Likewise, Mr. Kaunda, president of Zambia from 1964 until 1991, when he stepped aside after defeat in his country’s first multiparty elections in nearly three decades, also had harsh words. “The exploiters are now very hard on Zimbabwe because of the immense resources your country has,” he declared recently. “Let’s continue fighting for our interests in Africa.”

Still, it’s easy to see why both men have been harshly critical of the economic restrictions imposed by the European Union in 2002 and the United States the following year: The measures have neither brought down the Mugabe government nor influenced its behavior.

Far from weakening the ruling ZANU-PF party, they have only highlighted what a blunt foreign policy tool sanctions can be. From North Korea to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, sanctions have hit repressive regimes where it hurts least. In Zimbabwe, as elsewhere, ordinary citizens — not the cosseted elite — have suffered much from the collapse of government revenue over the last decade and the drying up of foreign investment. Nothing better illustrates this utter failure then the staggering mass exodus of skilled and unskilled labor — at least 3 million Zimbabweans in a country of only 13 million have fled.

Mr. Mugabe, who has been in power since 1980, has certainly kept a ruthless hold on Zimbabwe. The implementation of his land reform program, which sought to redress an odious system imposed under white minority rule, was marked by appalling human rights abuses and precipitous economic decline. So too was the presidential election campaign of 2008, when violence and intimidation culminated in the forced withdrawal of the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, who pulled out of the runoff even though he had won the first round of elections that year.

What angers many Africans, however, is that Mr. Mugabe’s overwhelming re-election this past July has done so little to change attitudes in the West. Britain and the United States insist the election was rigged but offer no convincing evidence to show that flaws on voting day amounted to systematic tampering that would have changed the outcome. African Union and Southern African Development Community observers declared the election valid.