A Fragile Democracy – Twenty Years On, the fourth New South African Review, is one of doubtless numerous attempts to characterise the state of South Africa some two decades after those magnificent days in late April 1994 when South Africans of all colours voted for the first time in a democratic election. As we write this, we are approaching the country's fourth such election, a significant indicator of the overall success of our democratic transition – for although there may prove to be wrinkles there is every expectation that the forthcoming contest will again be ‘free and fair’. Nonetheless, there are likely to be changes in the electoral landscape, there being significant prospect at time of writing that the ruling African National Congress's (ANC's) proportion of the vote will fall below 60 per cent, the level of electoral dominance it has consistently achieved hitherto. While the ANC can claim many triumphs, and can convincingly claim to have transformed South Africa for the better (materially and spiritually), there is nonetheless widespread discontent abroad. The ANC itself displays many divisions. The Tripartite Alliance (which links it to the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu)), is creaking; it is threatened by new opposition parties which appeal to disaffection – especially among the poor and those who feel excluded from the benefits of democracy – and even the established opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA) today seeks to cloak itself in the mantle of Mandela. Even while the ANC boasts about steady growth, more jobs, improved service delivery and better standards of living for the majority, critics point out that the economy is stagnating, unemployment remains stubbornly high, corruption flourishes, popular protest abounds, and government and many public services (notably the intelligence agencies and the police) have earned an alarming reputation for unaccountability. So we could go on – but we won't, as we would rather encourage our readers to engage with the wide-ranging set of original essays provided by our authors.

INTRODUCTION

In a recent survey carried out for a board meeting of Higher Education South Africa (HESA), Jeffrey Mabelebele, chief executive office (CEO) of HESA, noted that at the beginning of 2013 there existed an avalanche of more than thirty policy initiatives initiated by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) and other government departments, each underway and each with important ramifications for the sector. On the one hand, these policy projects focused on broad vision-type enterprises such as the Green Paper and (soon to be released) White Paper on post-school education and training and the ministerial committee to study the possibility of ‘free’ higher education. On the other hand, there are policy projects meant to affect the sector at the more operational level: the ministerial review of the funding of universities; a review of the norms and standards for student accommodation; new reporting regulations ostensibly to bring the universities into line with the reporting requirements of government departments; the establishment of a transformation oversight committee; and the establishment of a national application and information service (NAIS). This is an ambitious policy programme by any measure. The question is: what drives it? Is it simply the passion and drive of an activist minister or are there deeper reasons and concerns that create the impetus?

In 2012-2013 the minister of higher education and training, Dr BE Nzimande, placed five universities (more than 20 per cent of the institutions in the public higher education system) under administration on the basis that they were, in some form or other, dysfunctional. This is equivalent to disbanding the councils of the institutions, in some cases suspending the vice-chancellors and appointing an administrator to act as oneperson council/executive head. It would probably be accurate to estimate that about a third of the higher education system experiences poorly functioning university councils and/or poorly functioning administrative systems. This is seriously exacerbated (or even produced) by a weak national infrastructure including the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) and the lack of capacity at the national Department of Higher Education – an infrastructure that has yet to fathom the complexities of the context and the serious fragility of many of the institutions.

INTRODUCTION

The liberation from apartheid generated great expectations of change in the workplace and the labour market (Pons-Vignon and Anseeuw 2009). This was due to the key role of trade unions – both as a political force and through successful undermining of the racist order which had been established in workplaces – in overthrowing the system of minority rule, (Von Holdt 2003). Apartheid geography had ensured the racial separation of dwellings. Encounters (often brutal) between people considered to belong to different racial groups took place, mostly in what Marx calls ‘the hidden abode of production’. The history of ‘forcible commodification’ (Bernstein 1994) of southern African peasants into wage labourers, one of extreme violence, was followed by the imposition of a migrant labour system and of colour bars (limiting the promotion of blacks) across workplaces, with the active support of the state and capital. In the absence of alternative sources of income, wage employment came to occupy a central place in the daily life (or reproduction, in Marxist parlance) of most South Africans; but with a record-breaking unemployment rate (standing close to 40 per cent), more and more research points to the restoration of employer power post-1994 through the widespread use of outsourcing and an explosion in casual and informal employment (Buhlungu and Bezuidenhout 2008; Pons-Vignon, forthcoming; Von Holdt and Webster 2005). The economically liberating stable employment to which most South Africans aspire has therefore not materialised but remains the overarching objective of progressive forces in which unions continue to play a leading role (Barchiesi 2011).

