Dr. Miranda Melcher (2:03)

Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Nathan Munier about his book titled Zimbabwe's diamond the State Resource, Politics and Development, published by Cambridge University Press in 2025. Now, big picture this book asks what seems like a pretty straightforward question, right? What happens when states experience a rapid increase in resource wealth? Obviously, as the title of the book suggests, we're going to be talking about that in the context of diamonds in Zimbabwe. And while that's a very simple question to ask, the answers are not that simple. Right. There's all sorts of things going on in terms of sort of straight up economics, right. What happens to the money and the export markets and things like that. But also what does this mean for politics and who's in charge of these sorts of things. And other levers like regulation and power dynamics and things like that get very much involved too. So there's a lot to get into here. Nathan, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

Dr. Nathan Munier (3:06)

Hello, thank you for having me.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (3:07)

Could you please start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book? What questions are you asking kind of beyond that big picture one I started us off with.

Dr. Nathan Munier (3:18)

Okay, great. So I am initially from the United States, but I've been a professor for eight years at Tokyo International University in Japan. I got my PhD at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and I wrote my dissertation on the diamond trade. It was about the Kimberley Process certification scheme to make sure that diamonds were not coming from conflict areas. And that was the topic of my first book in 2020. So I've long been interested in this idea of how natural resources influence states and how different political dynamics are changed by flows of resource wealth, this type of thing. So I've actually, even when I was working on my previous book, I started working on this project looking at Zimbabwe specifically. And I was really interested in this question of how other types of resources besides oil. A lot of the resource politics or resource curse literature is focused a lot on the oil sector. But I've been interested in this question of how other types of resources might affect states differently. And so I decided to do an in depth study of Zimbabwe here because this large inflow of diamond production that they had starting in 2006 I thought was a good place to look at how, whether or not theories that have been developed to look at the oil sector and how that influences states may or may not apply to other resources, especially especially diamonds in this case.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (5:03)

Yeah, that's helpful to understand the ways in which this is an argument about Zimbabwe, but also about these kind of broader theories around political economy and natural resources. Now you mentioned 2006 and that is obviously a really key year. But to understand change, we have to know sort of what the before state is. So if we go before 2006, you talk in the book about Zimbabwe as a low capacity democracy and an opaque state. Can you unpack those terms for us to help us understand what we're seeing before diamonds?

Dr. Nathan Munier (5:33)

One of the things I really focus a lot in the book is if we go back to like say 1980, in many ways, Zimbabwe had a head start on many neighboring countries in, in the region. They. And from about 1980 to maybe around 2000 or so, when inflation hit and some other political dynamics started to really become noticeable in many ways, across many different measures, at least Zimbabwe performed rather well, at least in comparison to other, other states in the region. However. So I think in many ways, especially in that period, it could have been described as, as a low capacity democracy. It had some of the aspects that we associate with democracy, but maybe kind of lack some of the basic capacity and processes, especially when it comes to political contestation and that sort of thing that we often associate with democracy. But since about 2000, especially since about maybe 2008, what really started to develop is that a lot of the formal economy started to break down. A lot of, kind of the predictability of institutions which did exist, kind of at least in a relative sense, compared to other countries in the region from from 1980 to maybe about 2000 also started to break down. And with like a lot of inflation, with a lot of formal sector going away, this kind of gave rise to a large informal economy and thus also brought about kind of a very blurred set of state processes. One thing I I talk about in this book that I think is interesting is that it isn't so much that Zimbabwe is a weak state per se, or that that the government is absent in a lot of areas. But a lot of times the role of the government is kind of blurred beyond recognition. Different government actors have their hand in different aspects of the informal economy, especially in the diamond trade or in other resource sectors. And some people might be informal diamond miners at one point, they might be police at another point, they might be in the government at a different point. So it's not really so much an absence of the government that is really notable. A lot of it is just that the role of the government is kind of very difficult to define, even for a lot of people within the government itself during different periods. Furthermore, while often the rivalry between, say, the ruling party, zanu, PF and the opposition parties have gotten a lot of attention, especially in the global media, what has often really mattered when it comes to the political economy of the country is factual rivalries within the ruling party Zanu Piaf and their competition to get more resources and for market share, so on, so forth. So that's something I look at a lot in this book. And one of the things we can really see in the diamond sector is that in each kind of different period since 2006, different factions within the Zanu PF have often used the diamond sector to gain relative to others and so on and so forth.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (9:13)

Yeah, I think it's definitely worth getting a little bit more into the diamond sector and how it works to understand these sorts of interactions. So can you tell us more about how the sector developed? I mean, why even is 2006 such a key year?

