What was definitely ‘engineered’ was the ridiculous discrepancy between the actual amount of people who went to the polling stations to cast a vote, and the amount of presidential votes which were declared for Mugabe. I believe he virtually doubled his tally of votes in the March 29 election.

I think engineering is the wrong term. A conjuring trick is more like it. How could someone so unpopular, running in a sham election where he was the only candidate on offer possibly attract so many million votes when most people didn’t vote. Even with the coerced voting for Zanu-PF in some areas, together with the army, police and prison services forced postal ballots included, there is no way he could have achieved the result without a large amount of falsified rigging.

As has been said many times before now, he would have looked less ridiculous if he had simply declared a state of emergency and shelved the election. At least people would have known where they were. The situation is now that no election will ever be taken seriously again in which Mugabe takes part.