Youth political participation in Zimbabwe is often described in familiar terms: party membership, mobilisation through rallies, and the manipulation of unemployed young people into violence. Yet these frameworks increasingly fail to capture how urban youths actually engage with politics today. Drawing on ethnographic research in Highfield, a low-income suburb of Harare, this article argues that youth political engagement has undergone a quiet but significant transformation - away from formal party structures and towards flexible, informal, and short-term modes of mobilisation.
These shifts were particularly visible during Zimbabwe's 2023 harmonised elections. While the elections themselves took place in a highly restrictive political environment, they also revealed new patterns of youth agency that complicate simple narratives of coercion, apathy, or violent mobilisation.
Beyond party cards and branch structures
Political analysts and party officials in Zimbabwe have long relied on "membership" as the primary lens for understanding political participation. Party strength is often measured through card-carrying members, branch density, and formal organisational hierarchies. In Highfield, however, these indicators increasingly obscure more than they reveal.
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Both the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) have gradually moved away from traditional party-building strategies among youths. Selling party cards, maintaining branch structures, and cultivating long-term activists have become less central than they once were. In their place, parties have adopted what might be called short-term membership recruitment: flexible, situational forms of engagement that allow young people to participate without committing to enduring party identities.
Youth participation today is often mediated through loosely organised leader-follower groups (such as 4ED groups in ZANU-PF), built around influential local figures rather than formal party offices. These groups mobilise quickly, dissolve easily, and can shift allegiance depending on opportunity, risk, or leadership dynamics. For young people navigating precarious livelihoods and an uncertain political environment, such arrangements offer a way to remain politically engaged without the long-term costs associated with formal party affiliation.
Loyalty over longevity in party politics
These changing forms of youth engagement have had important consequences for how candidates are selected - particularly during party primaries. The 2023 elections provided a revealing contrast between CCC and ZANU-PF approaches to youth mobilisation in primary contests.
The CCC adopted an improvised, anti-bureaucratic approach to candidate selection that relied heavily on street-level mobilisation and informal networks. Rather than privileging time-served party activists embedded in formal structures, the party allowed popular local figures - many with strong youth backing - to emerge through fluid and decentralised processes. This helped the CCC avoid the reputational burden of factionalism, elitism, and gatekeeping that had plagued earlier opposition formations.
In this context, loyalty to the party leader, rather than long-standing partisan affiliation, became a critical political resource. Proximity - or perceived proximity - to leadership was often more valuable than formal membership history. For many young people, this reconfiguration made participation more attractive: it reduced the barriers to entry and aligned political engagement with personal aspirations rather than institutional seniority.
ZANU-PF, by contrast, continued to rely more heavily on established structures, though these too have been adapted in response to changing political realities. Even within the ruling party, youth mobilisation has become more selective, tactical, and short-term, reflecting both resource constraints and an awareness of shifting youth attitudes.
The decline of rallies and the rise of street politics
Another striking feature of the 2023 campaign in Highfield was the decline of mass rallies - once a defining feature of Zimbabwean electoral politics. This was partly a response to state restrictions, particularly on opposition activity. But it also reflected deeper changes in party strategy and youth mobilisation.
The legacy of elite decisions to demobilise youth militias and de-emphasise overt political violence has reshaped campaign styles. Both parties were cautious about large gatherings. The CCC, facing direct repression, adopted what might be described as a "shadow-boxing" campaign: fast-moving, informal engagements that avoided predictable rally formats while maintaining visibility. ZANU-PF, despite not facing restrictions in Highfield, was similarly reluctant to stage mass rallies that might publicly expose its unpopularity.
Instead, both parties invested in face-to-face mobilisation, small group meetings, and informal street-level interactions. These modes of engagement were often more effective at reaching young people, who were already embedded in local networks shaped by employment precarity, hustling economies, and everyday survival strategies.
Youth agency in precarious times
Crucially, these developments should not be read simply as elite manipulation or tactical adjustment. Young people in Highfield were not passive recipients of new mobilisation strategies. Rather, their political behaviour reflected active choices shaped by ideology, party programmatic agenda (e.g. ZANU-PF's Vison 2030 agenda), aspiration, risk assessment, and lived experience.
Some youths engaged in civil action, others flirted with political violence, and many shifted between engagement and disengagement over time. These positions were not fixed. Individuals combined and transcended categories depending on context, opportunity, and personal circumstance. For many, political participation was less about ideological commitment than about navigating an authoritarian environment while pursuing dignity, recognition, and material survival.
The relative success of the CCC in Highfield - where it won the parliamentary seat comfortably despite losing nationally - can be partly explained by how well its mobilisation strategies aligned with the life hopes and political sensibilities of youth activists. Where party approaches resonated with young people's understandings of fairness, authenticity, and leadership, participation followed.
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Rethinking youth politics in Zimbabwe - and beyond
What does this tell us about youth politics in Zimbabwe? First, it challenges the assumption that declining formal membership signals political apathy. Youth engagement has not disappeared; it has been reconfigured.
Second, it suggests that political analysis must move beyond institutional metrics and pay closer attention to informal practices, short-term affiliations, and everyday political negotiation. Youths are not rejecting politics - they are reshaping it under conditions of constraint.
Finally, these findings have implications beyond Zimbabwe. Across urban Africa, young people are engaging politics in ways that blur the boundaries between participation, disengagement, loyalty, and opportunism. Understanding these dynamics requires grounded, ethnographic attention to how politics is lived - not just how it is organised.
In contexts of economic precarity and political restriction, youth politics is less about belonging to parties and more about navigating power. That reality should force scholars, policymakers, and political actors alike to rethink what participation really looks like.
Innocent Kasiyano holds a PhD from SOAS University of London. His PhD (2021-25) was supported by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation Governance and Development in Africa Scholarship.