And yet, reading the media or the reports produced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), one could believe that the South African government has yielded to the dreaded sirens of populism, at least in the labour market. Rigid rules have allegedly been established, killing flexibility by over-protecting workers who are poorly skilled and over-unionised; a deadly mix which lies at the root of high unemployment and poverty (Klein 2012). Such arguments follow the South African (neo)liberal tradition (Knight 1982; Hofmeyr and Lucas 2001; Kingdon and Knight 2007) according to which the key to unlocking growth and reducing poverty in South Africa would be to reform the labour market (making it ‘flexible’) and equip poor people with useful skills.

INTRODUCTION

The history of Southern Africa has been one of cooperation and conflict. The late 1940s saw the rapid cooling of relations as apartheid became the official policy of the Republic of South Africa, and from 1948 the apartheid system became the paramount factor around which sub-regional relations evolved. As successive National Party governments worked tirelessly to defend apartheid, the neighbours endeavoured to defeat the hated and unjust system. However, given South Africa's economic and military domination of the region and the history of deep interdependence, South Africa's relations with its neighbours – while tense and hostile – remained remarkably close, and although efforts to isolate South Africa politically and culturally were relatively successful they were not matched by similar successes at the economic level. South Africa's relations with its neighbours have paradoxically been characterised by moments of tension, even intermittent wars, and by relative stability and cooperation.

With the demise of apartheid in the early 1990s, many anticipated a thawing in subregional relations with peaceful coexistence and cooperation for mutual gains replacing old tensions. The new South Africa, led by a popular democratically elected government, was expected to use its proven capabilities and its democratic credentials to play a pivotal leadership role on the African continent in general and the Southern African region in particular. It is against this backdrop that South Africa's relations with the newly revamped SADC came into sharp focus. Analysts and scholars expected South Africa's membership to the regional body to bring about qualitative difference and to substantially strengthen the organisation (Biswas 2004: 8). President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe vividly captured this sentiment and hope in 1994, when he said: ‘Given its level and size of economic development, South Africa will have a positive and major role to play in enhancing the efficacy of SADC as a regional organisation’ (Conradie 2001: 47).

South Africa was perceived as a ‘natural leader’ in Southern Africa (King 1994:8). And with its economic and financial resources, its democratic dispensation and substantial military capabilities, South Africa was considered an unchallenged political, economic and strategic heavyweight in Southern Africa. Its accession to the SADC Windhoek Treaty of 1992 was generally perceived as something of a ‘shot in the arm’ for the sub-regional organisation, which would give it an edge in enhancing performance and driving progress (Seymour 1996:1).

THE MADDENING BRILLIANCE OF THE LABYRINTH IS THAT ENDING AND beginning often seem to be one and the same. If Sweet and Sour Milk's prologue establishes its evasiveness with Soyaan's mysterious death, Close Sesame's epilogue captures its fascination with overt violence and strategic subterfuge. Foucault's sovereign is here reconfigured as Farah's punitive General, with Damiens’ regicidal intentions re-imagined through Deeriye's abortive assassination attempt.

