Tony King, a professor at the University of the West of England, uses this Guardian article on the currency crisis as a springboard to what strikes me as some reasonable commentary at H-SAfrica:
. . . The government is running out of paper for banknotes, and is facing the prospect of losing the software licence as the German firm that supplies both is withdrawing from Zimbabwe, which means the army and police will go unpaid – and may well be contributing to Zanu-PF's willingness to negotiate. This kind of thing doesn't readily make the headlines, but it's an example of how sanctions *can* work, an antidote perhaps to the received wisdom in some circles that sanctions are ineffective.
The question should never simply be “Do sanctions work?” But rather the questions we should ask are more complicated: What sort of sanctions? Enacted how? To what ends? Proponents of sanctions can rightfully point to those levied against Apartheid South Africa in the 1980s. Opponents can equally rightly look to the American policies against Cuba as an example of ineffective sanctions. Circumstances and conditions matter much more than blanket arguments for or against sanctions absent context.