Dr. Nathan Munier (9:25)

Mining has, like, long been really important in Zimbabwe's economy. But in 2006, a large amount of diamonds were found in eastern Zimbabwe. Some people argue that this is the biggest find maybe in the last 100 years or so. What is really notable here politically is that these diamonds are located in a large area, and they're what's often called, like, alluvial diamonds. They're found on the earth's surface and they can usually be mined very easily, maybe with just a shovel or something like this. This contrasts diamond mining here to the diamond mining that you see in, say, Botswana, where most diamonds are located well underneath the ground. You need a lot of capital investment to mine for them, so on and so forth. In Zimbabwe, these diamonds can usually be found with very little technology or this type of thing. Diamonds have become really important, too. A lot of times people think of diamonds in terms of jewelry, and that's true for maybe about. Maybe about 20% historically. But they're also used largely for cutting instruments because diamonds are stronger than anything else. And a lot of Zimbabwe's diamonds are of the quality that are used for cutting instruments, but still kind of have a lot of value there. The alluvial nature of Zimbabwe's diamond sector, though, has made it very easy to mine diamonds informally outside of government direct government control. And the borders of Zimbabwe, especially along with Mozambique, have made diamond smuggling fairly easily easy. And that's one of the things I really look at in this book. You know, there's usually an informal market in just about anything, but with diamonds, you can carry maybe even millions of dollars worth in a person's pocket or in a very little space. So, you know, while there's many other things that are often traded around taxation or government control, even when compared to other resources, you can carry a lot of value with diamonds, thus making smuggling a Challenge for pretty much every government in the world. Although maybe even more of a challenge for governments that might lack the capacity or the will to control the diamond trade.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (11:56)

Yeah, that's definitely a very big difference with oil, which cannot be smuggled in a pocket quite so easily. So definitely a key difference there with the sort of comparison you raised at the beginning of wanting to investigate these.

Dr. Nathan Munier (12:07)

Theories or even say, like, I'd like to point out, like, for instance, timber. There's a big informal global trade in timber. And that's always been interesting to me because that would seem to be very difficult to smuggle. Same with sand or.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (12:20)

Yeah, yeah, they don't work the same way that diamonds do. You cannot pop them in a pocket, get on a plane and then have millions of dollars kind of right there. Yeah, that's definitely a very key difference. Thinking then about this as a sector though, right. Obviously the material itself is different maybe from some other resources, but the kind of industry still has to be organized in particular ways. So what does that look like if we sort of zoom out, like who is owning this diamond wealth? What sorts of ownership structures and changes do we see from 2006 onwards?

Dr. Nathan Munier (12:55)

So, yeah, this is something I'll look at a lot in the book. One thing that's really characterized Zimbabwe is that ownership structure in the diamond trade has changed. Well, I think in the book I say five different times. Maybe now, you know, maybe we could even say a six time. And this really contrasts the sector in Zimbabwe compared to other neighboring countries, especially like Namibia or Botswana, where there's really been only one ownership structure. This existed between those governments and NVIRs. So in each of these different periods, a lot of times different factions with ZANU within zanu PF kind of had an upper hand and that was largely reflected in the ownership structure. Furthermore, a lot of these strategies when it came to ownership structure didn't really last long enough to. To work very well or in some cases maybe didn't work much at all. And this is. This is why they were abandoned. But. But yeah, kind of lack of continuity in ownership structure is probably one of the reasons why in this time period a lot of diamonds have been traded outside of government control or around taxation. This has led to a situation where Zimbabweans could have benefited a lot, maybe from taxing the diamond trade, but have been largely unable to. And this is something that many people have. Have pointed out over time.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (14:29)

Yeah, that's definitely an interesting aspect of this. Obviously, whoever owns it, though, doesn't necessarily impact kind of who's buying the diamonds. So whichever of the ownership changes we're in. Right. Doesn't really matter kind of which one we pick for the moment. What happens to the diamonds once they are mined, regardless of who owns them or who owns the mines, who then buys the sort of finished diamonds? Do we see changes with that over time?

