Table 9: Is rural residence is the determining factor in religious and political
affiliation?
Urban
[n=448]
Lived Poverty
Social Capital
Political Fear
Political Trust
Close to MDC-T
Close to ZANU-PF
Reticent about closeness
Vote for MDC-T
Vote for ZANU-PF
Reticent about voting
Apostolic
Other religions
1.27
0.88
3.29
2.92
0.13
0.18
0.68
0.18
0.24
0.51
0.07
0.93
Rural
[n=752]
1.16
1.44
2.36
4.07
0.12
0.45
0.40
0.14
0.47
0.34
0.15
0.85
df
1198
1198
1198
1198
1198
1198
1198
1198
1198
1198
1198
1198
t
1.58
-8.66
9.66
-5.771
.568
-9.855
9.844
1.876
-8.065
5.782
-4.378
4.378
Sig
(2tailed)
ns
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000
ns
0.0000
0.0000
0.0610
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000
As seen in Table 9, the association between rural residence and affiliation to an Apostolic
church remains, but rural residence affects all religions equally. It is rural residence itself that
is key to determining whether citizens have greater social capital, less political fear, greater
political trust, and being less reticent to disclose whether they have a political affiliation. On
these findings, ZANU-PF could have expected support from members of Apostolic churches
in the 2018 elections, with the caveat that a significant number of Apostolic church members
do not declare their affiliation, and may well have voted for opposition political parties.
We also looked at Gender as an independent variable, and there were no major differences
between men and women. However, women were significantly more likely to be close to the
MDC-T and to vote for the same, but also to significantly more likely to reticent about their
closeness to a political party or voting for a political party. Men were more likely to belong to
religions other than an Apostolic church, and there were no differences due to gender on any
of the indices – Lived Poverty, Social Capital, Political Fear or Political Trust.
Conclusions
There were two broad research questions guiding this study:
Members of Apostolic churches will express stronger support for ZANUPF than other political parties;
Members of Apostolic churches will be predominantly rural, and hence
show higher frequencies of social capital and political trust, and less
political fear (RAU. 2018 (a); RAU. 2018 (b)).
The first question is only partially answered. Members of Apostolic churches do have stronger
support for ZANU-PF than other churches, and, as seen in all the frequency data, are a very
distinct group from all other religions. They have significantly greater Social Capital, less
Political Fear, and greater Political Trust. However, all the indices suggesting that Apostolics
are wholly distinct are confounded by another variable, Rural Residence. As seen in Table 9, it
9