TOMORROW, the Sadc region in an extraordinary solidarity and for the second year running will be demanding that Western economic sanctions against Zimbabwe be unconditionally lifted. Stir The Pot: Paidamoyo Muzulu This is a huge statement and gesture from the region, but Zimbabweans remain split on the issue and are still worlds apart despite the economic and social havoc the sanctions have wrought on the country. At the turn of the century, Zimbabwe embarked on revolutionary land reform programme — a programme that saw a massive seven million hectares expropriated from white commercial farmers for resettlement of landless blacks. The land question was one of the unfulfilled agreements reached at the 1979 Lancaster House independence conference. The United Kingdom (UK) had undertaken to fund the land reform programme and was supported by the United States. However, the Lancaster House agreement had sunset clauses — clauses that controlled how long the transfer of land should take and that whites for the first seven years of independence had reserved 20 seats in the National Assembly. Land was to be bought on a willing seller, willing buyer basis. The process was slow and frustrating, enraging many who had fought in the armed liberation struggle who started accusing their leaders of selling out or getting closer to the former colonisers. The Zimbabwean government acquired about three million hectares of land in the first decade of independence with financial support from the UK. The restless peasants and veterans of the struggle in 1998 started invading white-owned commercial farms and resettling themselves. Seeing an opportunity to revive its waning popularity among the electorate, the Zanu PF administration endorsed the invasions which were chaotic and, in many instances, violent. Zimbabwe became headline news across the world, inviting the wrath of the UK and the US who immediately started imposing economic sanctions and travel restrictions, accusing the Zanu PF administration of violating citizens’ human, property and political rights. Economic sanctions have been a punishment of choice for Americans against governments that upset the global economic structures. Cuba has suffered an economic embargo since 1960 solely because of its communism and nationalisation of land and industries after Fidel Castro assumed power through a war. Iran, too, has suffered the same fate after its 1979 revolution. More recently, socialist administrations of Bolivia (Eva Morales), Venezuela (Hugo Chavez) and Greece (Alexis Tsipiraz) have faced the same fate. Zimbabwe, in a rare diplomatic feat, has gained the support of Sadc and the African Union to have sanctions against the country condemned. Members of Sadc and AU at the 2020 United Nations General Assembly called for the removal of sanctions against Zimbabwe. Among the countries that openly called for the lifting of sanctions were South Africa, Namibia and Kenya. The sanctions against Zimbabwe, like South Africa’s African National Congress’s former leader Nelson Mandela listing as