Dr. Nathan Munier (14:53)

Sure, yeah. Another thing I look at a lot here is the mode of exchange in the resource sector. And if you look up until about 2000, most. Well, many resources were sold to Europe. The small amount of diamonds that were mined were often sold to India, where there's a lot of diamond beneficiation that takes place. But one thing we see that holds somewhat kind of constant even across these different changes in ownership structure, is that the United Arab Emirates has become a very big place to trade diamonds and other resources, both from Zimbabwe and in the region of southern Africa in general. So that, that is kind of a change. And we can see this reflected in. In this international agreement, the Kimberly Process. So this international agreement was set up in 2003 to make sure the diamonds were not coming from conflict areas. A big crisis for this agreement was in 2008 when the diet, when the military took control of the diamond fields directly in Zimbabwe. And this resulted in one of kind of the worst human rights violations since Zimbabwe became independent. And this got a lot of non governmental organizations and human rights groups very angry about this. But ultimately, the Kimberly Process was not really able to deal with this very effectively in time. Some countries that don't really have that much of their own diamond production, such as the United Arab Emirates, have become more dominant inside the Kimberley Process, even serving as president, along with China and Russia that are big importers of diamonds. And actually even Zimbabwe served as president of the Kimberley process in 2024, which was something that a lot of people saw as being just kind of misguided or so on and so forth. Defenders of the Kimberly Process will say, though, it's not really a human rights agreement, that it's just put there to stop diamonds coming from areas where there's an active conflict. Other issues, such as maybe labor rights or safety or this sort of thing don't really matter or aren't really what the agreement is made to deal with. And some people will argue that while this agreement might not be perfect, it's better to exist than if it weren't to exist at all. And. And, you know, especially in my first book and a little bit in this one, I kind of look at how in some ways, the Kimberly Process has made political actors in Zimbabwe maybe do things that they wouldn't have otherwise done. But a lot of times this became more of like a politicized process in which regulations from this international agreement would be selectively chosen to kind of target other actors in like, a competition for market share, as opposed to maybe having much to do with kind of the initial idea of this international agreement. Although at times, you know, I think you can kind of point to cases where it has made actors do things that they maybe wouldn't do otherwise. So looking at the interactions of this, I think is interesting. And then, of course, with Russia going into Ukraine a few years ago, and given that they're a large diamond producer, that's created another kind of big dynamic in the global diamond trade that has kind of mattered a lot for countries in southern Africa, some of which have, you know, a close relationship with Russian diamond companies and this type of thing.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (18:59)

Yeah, that's definitely interesting to look at the international political ramifications of all of this. What about the domestic political ramifications? How, for example, has Zanu PF's dominance of the diamond trade that you've mentioned now a number of times influenced their ability to dominate in terms of domestic politics, too?

Dr. Nathan Munier (19:16)

I think probably the best example of this is from 2009 to 2013, there was a government of national unity between Zanu PF and the MDC. However, Zanu PF kept the presidency. They kept the military and the police, and the most important ministry that the MDC got was finance. And they were always kind of complaining that they had no little or no revenue from the diamond sector. The diamond sector was being used outside of their control and that they had no oversight of. Was always kind of an interesting dynamic, though, because on the international stage, the MDC would argue that sanctions on the diamond sector in Zimbabwe should be lifted, that, you know, this was counterproductive, so on and so forth. But when it came to its interaction with ZANU PF directly, they had kind of very little ability to benefit from the diamond trade during this period. And it's pretty clear that factions within ZANU PF benefited a lot. And that was something that. That bothered the MDC from 2009 to 2013. Ultimately, though, because of this and because of their dominance in a lot of other informal markets, Zan knew PF was able to regroup and kind of easily win an election in 2013. And so in some ways, they kind of an unfair election, but nonetheless, a lot of people didn't like the Government of National Unity. A lot of times they felt as though it was unable to really address much of anything. It was kind of, there was a lot of gridlock. And given this kind of dynamic too, when the MDC got in government, the ZANU PF in some ways was able to kind of blame them for some of the things that went wrong during those four years or so too. So there was kind of that dynamic as well.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (21:34)

Yeah, that's interesting to think about. Again, kind of what's happening domestically versus internationally and how the levels are intersecting. What about regionally? To what extent is what you've described so far about Zimbabwe's diamond sector and its influence on politics similar to other countries in Southern Africa that you've mentioned also are involved in diamonds?

