At Pambazuka News Briggs Bomba and William Minter question the purpose and efficacy of imposing sanctions on Zimbabwe, and their larger implications certainly extend beyond Zim. From the article abstract:
In debates about Zimbabwe’s political crisis and the role of the international community, it is difficult to sort out reality from rhetorical smoke and mirrors, write Briggs Bomba and William Minter. The current debate on ‘sanctions’ is a classic example: There is much strong language for and against, but rarely do debaters bother to say which measures are actually in place and what specific effects they have or should have.
In many ways, the effectiveness of sanctions against South Africa in the late 1980s and early 1990s stands as an outlier, as most sanctions are of dubious effectiveness. American sanctions against Cuba should probably be considered a more sobering benchmark.