. One participant explained that their organisation did a study in the Mashonaland region and established that citizens there are still gripped with thoughts of the liberation war, and continue to socialize their children along the liberation war ideologies. With the State being so inalienable from ZANU-PF, most of the people in these provinces do not have much choice between doing what they are “advised” to do by the government or by 6 This might also be construed as another form of “exit” in Albert Hirschman’s term, where, rather than leaving the field physically by migrating, the adherents of these “new” churches are psychologically leaving the field. 7 These terms derive from Almond & Verba (1963). See Eldred Masunungure, Tony Reeler, Richman Kokera, Daniel Mususa, Stephen Ndoma & Heather Toga (2016), Are Zimbabweans Revolting? An Examination of Risk-taking and Risk-Aversion since 1999, March 2017. MPOI & RAU. 20