I'm sure people can point to studies or whatever in claiming sanctions against this nation or that one are effective. But I've always suspected they make life harder for the common folk without impacting the high and mighty.
Did any high ranking South African miss a meal during sanctions in the last stages of the apartheid era? Did Saddam go without during the decade or more that sanctions crippled Iraq? (Yes, I know about oil for food scandals.) Ditto North Korea.
In considering the case for sanctions against Zimbabwe, Martin Vander Weyer offers up some food for thought in The Spectator:
Shell and Barclays were the two highest-profile British companies in South Africa during the apartheid era. Both pursued non- racial business practices as far as they could, but both endured years of disrupted shareholder meetings and flak from the student Left. Shell stuck it out — and shortly after his release from prison in 1990, Nelson Mandela declared, ‘We’re glad you stayed.’ Barclays bowed to the protesters and abandoned its network of 900 branches in 1986; when the bank returned in 1995 to open one office in Johannesburg, Mandela told the men from Lombard Street, ‘You should never have sold.’
It may seem a tough call. No one wants to think they're propping up Mugabe. But I agree with Martin Vander Weyer that staying in Zimbabwe, while doing your best to have as little to do with the regime as possible, is best for the average person in the former Rhodesia.
Of course, you know I've been keeping my eye on Lonrho PLC (trades in London under symbol LONR), which has an investment arm (LonZim) doing business in Zimbabwe. But I don't think that clouds my thinking.
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