Participants indicated that these questions were very helpful in giving an overview of risk taking but were not exhaustive and cannot be used in isolation to explain risk taking behaviour and trends within the entire population of Zimbabwe. Participants queried the definition of risk taking on the basis of the index score/values derived from the four questions taken from the Afrobarometer and argued that what was meant by risk in the paper as derived from the index taken from these four questions, was not clear and did not accurately stand for the same in people’s realities on the ground. In particular, respondents across the four sites argued that ZANU-PF supporters are not risk takers contrary to the paper’s claim. Rather, they are the risk to everyone else. They enjoyed police and State protection and committed acts of violence and aggression towards non-ZANU-PF supports while being afforded impunity from impunity. Opposition supporters who are victims of political violence did not enjoy the same kind of police interest in arresting their attackers while ZANU-PF victims of political violence enjoyed the police’ enthusiastic prosecution of the attackers. Essentially, the kinds of risks which these two groups were exposed to were different making it conceptually and practically unclear how ZANU-PF supporters could be labelled as risk takers. According to some respondents using the term risk taking in relation to ZANU-PF members and supporters is “too much”. The freedom to support ZANU-PF is not risk taking because there is no risk. It should rather have been called - freedom to participate in political processes. The ZANU-PF cadre has nothing to lose when they utter political sentiments. Expressing oneself if you are a ZANU-PF supporter is not risk taking or risk aversion, because ZANU-PF members are actually the risk, they are free to say what they want and do what they want but not so for opposition supporters. The actions that people take cannot be considered as risky if they are aware of the outcome. ZANUPF supporters know very well that they have the support of state machinery via the courts and the police and even when people report them to the chiefs for any electoral violence. Thus freedom to say what you think, freedom to join any organisation, freedom to vote and being careful about what you say do not apply as factors for consideration when mapping risks and risk taking behaviour in Zimbabwe. Actual and verified participation in the protests and demonstrations over “hard” governance issues such as electoral reform, tenure of the presidency, stepping down of the president and calls for his resignation, calls for return of the rule of law among others, should be measured to come up with accurate claims of risk taking. Others added further that this “verification of actual participation” needed to be done at multiple levels “beyond Afrobarometer statistics”. Participants in Bulawayo queried the accuracy of the report’s claim (on page 10) that the Manyika are most risk averse and the Ndebele are the least risk averse. Some participants suggested that other considerations such as relative economic stability in rural areas, migration within and out of “hotspot” areas, clarity of the risk and immediacy of the dangers that one is exposed to after expressing their views in particular ways are some of the very important factors that shape people’s consideration of how to behave in public. Another factor to consider is the legacy of Operation Murambatsvina which saw many of the displaced people moving to rural areas. 5.5 Operation Murambatsvina (OM) and its link to risk taking Respondents agreed with the view that the government carried out Operation Murambatsvina with the latent objective of displacing huge urban populations and disrupting support for the main opposition party-the MDC. As a result of OM, huge numbers of urban dwellers were forced to relocate to the rural areas. OM demonstrated that the citizenry lacked power to 16