South African crime fiction: sleuthing the State post-1994

Abstract

In this essay we demonstrate how the burgeoning field of South African crime fiction has responded to the birth and development of a democratic, post-apartheid South African state. First, an overview of South African crime fiction in the last 20 years is presented. Then the essay presents an argument for South African crime fiction to be regarded as the ‘new political novel’, based on its capacity for socio-political analysis. We use Deon Meyer, arguably South Africa's most popular and successful crime fiction author, as an exemplar for our argument. In the following section, the genre-snob debate and the resurgence of such terms as ‘lowbrow’ and ‘highbrow’ are considered in relation to crime fiction and the role it plays in the socio-cultural arena of post-apartheid South Africa. We conclude with a comment on the significance of popular literary genres for democracy and critical discourses which underpin that democracy. The essay shows that crime fiction is a strong tool for socio-political analysis in a democratic South Africa, because it promotes critical discourse in society, despite being deemed lowbrow or ideologically ambiguous.

Keywords::

• crime fiction
• South Africa
• social analysis
• genre
• ideology

Notes

^1. For example, the CrimeWrite Festival in Johannesburg (2010), the Franschoek Literary Festival (2012), the Richmond Boek Bedonnerd Literary Festival (2012) and Afrikanissimo – Festival of African Literatures in Frankfurt, Germany (2013).

^2. A blog created and maintained for many years by doyen of South African crime fiction, Mike Nicol.

^3. This is an outlet for the Stellenbosch Literary Project, maintained by the Department of English at Stellenbosch University. It has been the site of the most in-depth and cutting-edge debates about South African crime fiction in recent years. http://SlipNet.co.za/?s = genre+snob+debate (retrieved 18 January 2013).

^4. For more on this controversy, see Naidu, 2013.

^5. See SlipNet for the full discussion.

^6.Current Writing, 25, 2 (2013).

^7. A parallel can be made between Nixon's reign when extremely high corruption levels in the USA saw the popularity of the hardboiled crime fiction novel soar, and post-apartheid South Africa. The inception or increased popularity of crime fiction in such a context signifies perhaps a desire for justice and the restoration of order.

^8. By referring to the KGB, the Cold War and the CIA (and to post 9/11 Muslim fundamentalism in Trackers/Spoor 2010 [2011]) Meyer increases his appeal to a global readership.

^9. For an exception, see Le Roux and Buitendach (2014), who focus on Meyer's publishing history and the marketing of his works.

^10. See Meyer's first novel, Wie Met Vuur Speel (Tafelberg, 1994).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Samantha Naidu

Sam Naidu is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, Rhodes University, South Africa. She was the recipient of a Commonwealth Split Site Doctoral Scholarship in 2004 and completed her PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 2006. Between 2007 and 2010 she taught Post-colonial literature at Brunel University in London, UK. Her main research and teaching areas are: South African crime/detective fiction; Transnational literature; the poetry of Emily Dickinson; Monstrous, Grotesque and Abject Bodies in literature; and the oral-written interface in colonial South Africa.

Elizabeth le Roux

Elizabeth le Roux is a Senior Lecturer and the coordinator of Publishing Studies in the Department of Information Science at the University of Pretoria. She is co-editor of the journal Book History, and her research focuses on the history of books and publishing in South Africa and in Africa more broadly. A book based on her PhD studies, A social history of the university presses in South Africa, is forthcoming from Brill in July 2015. Before becoming a full-time academic, she worked in the scholarly publishing industry in South Africa.