You can always tell when President Mugabe is really rattled. It's when he launches into a tirade about white, racist, imperialist conspiracies in a desperate attempt to deflect attention away from the facts. It has worked pretty well for him in the past but his latest rant only served to highlight the issue he currently wants to bury - the state-sanctioned torture of opposition supporters and the fact that those responsible might now be brought to book in South Africa.

There has been a lot of talk in Zimbabwe recently about constitutionality and constitutionalism – about how to ensure that the country’s new Supreme Law is not co-opted and corrupted by the powers-that-be as the current constitution has been and that Zimbabweans enjoy the rule OF law not rule BY law. Nothing could have highlighted the importance of this debate as acutely as the wrongful arrest and illegal detention of renowned lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa – the day after the country’s constitutional referendum.

More than three years after the inauguration of Zimbabwe’s Inclusive Government (IG) in February 2009, the piecemeal and painfully slow transition process is finally gathering some speed. It now seems as though the referendum on the new Constitution will take place before the end of 2012, followed by elections in the first half of 2013, which will once again pit President Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party against Prime Minster Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC.

I was wrong. I thought that President Mugabe and ZANU-PF would rig the vote just enough to win – just enough to be ‘crediblish’. You’d think that I – and many others – would have learned by now. You should never underestimate Mugabe or ZANU-PF. And you should never believe that electoral thieves will be content with stealing ‘just enough’ to win – if they can, they will steal the whole bang shoot.

Including Matabeleland.