Governance and the Postcolony seeks to recalibrate ‘governance’ in light of the interventions of post-colonial and decolonial theory and the conditions of ‘the’ postcolony. Editor David Everatt sees this as a ‘resurrection’ of governance from the mire of academic pedantry and the weight of indices of ‘good governance’ imposed by the World Bank and former imperial powers. For Everatt, governance involves ‘power and the ability to hold it to account’ (p. 20). It is a process: ‘a series of moments of democratic tension’, in which ‘the exercise of power by the state is open to contest, challenge and counter’ (p. 3, 20, 38). He argues that governance theorists have insufficiently acknowledged historical and contemporary inequality in power relationships. Against this background, and employing an array of theoretical frameworks and models of governance, chapters consider governance with regard to the African Union, human development, foreign policy, urban food systems, public health, public policymaking, water management, state-owned entities, judicial oversight, higher education and service delivery.

Some chapters – Bond's on imperial and sub-imperial practices in the context of global, neo-liberal capitalism (p. 82–98), or Miller, Mkhize, Pointer and Magoqwana's contribution, which considers poor and racialised subjects and raises notions of feminism and environmentalism (p. 258–282) – highlight the unequal context of the postcolony. However, a certain incongruity emerges in attempting to make governance relevant to the postcolony while running up against its shortcomings and contradictions as a largely imposed set of theories and measures. At times, one might have expected that the inequalities in power that Everatt centres would be foregrounded, such as in Nieuwkerk and Mphahlele's chapter (p. 117–138) on crisis leadership during the West African Ebola outbreak of 2014–2015, where this key context is all but an afterthought; or in Monyane's chapter (p. 214–235) on the judiciary in South Africa, where there is no elaboration on the significance of what the author acknowledges to be colonial ‘rules of the game’. In general, conventional analyses using African examples outweigh any reimagining of governance in the context of post-colonial Africa.

Given the subtitle – A view from Africa – one would expect a greater share of voices or case studies reflecting the diversity of African contexts. One case study from West Africa and a chapter informed by research in Zambia are unbalanced by the preponderance of South African material and perspectives. The attempt to theorise governance in the African postcolony is therefore limited. No study can be exhaustive, but one would also welcome African perspectives on patterns of labour, un/employment, migration and xenophobia: all important issues for governance.

The absence of a working definition or deeper conceptualisation of ‘democracy’ hampers the analysis of governance in relation to ‘democratic tension’. What is democracy? When is tension democratic – between which actors, and in relation to which post-colonial questions? Two chapters attest that the South African events around decolonising higher education in 2015–2016 are an important field of inquiry for post-colonial governance. But this demands closer attention to the content of those movements than the chapters deliver. An analysis of the ways those movements challenged governance logic and structures, and suggested or formulated new techniques and patterns for ‘governance’ based on their visions of the postcolony, would be a more substantial contribution than analyses through existing models of governance or a governance agenda set by a group of academics. Democracy would be a focal element in such a discussion.

Cumulatively, the chapters complicate governance as a concept and provide a (South) African context for thinking about governance. But the ambitious promise around post-colonial and decolonial theory laid out in Everatt's opening chapters is not sustained. The primary contribution of Governance and the Postcolony is to open the concept of ‘governance’ to further inquiry and debate on its relevance to the postcolony.