On 4 March, the US government announced it had lifted sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe more than two decades ago. According to a US Treasury press release, the discarded measures are being replaced with ‘targeted’ measures that purportedly only affect President Emmerson Mnangagwa, his wife, nine officials and three entities.
Some see a long struggle bearing fruit. For years, African leaders and activists had been calling for 2003 sanctions to be done away with because they had been hurting ordinary Zimbabweans and causing migration into neighbouring countries. However, one Zimbabwean official doubted the country’s pain would dissipate with targeted sanctions. “We are all under sanctions,” government spokesperson Nick Mangwana reiterated on X.
African Stream published an exclusive interview in October with Xavier Zavare, chairperson for the United Kingdom district of the ruling party, Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). He broke down the history of sanctions and how they detrimentally affect ordinary Zimbabweans.
Officially known as the ‘Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act’ (Zidera), they were put in place to ‘support the people of Zimbabwe in their struggle to effect peaceful, democratic change.’ However, many see the sanctions as retribution for the country’s land reform program that was carried out in the late 1990s to redress British settlers seizing more than two-thirds of Zimbabwean land, despite making up less than 4 per cent of the population. Land reform was a key part of the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement that led to the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980. During the talks, the British and US governments committed to help fund a program to ensure equitable land distribution in the southern African nation. However, they later reneged on their promise, forcing the government of Zimbabwe to go it alone.
According to a US-based group called Sanctions Kill, 39 countries—or one-third of humanity—suffer under some form of US sanctions. The group says 19 sanctioned countries are in Africa.