This study seeks to examine the roots of protest violence in the year 2016 in Zimbabwe. The assumption is that the protests resulted from deeply felt grievances related to a litany of issues including corruption, bad political economic governance and human rights abuses among others. However, recourse to violence emanated from the nature of the government’s response to the protests. By resorting to suppression, the government implied the institutionalized discrimination and criminalization of the protests, which led to violence as protesters insisted on the legitimacy of their protest activities. Responding positively by redressing the grievances could have meant accepting the grievances as legitimate and the result could have been accommodation and peaceful coexistence.