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

'South Africa's Brave New World is both a tour de force and a tour de horizon of South Africa's uneven journey since 1994 and the ascent of the ANC to government. It is a tale, told with verve and in no-holds-barred style which lifts the lid on a range of topics which have been semi-buried by the miasma of political correctness which has engulfed the country since the advent of democracy. Parts of the tapestry which Johnson stitches with expertise and eloquence is variously inspirational, harrowing and even disturbing and shocking. The journey encompasses the pinnacles of high achievement and very often the precipices of low politics and skulduggery in high places. An essential contribution to South Africa's history-in-the-making.'
-- Tony Leon

'Johnson names names and spells out amounts ... there are landmines scattered throughout ... not a comfortable wrap up'

The universal jubilation that greeted Nelson Mandela's inauguration as president of South Africa in 1994 and the process by which the nightmare of apartheid had been banished is one of the most thrilling, hopeful stories in the modern era: peaceful, rational change was possible and, as with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the weight of an oppressive history was suddenly lifted.

R.W. Johnson's major new book tells the story of South Africa from that magic period to the bitter disappointment of the present. As it turned out, it was not so easy for South Africa to shake off its past. The profound damage of apartheid meant there was not an adequate educated black middle class to run the new state and apartheid had done great psychological harm too, issues that no amount of goodwill could wish away. Equally damaging were the new leaders, many of whom had lived in exile or in prison for much of their adult lives and who tried to impose decrepit, Eastern Bloc political ideas on a world that had long moved on.

This disastrous combination has had a terrible impact - it poisoned everything from big business to education to energy utilities to AIDS policy to relations with Zimbabwe. At the heart of the book lies the ruinous figure of Thabo Mbeki, whose over-reaching ambitions led to catastrophic failure on almost every front. But, as Johnson makes clear, Mbeki may have contributed more than anyone else to bringing South Africa close to "failed state" status, but he had plenty of help.

'South Africa's Brave New World is both a tour de force and a tour de horizon of South Africa's uneven journey since 1994 and the ascent of the ANC to government. It is a tale, told with verve and in no-holds-barred style which lifts the lid on a range of topics which have been semi-buried by the miasma of political correctness which has engulfed the country since the advent of democracy. Parts of the tapestry which Johnson stitches with expertise and eloquence is variously inspirational, harrowing and even disturbing and shocking. The journey encompasses the pinnacles of high achievement and very often the precipices of low politics and skulduggery in high places. An essential contribution to South Africa's history-in-the-making.' Tony Leon

`Over the past ten years or so, South Africans have been battered senseless by an endless series of scandals and crises, none of which ever seem to achieve satisfactory resolution. After a while, you simply stop registering these things. Humans cannot live without hope, so most of us just shrug and stumble blindly and dumbly on with our lives. Bill [R.W. Johnson], on the other hand....Bill kept his head clear and his eye on the ball, and now he's laid it all out in this masterpiece. It's not the reportage that's telling, because this is mostly a cuttings job. It's the Olympian sweep and lucidity of his analysis, and the Churchillian clarity of his prose. The result is a book that is utterly devastating for anyone who still cherishes illusions about the Rainbow nation. In fact, Bill's book renders almost everything that came before it naive and superfluous.' Rian Malan, author of My Traitor's Heart

R.W. Johnson has spent much of his life thinking and writing about South Africa. An anti-apartheid activist since his teens, he is one of the few people alive who heard public speeches given by both Verwoerd and Mandela before the latter was imprisoned. An ANC supporter, he narrowly escaped jail before arriving in England as a Rhodes Scholar. He went on to become a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1977 his seminal book How Long Will South Africa Survive? was published. Johnson's long exile left him with few illusions about the ANC and its Communist party allies, but with South Africa's liberation he returned to live in the new South Africa, and headed the Helen Suzman Foundation. R.W. Johnson is the South Africa correspondent for the Sunday Times.