Diamond pricing and valuation in South Africa's extractive political economy

This article explores the valuation and marketisation of diamonds in South Africa from 2004 to 2012. It argues that there is no positivist foundation for a real' or fair' price from which derogations can be measured, which constitutes a challenge for establishing transfer pricing in the context of tax justice. Instead, there is a performative valuation process wherein artificial underlying values are assigned which then condition prices and tax liabilities. Thus it is not the essential nature of diamonds per se that conditions a resource curse', but corporate control over the marketisation process in the context of enclavity and oligopoly.