CHAPTER 2 METHODOLOGY
2.4 QUESTIONS OF RELEVANCE
It has been argued that Foucault’s genealogy is of relevance to this thesis as it is concerned with analysing those “knowledge-power” relations that produce and regulate discourse. This is possible because power is framed by Foucault as productive and relational and inextricably bound to “knowledge”. Within his early genealogical research, Foucault focused on the micro-physics of power; those power relations that are exercised on the bodies of individuals through social and institutional practices. However, the movement in Foucault’s thinking towards considering both the micro- and macro-physics of power is demonstrated by his governmentality research. Although the emergence and rearticulation of the “idea of a government of men [sic]” (Foucault 1978b, p. 123) are limited to a Western context by Foucault’s analysis, it is relevant to this thesis as elements of European political rationalities were imported to South Africa from the start of colonialism in the mid-17th Century onwards.
The ascendancy of these rationalities was gradual and, despite being resisted and contested, these ways of thinking were eventually normalised, as was the case in most colonial territories.
But because Foucault did not consider such forms of non-Western rule, the particularities (similarities and differences) of political reasoning within South Africa, which “generated changing ways of imposing and maintaining rule over the colonised and, therefore, changing terrains within which to respond” (Scott 2005, p. 29) vis-à-vis European mentalities of rule, should be acknowledged.
63 It is plain that aspects of pastoral power were employed by Dutch (1652-1795) and British (1795-1910) colonial rulers in South Africa. As Tikly argues, “[j]ust as the shepherd as a human being was a distinct and superior kind of being in relation to pastoral power, so the colonial rulers likewise saw themselves as superior to the colonized subjects” (2003, p. 163).
However, when compared to Europe, pastoral reasoning in colonial South Africa gave rise to extremely oppressive forms of rule which created slave and servant subject positions. Similarly, the political rationalities that gave rise to governmentality in Europe had, and continue to have, a bearing on ways of thinking about government in South Africa. The articulation of European sovereignty by raison d’ État, that is, absolute authority over the territory and inhabitants of the state, was extended to colonial territories, including South Africa. Combined with pastoral reasoning, this understanding of sovereignty sanctioned and legitimated the right of colonial rulers “to take life and let live” (Foucault 1998b, p. 138). Furthermore, colonial rule in South Africa was also informed by police reason which sought to create “state utility on the basis of and through men’s [sic] activity” (Foucault 1978b, p. 323). Through imposed servile activity in a territory it claimed jurisdiction over, mercantilism (which developed alongside police reason in Europe) motivated for the creation of certain routines of conduct in South Africa that would directly benefit the economies and power of the Dutch and British states respectively.
One of the most palpable effects of European mentalities of rule in South Africa was the creation of the South African state in 1910 through an Act passed by the British Parliament.
The South African Act of 1909 granted permission for the unification of four separate political entities, the Cape, Transvaal, Natal and Orange Free State, to form the Union of South Africa.
This development signalled the ‘governmentalisation of the state’ and the creation of “a complex of centralizing governing relationships and mechanisms aimed at steering people (both as individuals and population)” (Simons et al. 2009, p. 65), but within a context very
64 different from 17th Century state formation in Europe. Significantly, the legitimacy of South Africa’s borders has rarely been questioned since 1910, with contemporary leaders such as South Africa’s current Deputy President, Kgalema Motlanthe, in response to the Centenary of the Union of South Africa, claiming that “[t]he post 1994 South African non-racial democracy is…a logical outcome of this long history of lofty principles that sought to create a unitary nation” (2010, my emphasis). Although an in-depth consideration of the appropriation and rearticulation of European mentalities of rule in South Africa will not be repeated here, it is worth noting the relevance of Foucault’s analytics of governmentality to South Africa and other non-Western contexts.45
The rationalities that constitute modern governmentality in Europe (liberalism and neo- liberalism) are of greatest relevance to the moments of apartheid and post-apartheid rule in South Africa. However, because free subjects did not constitute the object of liberal reasoning during apartheid rule, South Africa was constituted by an evolved illiberal rationality that
“[did] not accept a conception of limited government characterized by the rule of law that would secure the rights of individual citizens” (Tikly 2003, p. 163). Furthermore, racism, as a bio-political phenomenon in South Africa, sought to divide along racial lines those regarded worthy or unworthy of life or human rights. Despite the adoption of a liberal democratic system of rule following the 1994 election in South Africa, elements of apartheid’s rationality are still evident in the post-apartheid political sphere within market-based economic policies and within the development of a new racialised bio-political imperative, highlighted by Tikly. Contrary to some teleological interpretations of South Africa’s history, it is unlikely that one election (1994) and its aftermath can fundamentally alter centuries old entrenched political rationalities.
There is a need to consider the continuities and discontinuities between apartheid’s illiberal
45 Studies of colonial and other authoritarian forms of rule by drawing on Foucault’s analytics of governmentality have been conducted, among others, by Blake (1999), Kalpagam (2000a, 2000b), Scott (2005) and Sigley (2006).
65 rationality and South Africa’s conflicting post-apartheid political rationality. As Tikly (2003) points out, liberal and neo-liberal mentalities of rule have informed the reconstitution of governmental practices since 1994 – evidenced, among others, in the adoption of a new non- racial Constitution in 1996, which is underlaid by liberal reasoning; the introduction of the neo- liberal Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy (National Treasury 1996) by the ANC government during the same year; as well as the calculation of post-apartheid ‘risk’
by both liberal and neo-liberal mentalities of rule. A more detailed overview of the approaches that will be followed in the two levels of analysis advanced by thesis is necessary and is provided in the section below.