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SOUTH AFRICA’S BRAVE NEW WORLD
R.W. JOHNSON
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 and hopeful stories of the modern era. 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 a great deal of psychological harm that no amount of goodwill could wish away. The new leaders were equally damaging, and this disastrous combination had a terrible impact. 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, he had plenty of help.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
R.W. Johnson has spent much of his life thinking and writing about South Africa. As an anti-apartheid activist since his teens and an ANC supporter, he narrowly escaped jail before arriving in England as a Rhodes Scholar. His long exile has left him with few illusions about the ANC and its Communist allies. R.W Johnson now lives in South Africa and is the correspondent for the London Sunday Times.
This book is under embargo and will only be released in South Africa on the 1st of April 2009.
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