1999 that they were risk takers, this dropped to a low of 13% in 2005 (Masunungure et al. 2017). Not even the extensive political violence that took place between 2000 and 2004 (when the second Afrobarometer survey was carried out) had such an effect. The drop between 1999 and 2004 was only 12 percentage points – from 84% to 72%. There has been a very slow return to risk taking from the low of 2005, and by 2014, a majority (58%) of Zimbabweans now describe themselves as risk takers. An Afrobarometer report in 2005 detailed many of the economic and social consequences of OM (Afrobarometer. 2006), but what has not been examined in any great detail has been the consequences of OM on political agency This current report examines the effects of OM more specifically, contrasting the findings of the Afrobarometer surveys in the years before and after OM; this is a contrast between Round 2 (2004), Round 3 (2005), and Round 4 (2009). Methods The data from Rounds 2 (2004), 3 (2005) and 4 (2009) were compiled in a single Excel data base. A code book of all relevant Afrobarometer questions related to this study was created, and a new coding structure applied to reduce the results into a binary format. The questions were chosen for comparability between the three surveys, and included the following:       1 Demography – age, gender, education, employment and place of residence (rural or urban); Lived poverty index – questions related to lack of food, water, medical care, cooking fuel and cash income. These questions were chosen to see whether OM had affected their material lives differentially for rural and urban residents; Political Participation – questions about being able to say what you think, join the political party of one‟s choice, vote for the party of one‟s choice, and not careful what you say in public. Elections since 2000 have been frequently violent, as was particularly the case for 2002 and 2008. Fear of political violence may affect citizen’s willingness to participate in politics; Community Participation – questions about discussing politics with friends and family, attending community meetings, joining others to raise an issue, and attending a demonstration or protest march. These questions were chosen to see in what way OM had affected citizens participation, and was predicated on the previous study’s demonstration that OM had resulted in a massive increase in risk-aversion; Political Trust – questions about trust as this is seen by many as being a critical factor in engendering agency: trusting the President, trusting parliament, trusting the ruling party, trusting the police and trusting the courts; Political Affiliation – question about which political party the respondents were close to. Previous research has shown that explicit political party support – ZANU-PF or MDC-T – defines two distinct groups with very differing points of view (RAU. 2015).1 Here we only included those respondents that actually expressed a political affiliation. Nearly a third of respondents consistently do not answer this question, either refusing to answer or stating that it is inapplicable to them. It is risky to assume the actual affiliations of these two groups, and hence we concentrated on those with explicit affiliation only. 6