The architecture of opacity: Zimbabwe's diamond industry and its lessons for the mineral-driven energy transition

This article examines the securitization of the Marange diamond industry in Zimbabwe, arguing that it represents a deliberate political strategy to engineer an “architecture of opacity” for regime survival and elite enrichment. By integrating securitization theory with concepts of the shadow state, we analyze how the ZANU-PF government resolved a legitimacy crisis by violently enclosing a national resource before turning it into a tool of political control. We find that this process was enacted