Dr. Nathan Munier (21:52)

Yeah, it's kind of interesting because Zimbabwe has had a long history of being friendly with the ANC government in South Africa, SWAPO in Namibia. A lot of things that they have done economically these governments maybe didn't support, but they still kind of argued that Zimbabwe could do them if they so wanted. You know, you see that kind of in the, with land reform and with these various mining policies over time. Thus these governments haven't really, you know, kind of provided maybe the. A certain level of critical oversight at least kind of in these ways. It's interesting though, because with. Since the diamond sector is really important in South Africa, really important in neighboring states, they often care a lot about the reputation of the industry as a whole. In fact, South Africa was one of the founders of the Kimberley process. Nelson Mandela was directly involved in it. And at that time they were worried that if consumers were to boycott the diamond industry that that could hurt kind of the regional economy as a whole. And we also see this with issues that have been brought about with Zimbabwe's diamond sector since usually smuggling diamonds or getting diamonds around government control involves crossing borders is something that inherently requires cooperation. And in many ways South Africa, Namibia, some of these other neighboring states have been willing to, you know, kind of share technological expertise or spend resources to try and kind of rehabilitate Zimbabwe's diamond sector because of concerns that issues there could hurt investor and consumer confidence in, in the region. And, and you can kind of see this in the diamond sector, but also I think in, in other economic sectors as well. And also since Zimbabwe is a landlocked country, you know, access to ports is really important. And thus it's, you know, it's kind of at least quasi political alliance with neighbor neighboring states has, has mattered quite a bit over time. Although, you know, as I kind of talk about in this book, a lot of these Other countries have faced a lot of challenges as well. So, you know, I think one of the reasons why Zimbabwe. So like, for instance, Zimbabwe had a really contested election 2008, but also had what was seen as kind of a largely unfair and contested election of maybe about a just over a year ago. And you know, in 2008, South Africa and other countries in the region became very involved. But with all this kind of going on politically in South Africa now, there wasn't as much intervention or just as much attention from the global media in general about what was going on in Zimbabwe then, even though some of the things that were going on really you know, kind of mirrored or very similar to what had gained a lot of attention in the past. So I think that there is kind of this, this dynamic as well.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (25:19)

Yeah, definitely something to keep an eye on going forward. There are some other countries, though, that you mention in the book that I want to make sure we don't neglect. So we've talked about some of the ones involved kind of in the Kimberley Process and sort of other big diamond producing, for instance, Russia. We've talked about regional countries that are relevant both for the border control issues as well as the diamond production. What about countries that might seem really unrelated, like Eritrea or Venezuela? You argue that they're actually really not unrelated. What's the connection there?

Dr. Nathan Munier (25:49)

Yeah, so I look in the book a little bit at Venezuela, for instance, and I'm not, you know, I don't know as much about say, South America, but I, I have followed like kind of the situation there. I think most people have now. And I think there are some similar dynamics. So in both cases there was very serious inflation, although it happened a little bit later and probably more intensely in Venezuela, maybe around 2012. Both countries were sanctioned by a lot of the same governments. Both countries face a lot of kind of very serious economic problems and kind of collapse of the formal market. But in both cases they kind of had an out or something that kept them alive while other sectors of the economy were not producing very much. And in Zimbabwe that would be this large diamond fine that kind of gave them an out or allowed this ZANU PF rule to persist possibly longer than it would have otherwise. I mean, obviously there's other things at play, but yeah, they kind of had an out here. And I argue that the informal gold sector in Venezuela may have played a similar role. Historically, Venezuela has been really oil dependent, maybe kind of one of the most extreme cases of oil dependence. In fact, I think the first book to really kind of highlight the Resource Curse or the Paradox of Plenty of by the scholar Terry Lynn Carl, you know, was largely about Venezuela, and this was even before Chavez. But by. By about in the early 2000s, the oil sector started to have a lot of problems. This kind of coincided with a lot of kind of political issues. The countries that were often importers of oil. By 2012, a lot of the oil sector had collapsed. But informal gold mining is something that it at least appears as though the Maduro government was kind of really involved in and was able to kind of use as a lifeline to stay afloat despite kind of a lot of chaos and a lot of a lot of problems for maybe about 2012-20, 2016 or so. And, you know, I think this is kind of an. A good thing to kind of point out here is, you know, some things are always illegal, but when it comes to diamonds or gold or, you know, sometimes these things are illegal in some contexts and not in others, sometimes those categories can be rather blurred. Some. You know, I think one thing you often kind of see in these sectors is sometimes even if law enforcement knows people are, you know, smuggling diamonds or gold or something, they might just kind of look another way or just not really think it's that big of a deal or something like this. So, you know, I think in both cases, you kind of see this example where a resource that is kind of found and can be easily mined for allow these governments, or at least kind of one of many variables that probably allow these governments to get more of a lifeline politically than they may have otherwise had. And I think too, if you look at Zimbabwe, and one thing I kind of really try and set up in the book is if you compare Zimbabwe to other neighboring countries, it kind of had a head start in many ways, but it has kind of fallen off in comparison to most, if not all, other countries in the region. And I think that we see something similar with Venezuela, too. But a lot of times when governments face kind of extreme sanctions and extreme kind of pressure internationally and domestically, that Zimbabwe and face in 2008 and that Venezuela faced in 2012, a lot of times that would lead to a collapse of the regime. But I think in both of these cases, they had an out or something that could keep them afloat. So I think that that is kind of an interesting similarity and it's kind of interesting to see how a lot of this, especially with Venezuela, is in the news a lot now. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (30:20)

