Similarly, the disruption to schooling, the attacks on teachers (and their frequent displacement), and, worst of all, the use of schools for political activities and even as places where violence and intimidation occur, can have profoundly negative consequences for children. It was noted that children were frequently forced to attend political rallies – this was reported in 40% of the cases (see Table 5) – where it can be made manifestly plain to children the risks involved in political activity, never mind the more odious implication that children are being politically indoctrinated. It was also plain from these cases that teachers become viewed as untrustworthy persons in the community, and can be publicly humiliated and physically attacked, which hardly creates the kind of climate in schools necessary for safe learning. And when teachers are driven out of the community for the kinds of views they are purportedly holding, it is unlikely that this is unknown to the community at large or the children in the school. On this data, schools are not the places of safety that children need. It is also clear from the Human Rights Forum cases that homes too are not necessarily places of safety, and a very large percentage of the 446 cases – 254 to be precise – were reports of attacks on families’ homes, resulting, as was evident from the smaller sample of 89 cases, in violence, property destruction and theft, and eventual displacement. The terror that such events would cause in young children can only be guessed at. Such attacks on family homes would hardly pass unnoticed in a community, providing a terrifying example to other young children of what might happen to them, a situation that might easily be similar to living in zones of high war zone stress. As we commented in the earlier report15: A home in which a child‟s parents do not overtly conform to the public demand for unqualified allegiance to one political party, or even worse has parents that actively support the other political party, will not be a place of safety. This is reinforced at school where teachers, in much the same position as the child‟s parents, can be attacked, where public statements can be made denigrating, explicitly and by implication, a child‟s parents or teacher. This can be further reinforced by the conversations between children themselves, and create a sense of being an outsider and having to be careful about what one says for risk to oneself or one‟s parents. It was argued in the background to this investigation that the welcome focus on armed conflict for its effects on children and education might not cover all the situations in which children might be exposed to violence, and that insufficient attention has been paid to elections as sources of extreme public violence and threat. It is clear, as was pointed out, that many countries in Africa experience violent elections, and Zimbabwe is amongst these. As was seen from this analysis of the Human Rights Forum cases, all the violations experienced by children increase markedly during elections, and, as has just been described, these are not trivial, and occur both at home and at school. An immediate priority here must be for the government to create schools as Zones of Peace, and here to implement fully the recommendations of the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (see Appendix 1). Whilst it may be difficult in the polarised political climate that is Zimbabwe today for government to protect all citizens in their homes, and certainly many of the perpetrators come from non-state groups over which the government may not have actual power, but the government does have responsibility and control over education and schools. It 15 See again Pswarayi, L, & Reeler, A.P (2102), „Fragility‟ and education in Zimbabwe: Assessing the impact of violence on education. December 2012, HARARE: RESEARCHA & ADVOCACY UNIT. 18