South Africa's Brave New World: The Beloved Country Since the End of Apartheid Hardcover - 2010

Media reviews

ćR.W. Johnson is a historian, but also a polemical journalist, andhe writes with passion about the present. He provides a robustly liberalcritique of the new South Africa.Ć -Economist

ćJohnsonďsbook is laden with the bitterness of one who has witnessed a lost chance atreform, after the end of apartheid. It exposes the dark underbelly of theANCďs government with a view toward pushing leaders to act being thesloganeering of 1994. It is, to this extent, an act of hope.Ć --NationalReview

ćThe South Africa correspondent for the (London) Sunday Times and afrequent contributor to the London Review of Books, Mr. Johnson hasbeen a prolific critic of the ANC's 16-year tenure in power. SouthAfrica's Brave New World, his political history of the post-apartheidera, amounts to a book-length indictment of the ANC. Its leaders comethrough as so corrupt, lecherous and violent that governance is not even anafterthought. "If we didn't dine with thugs and crooks," says one to Mr.Johnson, "then we'd always eat alone." The book is a catalog of sins andrumorsÔ. It is big and disorganized but filled with credible gossipÕlike theTrevor Manuel storyÕand therefore a delight.Ć --AUTHOR BIO: R.W. Johnson is Emeritus Fellow of Magdalen College,Oxford, where he taught many years. Formerly director of the Helen SuzmanFoundation in Johannesburg, his contributions to the international presshave given him an unequalled reputation as a writer on Southern Africanaffairs. END