BOOK REVIEWS 83the need for co-ordinated regional information as a necessary part ofregional co-operation in a Southern Africa freed of apartheid. Similarly,Ansu Datta provides a useful contribution on regional co-operation,emphasizing the need for co-ordinated action between governments, non-governmental organizations, and ordinary people in the region. The lasttwo actors, it is argued, provide a back-up to inter-state co-operation inwhich governments are the key actors.While it is true that Nordic assistance to SADCC states has been amajor component of development assistance since 1980, Hans Abrahamsoninforms us in his chapter that such aid now needs to be reorientated.Apart from the physical development of roads, railways, ports, and so on,there is a need to channel resources to support networks such asforwarding services, insurance services, national and regional carriersand shipping services. This is indeed vital if investments made during the1980s in the physical development of transport, communication and relatedfacilities are to be made full use of by SADCC (now SADC) states.In his chapter Tom 0stergaard clearly reveals the contradictions ofNordic/SADCC co-operation. All aid programmes are not altruistic andsuch aid creates and reinforces the dependence of the recipient on thedonor. The Norsad fund is used as an illustration of this anomaly. Thedesire of donor states to influence policy in the recipient state and theinterest of the latter to preserve some form of autonomy in the allocationand consumption of donor resources have caused conflicts between Nordicand SADCC states, particularly in the agricultural sector.Finally, although the authors hesitated to make precise predictions onthe nature of regional co-operation after apartheid is wholly abolished,they do offer some opinions. One is that post-apartheid South Africa willhave severe internal problems as it moves away from apartheid rulewhich could result in internal instability in that country, a factor thatmight undermine future regional co-operation. But, on the other hand, theauthors seem to believe that the advent of a democratic South Africawould enhance economic possibilities in Southern Africa, and indeed Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole.University of Zimbabwe A. M. KAMBUDZIThe Black Insider By D. Marechera. Harare, Baobab, 1990, 128 pp.,ISBN 0-949229-16-4, Z$16,00.The Black Insider (1990), together with Cemetery of Mind (1992), is one ofMarechera's posthumously published novels (he died in 1987) and appearsafter the much-celebrated House of Hunger (1978), the often overlookedBlack Sunlight (1980) and the controversial Mindblast (1984). Its publicationis due to the tireless efforts and dedication of Flora Veit-Wild. The BlackInsideris in all respects an unusual novel, one which relentlessly interrog-ates the nature of the novel itself, very much in the post-modernist sense.Any reader expecting to find a conventional plot and developed char-acters in a recognizable social setting is in for a rude shock. In this novel84 BOOK REVIEWSMarechera portrays the nightmarish world of a small band of artistsmarooned in an old and decaying Faculty of Arts building. Outside a war israging, the causes of which have long been forgotten. Bombs ^pl?~e^rparatroopers descend as part of an ongoing madness brought at>out Dythe 'civilization' of the twentieth century. . .Pitted against the encircling gloom is the author-narrator Žn°l d Blk d ild f hi Af H is a be'e*g g gpenniless and Black and exiled from his African home. He is a ^f^gartist forced by the circumstances of his colonial backgrouna *inhospitality of his British hosts to question in a radical wayth ^i* ,snessand habits of thought which have created a world in which hom?££^aand vulnerability are the norm. For the narrator, history na^b on Hiro-cycle of genocide and he cites the dropping of the atomic bornshima, the Soweto massacres and the mass killing of the Jews ^~ivilizaof a periodic, collective madness indicative of twentieth-century. .st Jn ^^As is the case in all of Marechera's works, the role of the ^^ otjjerBlack Insider is a special one. The author-narrator, together st the so_characters such as Liz, Cicero and Otolith, is waging a war ^fgj thinkingcalled traditions and heritages which have fostered regime" ntaneityand loyalty towards systems which maim the originality a°d Jjf becauseof the individual. He laments, 'You can't even hide in v°u ught to readyour thoughts think themselves in the words you have been taBrt of aand write' (p. 35). To him even the language people use ' narrator'sconspiracy to rob citizens of their originality and sanity- \ of colonial-vision of Africa is that it is a continent nursing bitter memor>e to ^ wholeism: 'a continent of wounds which no longer knows what it Ł* j smashedand healthy Š a country disfigured by scars and broken teeth ** o{ schoolstesticles' (p. 79) as a result of the introduction and proliferati£.g about theand churches and universities. The narrator is equally scath'npre-colonial past and its bitter legacies of violence really relatedIn terms of thematic concerns, The Black Insider is umbiJJ. jSorient ourto Marechera's novel Black Sunlight. Both texts are meant to °^ the samethinking and subvert conventional ways of looking at reality' 5jder of Theway as the anarchist revolutionaries of Black Sunliaht the '^ Qn authorit-Black Insider is in fact an outsider marginalized bv forces be° i0 differencearianism and the ultimate destruction f h A ntaDLre tightlyBlack Insider is in fact an outsider marginalized bv forces b i0 diarianism and the ultimate destruction of humanitv A notaDLore tightlybetween the two novels, however, is that Black Ziinlight >s J,era is moreconstructed than The Black Insider. In the latter novel Mare^unient?rie?'daring, mixing artistic genres such as dramatic sketches, &.rn flotnin8 !spoetry, parody and creative writing to create a novpl in ^ ^ togetner,predictable and nothing is stable. What holds the narrative pities of thehowever, is the formidable intellectual and imaginative c»P^e.^J-author-narrator himself. The reader's imagination is fired Mfe ^Tjn81!narrator's almost encyclopaedic knowledge of WOrld Mefl>«0<el ces ourthe ordinary reader is also discomfited by the fact that tbe ^ril^ake forliterary allusions. It is an ambitious novel whose iconocla*111 {tePability to question those realities and thoughts which ^e °granted Š especially in a Third World context such as oi""5'University of Zimbabwe ^'