Diamond Warriors in Colonial Namibia

Book excerpt: Diamond Warriors in Colonial Namibia enters into unchartered scholarly territory of illegal diamond smuggling at the largest diamond mining company in colonial Namibia—De Beers’ Consolidated Diamond Mines of South West Africa (CDM). It details the underground activities of the natives (migrant workers) employed by the CDM and how these illicit activities accounted for rapid development in Owamboland. Beyond this account, the book takes on the deterministic ‘natural resource curse’ theory that equates natural resource endowments to a curse resulting in underdevelopment and sometimes conflict. It is argued and proven herein, from a decolonial standpoint, that such an approach is an oversimplification of the political economy of natural resources in Africa in general and Namibia in particular. The text also provides a contextual account of the contract labour system and details the symbiotic relationship between CDM and the colonial state before highlighting the remaining unanswered questions and areas of further research