No, I think we'll continue to be following all these sorts of things. Before I ask what you might be working on next. Is there anything else about this book that we want to make sure we mention in our discussion?

Dr. Nathan Munier (30:30)

Well, one thing I'd like to talk maybe just a second about is so, and this might kind of go into things I'll look at in the future, but there's been some really interesting dynamics in the southern African region politically in the last maybe two years or so. There's now a government national unity in South Africa. There was a single party dominant regime in Botswana that lost an election and thus has kind of brought about a new government or a new change there. So I think that that is kind of an interesting thing to look at. And I think that one kind of interesting dynamic with this is, you know, traditionally countries like Botswana, South Africa have been really dependent on mining. But you know, there's always kind of been this need to maybe strategize beyond that or kind of get beyond that. And I think some of the dynamics that we have seen in terms of kind of the dominant mining resources in these countries have maybe at least partially kind of contributed to some of these, these changes that we see in the region. I guess I think I may have touched on this. But another thing I kind of would like to point out is that, you know, one of the reasons why, and I think this book kind of illustrates this. One of the reasons why I think Botswana and Namibia have had kind of relative success, at least to a lot of other countries in sub Saharan Africa, is that while, you know, the ownership structure that they have in the diamond sector might kind of really leave a lot to be desired, it has kind of allowed a level of stability and infrastructure and you know, kind of to some degree a level of competitive democracy that, that, you know, is kind of apparent even just like when you visit there or something like this. So on the other hand, I think, you know, one thing we can kind of see with Zimbabwe is kind of a lack of a kind of coherent long term strategy in the resource sector has maybe kind of caused some of the inverse of this. And I think that this to some degree can be reflected in these countries government and economic systems over time.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (33:02)

And is this what you're continuing to work on? What's on your desk now?

Dr. Nathan Munier (33:05)

Sure, yeah. So one thing I want to look at is, and I've been working on this for a while is like single party dominant states. So I've lived in Japan for almost eight years now. And one of the most interesting things I've always found about Japan is that it's a single party dominant democracy. But has totally, you know, pretty fair and free elections and everything, so on and so forth. And I've often thought that, you know, many of these countries I study in southern Africa, you know, parties like the African National Congress or SWAPO or, you know, they should maybe kind of look to the LDP in Japan as kind of a way to kind of set up a long term big tent party that can survive in a fairly competitive political environment. Same with say the Social Democratic Party in Sweden or something like this. I've kind of gotten an interest in kind of single party dominant regimes that are able to win kind of free and fair elections over and over again. Although as I was kind of saying in the last year or two with Botswana in South Africa, some of that single party dominance has changed a bit. So I think that that is. Yeah, that's an interesting dynamic that I plan to look at going forward.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (34:29)

Well, that certainly sounds intriguing and continues to be relevant. So best of luck with that project. And any listeners who want to read more about what we've been discussing in the meantime can look at the book titled Zimbabwe's Diamond Trade State Resource Politics and Development, published by Cambridge University Press in 2025. Nathan, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

Dr. Nathan Munier (34:49)

Thank you for having me.

Dr. Miranda Melcher (35:03)

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