Book review: South Africa’s Brave New World

R.W. Johnson has always been "pretty clear-eyed" about the new South Africa, said Justin Cartwright in the Spectator. He arrived back in the country of his birth for Nelson Mandela's election in 1994, after years as an Oxford don, and "the more closely he looked at the facts, rather than the myth, the greater his disillusion".

Since then, his journalism has consistently highlighted the ruling ANC's "cynical disregard for parliamentary democracy and its appetite for self-enrichment". To read his "important" new book is to be "profoundly depressed" about the country.

This is a "ripping audit of the post-apartheid settlement", said Stephen Robinson in the Sunday Times, which charts "the collapse of the public-health system, the soaring rates of crime and emigration, the canker of corruption, and the nation's loss of innocence and purpose".

Johnson asks whether even Mandela, who ignored the looming Aids crisis, will be "as kindly viewed by future historians". But his successor, Thabo Mbeki, is the real villain, a "paranoid and dangerous figure" who regards all criticism of his policies - including support for Robert Mugabe and the treatment of Aids with garlic - as motivated by racism. He is seen "ruthlessly marginalising colleagues he regards as threats and surfing the internet late into the night to find the latest insane theories of American HIV-Aids deniers".

The ANC has certainly made terrible mistakes, and too many of its leaders are "corrupt and bad", said Ivan Fallon in the Independent. But South Africa is "far from a disaster", and Mbeki, for all his faults, presided "over a period of growth and prosperity".

Johnson is too "bitter" and pessimistic to see this. As a result, his "bilious, sometimes brilliant analysis" is profoundly flawed.
South Africa's Brave New World by R.W. Johnson, 720pp (Allen Lane, £25). The Week Bookshop £22.50 (inc p&p) ·