US Envoy to Africa: Hey, Mugabe...how about you leave already?

Eh. It looks hopeful on the outside, but I'm not convinced:

"We think in this situation we have a clear victor," said Ms Frazer, the senior US envoy to Africa.

"Morgan Tsvangirai won and perhaps outright, at which point you don't need a government of national unity. You have to accept the result."

But she said that any results released would not have any credibility and added that: "There may need to be a political solution, a negotiated solution."

Emphasis mine.

A negotiated solution? As I understand democracy, when one side clearly wins no negotiation is necessary. If Sen. John Kerry had won the presidency in 2004, how would people - on the left and the right - have acted if Bush had refused to step down, and the international community called for a "negotiated solution".

What would this "negotiated solution" look like? Captain Ed has a prediction:

Instead of actually releasing the real vote counts and treating it like a real election, dictator Robert Mugabe would offer to partner with Morgan Tsvangirai in a “national unity” government until another fresh election could be held.

[...]

[A] “power-sharing” government will most likely mean Mugabe holds the strings while Tsvangirai acts as a puppet to give him a fig leaf of credibility. If Mugabe wanted to honor an election, he has the opportunity now by inviting the UN to review the raw vote totals and the MDC’s photographs of the local precinct results that they took as a safeguard against Mugabe’s election-rigging. If he won’t do that, then why would the MDC or anyone else trust that he will honor the results of the next election?

Negotiations won't work for two reasons: 1) Mugabe isn't interested in true negotiations - only in keeping power and, 2) the MDC is operating under the (correct) premise that they won the election outright and no negotiations are needed.

What say you, UN? What say you, African Union?

Oh that's right. This mess is just one of the horrifying after-effects of colonialism...you know, that period of time when people had plenty of food, security, and the right to own land, regardless of race.