IN PENPOINTS, GUNPOINTS AND DREAMS, NGŨGĨ CONCLUDES HIS SURVEY of dissident African writers with a customary flourish: ‘prison then is a metaphor for the postcolonial space, for even in a country where there are no military regimes, the vast majority can be condemned to conditions of perpetual physical, social and psychic confinement’ (Ngũgĩ 1998: 60). This is the dominant motif of a chapter entitled ‘Enactments of Power’, in which Ngũgĩ draws heavily from Discipline and Punish. His attempt to forge epistemological connections between modes of power in feudal Europe and those of post/neo-colonial Africa supplements the philosophical inquiries of V.Y. Mudimbe, amongst many others. This chapter builds on the foundations established in the analysis of Sweet and Sour Milk, arguing that the central Variations novel signals an intensification of Farah's primary concern with the complex interplay between the microphysics of power and resistance. From the Foucauldian perspective of this study, however, Sardines stands alone for several reasons. Critical debates have raged over the complex and at times contradictory figure of Medina, the only female member of the ‘Group of 10’, as well as her wider role within Farah's fictional oeuvre. For Wright, the ‘problem remains …

ON RARE OCCASIONS, YOU STUMBLE ACROSS A TEXT THAT MAKES YOU smile and wince at the same time. Such was my experience with Patricia Duncker's debut novel. Her anonymous student protagonist obsesses over and finally locates errant author Paul Michel in a provincial French asylum. He subsequently helps him escape, sleeps with him and, various twists of fate later, attends his funeral. Beyond its intrigues of plot and character, Duncker's novel succeeds in representing the problematic, because human, aspect of research. Before his meeting with Paul Michel, her protagonist has only a tepid passion for academic investigation. It is only when researcher and researched collide that he feels his work truly begins to ‘mean’ anything. When the scholar uncovers previously confidential correspondence between his author and namesake Michel Foucault, the analogy between university library and madhouse appears even starker: ‘Paul Michel was a novelist and Foucault was a philosopher, but there were uncanny links between them’ (Duncker 1997: 6).

IN THIS AND THE CHAPTER THAT FOLLOWS, I REFLECT ON HOW AND WHY Foucault's meditations on politics, war and surveillance have been used to explore issues relating to what has been called ‘postmodern conflict’. Likewise, I consider how some Foucauldian interventions on AIDS, as well as the microphysics of power and struggle, provide an intriguing prism through which to view Secrets. If Foucault's meditations on disciplinary procedures can inform a reading of the Variations sequence, this final instalment of the Blood in the Sun cycle begins to probe similar questions in relation to the body as hosting viruses that spill over various geo-political borders. Whilst I do not seek to draw any easy lines of equivalence, it seems sufficient to note that the trajectories of both Farah's and Foucault's later discourse are, for varying reasons, increasingly preoccupied with the ‘global equalizer’ of AIDS. As I suggest throughout my analyses of what comes after Blood in the Sun, Farah will explore some of the avenues of inquiry tentatively set up here in both fiction and non-fiction. As Menkhaus’ epigraph suggests, issues ranging from global security to international migration and the threat of pandemics have dominated contemporary discourse on Somalia. As such, they inform much of Farah's most recent work.

THE PROPHETIC FORCE OF FANON'S WRITING HAS ATTRACTED VARIOUS commentators concerned with the peculiarities of postcolonial state formation. In the case of Somalia during the latter stages of Barre's regime, the warnings he issued about the dangers of political nepotism would prove particularly apt. In 1986, the year Maps was published, Barre was returned to power with a purported 99.9% of the vote (Lewis 2002: 255). Fanon imagines precisely such a scenario in ‘The Pitfalls of National Consciousness’ (Fanon 2001: 146). Throughout what follows, I argue that his legacy casts a significant shadow over Maps. In Hilaal, Farah has created a pseudo-Fanonian character who researches ‘the psychological disturbances the [Ogaden] war had caused in the lives of children and women’ (M: 157). This recalls The Wretched of the Earth's provocative final chapter, ‘Colonial War and Mental Disorders’ (Fanon 2001: 200–250). Hilaal's most significant case study is his young nephew, Askar, whose fractured narrative reflects the psychic and physiognomic pressures brought about by conflict. Askar's turbulent struggle to come to terms with the politics of identity and affiliation takes place against the backdrop of Somalia's anti-secessionist war with Ethiopia.

