5 - The One Who Controls the Diamond Wears the Crown

Summary

Of the states examined in this research, Zimbabwe has the most in-country variation in response to the Kimberley Process. Since a large diamond find in the Marange diamond fields in 2006, Zimbabwe has had five different regulatory strategies in response to the Kimberley Process that are defined in this study. Furthermore, Zimbabwe became a controversial and pivotal case for the Kimberley Process when the government took over the diamond fields in 2008. This led NGOs and other governments to accuse the Zimbabwean state of human rights abuses and complain that the Kimberley Process was too weak to act forcefully in this case. However, while the Zimbabwean state has ignored many other international agreements there has always been at least some effort to stay within the Kimberley Process, thus leading to interesting levels of variation in the government’s strategy toward the process over time. This research argues that variation in regulatory policy in the diamond sector is due to the political economy of factional rivalries within ZANU-PF that have long dominated Zimbabwean politics. In this context the Kimberley Process was heavily politicized and used as an instrument to gain market share.