 Membership in voluntary associations is positively related to political engagement;  Conventional modes of political participation are strongly related to membership in voluntary associations, and, the less conventional the mode of political engagement, the smaller the relationship to membership of voluntary associations;2  There is little evidence for causal relations between membership of voluntary associations and political participation, with most evidence being only correlational. There is still much to be done to fully understand social capital and its relationship to active citizenship, but this has not dampened enthusiasm for the concept which has nonetheless received increasing attention. It is not merely in the domain of political or vertical participation that social capital is seen as important, and much work has also focused on the community, or horizontal participation. This was an important point made by Putnam (1993) earlier on. Where vertical relationships dominate (as in Zimbabwe, for instance), civic initiative is discouraged and social capital is undermined. Horizontal relationships, assumed to require trust and reciprocity, will generate social capital, and can be seen, for example, in communities where crime is low and little formal policing is required. Thus, community becomes a critical feature of social capital. Additionally, politics is not merely a concern with representation and state institutions, but operates wherever and whenever human beings act in common enterprise (Leftwich.2009). An empirical examination of social capital in five Australian communities provides additional food for thought (Onyx & Bullen.2000). Based on a questionnaire investigation, with 1,211 subjects, factor analysis revealed eight independent factors – community, agency, trust, workplace, neighbor, tolerance, friends, and value of life. Each factor was associated with specific behaviours. For example, agency was associated with took initiative at work, helped workmate, free to speak out, seeks mediation for dispute, and can find information. Interestingly, social capital in this study was not associated with demographic variables: age, gender, work, salary or qualification levels did not correlate with the eight factors. But, there were several findings in respect of demographics:    Women were less likely to feel safe in their local communities than men; People with more children were likely to participate more in the local community than those with fewer children; The longer one had lived in a community, the more likely there would be stronger neighborhood connections. So, at least according to Onyx and Bullen, social capital seems to connote a communitarian variable and suggests collective goods available to all citizens, van Deth’s second meaning for social capital (van Deth.2001). There is one detailed African study on social capital, examining the relationship between social capital and political violence (Bhavnani & Backer. 2007), which did include Zimbabwe among the 16 countries studied. In summary, the study showed strong relations between various factors hypothesized to be associated with social capital: associational membership, civic engagement, trust, social cohesion and equality. The study found that membership in professional and business associations was significantly more likely to be 2 Here see also Finkel (1987), and the finding that unconventional participation (aggression) is negatively related to political efficacy and support for regimes. 6