Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses how urban youth in Zimbabwe have grown up, learnt to live with and respond political violence and authoritarianism in a context of protracted economic crisis. It uses the concept of political socialization and focuses on politicized urban markets as 'sites of socialization'.

Paper long abstract:

In post-independence Zimbabwe, urban markets have become important spaces for generating livelihoods for urbanites due to protracted economic crisis. However, urban markets have also become politicized spaces: they are the stage for unfolding political crises and authoritarian politics in cities. In Harare, since the ruling party lost control of the city council to the opposition party, informal markets have become spaces for violent ruling party patronage: a strategy for the ruling ZANU-PF party to regain control. Urban markets transformed into a terrain of political struggles between ZANU-PF and the main opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change. This paper examines how the large number of young Zimbabweans who work at urban markets experience these manifestations of urban authoritarian politics, based on qualitative research in Harare from 2019 to 2021. Using the concept of youth political socialization, we explore how young vendors have grown up learning to live with political and economic crisis, and how they have learnt to respond to contemporary forms of authoritarianism in urban spaces. We argue that, while the impact of economic crisis is strongly felt and this increases the need for accessing livelihood opportunities through ruling party patronage, many young people resist authoritarian politics. We discuss a range of responses to authoritarianism: from perfect performance, to compliance and resistance. Findings contradict the existing dominant discourse on 'violent youth' . For the discussion, we ask how youth can be supported to initiate alternative livelihoods and forms of political expression in challenging, repressive political contexts.