South Africa's Brave New World: The Beloved Country Since the End of Apartheid
Bound to cause intense controversy, this critical history of post-apartheid South Africa by a well-known author and Johannesburg correspondent for the Financial Times, details corruption, huge unemployment, violent crime, mismanagement, crony capitalism, AIDS denialism, and, especially, the negative effects of affirmative action (“the greatest single disaster to overtake the new South Africa”). Johnson names names, and it’s quite a catalog: Mandela (characterized as old and frail, just a figurehead); President Mbeki (his HIV/AIDS denial, his failed campaign to smear his successor, President Zuma); Archbishop Tutu and the acclaimed Truth and Reconciliation Commission (“deeply flawed, heavily biased, sloppy”); and many more. All the detailed local politics will be too much for many U.S. readers, but Johnson speaks for a very influential opposition that is gathering strength. American readers with South African connections will be intensely interested in this account, but so will all readers who have followed the country’s progress. As always, critics of change represent both reactionaries, who, in this case, long for the good old apartheid days, and liberals disappointed that, for the majority, too little has changed. --Hazel Rochman