Sanction This

Thank God for Russia and China, which refuse to make the plight of the Zimbabwean people any worse by countenancing sanctions, not against the Thatcher-imposed nomenklatura whom sanctions would not effect in the least, but against the ordinary people.

And no, sanctions did not bring down apartheid in South Africa. That collapse would have happened long before if the ANC had not been so supported by, and supportive of, the Soviet Union. As things turned out, the Soviet Union collapsed (as it would have done anyway, Reagan or no Reagan and Thatcher or no Thatcher), so no one saw any further need to prop up the old South African regime in order to prevent the gaining of a Soviet foothold there.