What sanctions are these that Zimbabwe only remembers on October 25 at an all-night music shindig?

Tendai Ruben Mbofana

​Yet today I received a message from a reader asking me to dissect what he rightly perceived as the ridiculousness of seemingly unending calls to ‘remove sanctions on Zimbabwe’.

***To directly receive my articles please join my WhatsApp Channel on: ***https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaqprWCIyPtRnKpkHe08

​That is the sole reason I decided to pen this piece—having previously chosen to ignore the topic entirely.

Every year on October 25th, the ruling establishment orchestrates a grand political spectacle under the banner of the ‘SADC Anti-Sanctions Day’.

Marches are organized, impassioned anti-imperialist speeches are delivered, and thousands assemble for a state-funded all-night music gala featuring the country’s finest artists.

But as the final basslines fade into the morning air, a glaring question lingers across the nation.

What sanctions are these that Zimbabwe only remembers at a free musical shindig?

The propaganda machinery has long insisted that Western sanctions are a comprehensive, punitive blockade starving the nation of progress.

Yet, the everyday reality completely dismantles this tired narrative.

The United States officially overhauled its old ZDERA framework, replacing it with hyper-targeted measures under the Global Magnitsky Act directed at just a hand-picked group of corrupt individuals and specific entities.

Among those on this list are President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, businessman Kudakwashe Tagwirei, and Sakunda Holdings.

The European Union maintains little more than an arms embargo.

No foreign trade blockade exists.

No ordinary citizen is barred from running a business, holding a bank account, or building a future because of foreign executive orders.

Instead, the true wall standing between Zimbabwe and international credit lines is not a Western conspiracy, but a mountain of defaulted debt.

International financial institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF, and the African Development Bank do not withhold concessionary loans because of targeted individual sanctions.

They do so because Zimbabwe has accumulated over $12 billion in unpaid sovereign debt.

By standard international banking regulations, a country in default cannot access fresh credit lines.

In simple terms: you cannot borrow money if you haven’t paid back what you already owe.

The state knows this.

Behind the scenes, the Ministry of Finance works through the Structured Dialogue Platform on Arrears Clearance and Debt Resolution, actively negotiating debt restructuring with Paris Club creditors and multilateral lenders.

Technocrats sit in boardroom negotiations working out macroeconomic reforms and debt repayment terms, fully aware that default—not foreign embargoes—is the barrier.

Yet, when political rallies demand a convenient scapegoat for runaway unemployment, crippling poverty, and crumbling public infrastructure, the rhetoric immediately shifts back to the myth of economic blockade.

Adding to the absurdity is the performative outrage of regional leaders, most notably South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Year after year, Ramaphosa releases solemn, high-sounding statements echoing Harare’s anti-sanctions rhetoric, blaming Western measures for spillover economic challenges in the region.

Yet, curiously, these statements remain aggressively vague, deliberately avoiding any line-item breakdown of what these supposed measures actually target.

More revealing still is the complete lack of meaningful follow-through.

When Ramaphosa sits in high-level bilateral summits in Washington or London, he raises the issue as a cursory diplomatic talking point rather than pressing a substantive economic case.

If regional heads genuinely believed an illegal economic blockade was strangling Southern Africa, they would present rigorous economic data, demand formal arbitration, and aggressively challenge the policy details in bilateral summits.

Instead, they issue boilerplate press releases every October, revealing that for neighboring leaders, as for Harare, the sanctions narrative is merely a convenient diplomatic shield.

A way to perform solidarity without ever holding a neighboring regime accountable for its own domestic misrule.

The reality of everyday life on the ground exposes the absolute emptiness of the narrative.

For the vast majority of the year, ordinary citizens go about their lives as if no sanctions exist at all.

If the population genuinely believed that foreign powers were directly responsible for their inability to feed their families, the loss of loved ones in underequipped hospitals, or the absence of decent jobs, public fury would be palpable and constant.

People would debate sanctions passionately on commuter omnibuses, in queues, and at funerals.

Instead, conversations focus entirely on domestic survival, local corruption, and economic mismanagement, while the sanctions myth is completely forgotten for 364 days a year until politicians resurrect it for an October concert.

The absurdity of the “sanctioned state” narrative collapses even further when viewed through the lens of international diplomacy and global capital.

If Zimbabwe were an international pariah under a total economic embargo, foreign capital would flee its borders.

Instead, foreign direct investment flows steadily into the country’s vast mineral deposits.

Multi-million-dollar mining operations in platinum, lithium, and gold thrive with capital sourced from global markets.

Major international firms operate freely within these sectors.

Prominent examples include UK-listed exploration companies like Kavango Resources and multinationals like Caledonia Mining Corporation.

Western-aligned resource developers such as Australia’s Invictus Energy and the UK’s Contango Holdings maintain active operations.

All of them continue to extract and trade these resources without legal hindrance.

Even more striking is the nation’s international standing.

How can a state allegedly crippled and isolated by Western powers be elected by a sweeping two-thirds majority of the UN General Assembly to sit on the non-permanent seat of the UN Security Council for the 2027–2028 term?

How can a supposedly embargoed nation celebrate its Speaker of Parliament, Advocate Jacob Mudenda, being officially hosted inside the British House of Commons?

How can it reconcile this with him being recognized in the Speaker’s Gallery during Prime Minister’s Questions and feted at Westminster luncheons?

When the head of your legislature receives red-carpet protocol in London, when foreign capital mines your soils, and when the world votes to give you a seat on the UN Security Council, the illusion of an international blockade vanishes completely.

Ordinary Zimbabweans are not blind to this contradiction.

They know that their daily struggles—struggling public hospitals, high unemployment, and grinding poverty—stem from local governance failures, policy instability, and unchecked corruption.

Not foreign sanctions list entries.

How can the ruling elite reconcile failing to equip hospitals while finding the money to purchase luxury cars for cronies?

​

How does it make any sense for a country to dispense millions to tenderpreneurs yet fail to deliver piped water to homes?

The annual October 25th extravaganza is not a genuine expression of public grief over external aggression.

It is political theater designed to convert governance failures into a state-sponsored party.

Until the leadership faces its debt defaults and internal missteps with the same energy it brings to an all-night music gala, no amount of rhetoric will succeed.

Ultimately, no amount of political theater will ever make the sanctions myth stick.

• *Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to contact him on +263715667700 or *

  [email protected]