FOUCAULT'S EXAMINERS RAISED A NUMBER OF RESERVATIONS DURING THE defence of his original thesis, with the Sorbonne historian Henri Gouhier expressing his profound unease with this student who ‘thought in allegories’ (Miller 2000: 104). For the purposes of this analysis, I am grateful Foucault refused to alter his approach. The following chapters consider Farah's first trilogy, Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship, exploring it in relation to those carceral concerns and tropes that litter Foucault's early work. Alongside them, what Michael Senellart refers to as Foucault's ‘taste for the labyrinth’ in Security, Territory, Population also captures the imagination (Foucault 2007: 380). Whilst the labyrinth has various allegorical meanings, the above marriage between power as design and literature as obfuscation is particularly enabling. It corresponds with the murky world of Variations where, as D.R. Ewen suggests, ‘a weird cognitive fog envelops even simple facts’, leaving identities fragmented, disappearances routine and bodies either broken or obliterated (Ewen 1984: 201). Farah's preoccupation with the insurgent, if ultimately misplaced energies of the Group of 10 (a group of young intellectuals opposed to the General's rule in Variations) has provoked fierce debate.

IN ‘THE CITY IN MY MIND’, FARAH RELIES ON MANY OF THE TROPES THAT characterise his writing, both fictional and non-fictional, and that I have sought to explore throughout this book. The first epigraph, for instance, draws on that optical repository that features so heavily throughout his novels.

WHEN VIEWED IN RELATION TO FARAH'S FICTION AS A WHOLE, GIFTS IS something of an anomaly. Set against the backdrop of the kind of post-Ogaden-War misery depicted by Stephen Browne, it interweaves reflections on everything from the apocalyptic realities of famine in the Horn of Africa to the complicity of international aid agencies and global donors. If this provides the foundation for later novels, where new worlds of disorder are explored in all their macabre complexity, it is the love story element, unconventional as it is, that sets Gifts apart. More than a simple leavening of the text, I argue that Farah's decision to foreground Duniya and Bosaaso's burgeoning relationship, seen in conjunction with their all-too-brief adoption of an unnamed foundling child, has more interrogative significance. In this chapter, I explore how and why a dialectical relationship exists between narrative reflections on both the complicities and complexities of global aid, with Somalia as a compelling case study, and the equally complex unfolding of Gifts’ central romance.

THE FINAL SECTION OF THIS BOOK CONCLUDES AS IT BEGAN: CONSIDERING how and why Foucault's work continues to be deployed across a range of discursive fields. Whilst Giorgio Agamben and Judith Butler's investigations are separated by the socio-political schism of 9/11, both use Foucault to explore issues of biopower, sovereignty and taxonomies of the flesh through the shifting ‘camp’ paradigm. Agamben traces provocative connections between the classification and treatment of ‘bare life’ in Nazi concentration camps and refugee settlements from the Balkans to Rwanda, flagging up blind spots in the writings of Arendt and Foucault as he goes. This is discussed by Warren Montag in his contribution to Michel Foucault and Power Today (Montag 2006: 13–22).

I BEGAN WRITING THE DISORDER OF THINGS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM, BUT it really only came to life following my relocation to South Africa in 2010. If this book has considered how and why a discursive marriage between aspects of Foucauldian thought might enliven a reading of Farah's work, I, unlike Patricia Duncker's protagonist in Hallucinating Foucault, have been fortunate enough to encounter the subject of my academic interest. Having met Farah in Cape Town in 2011, I found myself reflecting on the ways in which The Disorder of Things might be re-energised by taking into account the process of adapting to life in a republic where certain Foucauldian concerns impact the everyday. Trying to come to terms with the disjuncture between life in a quiet English village and that within Johannesburg's gated communities, protected by twenty-four hour surveillance systems and security services, has certainly been educative. In this concluding analysis, I build on my personal reflections about life in a postcolonial African city to consider how and why Knots brings together many of the major preoccupations of Farah's oeuvre.