R.W. Johnson was a fellow in politics at Magdalen College, Oxford for many years before returning to South Africa, where he was brought up, in 1995. His books include The Long March of the French Left, How Long Will South Africa Survive? and Look Back in Laughter: Oxford’s Postwar Golden Age. He died in July 2026 at the age of 82.
Peter Hennessy’s new book hasn’t persuaded me that its central preoccupation, the current dispute over prime ministerial power and its extent, is not sterile and, indeed, rather boring – yet it is a splendid read. The truth is that the Westminster system is quite inadequately democratic and transparent, and Hennessy is, if anything, too respectful and conventional in his...
I was in the Harare headquarters of the Movement for Democratic Change when news came through that two boxes of uncounted ballots had turned up in Buhera North, the constituency in which the MDC’s leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, had been narrowly defeated by his Zanu-PF opponent a few days before. I asked Tsvangirai what he made of this. ‘Well, it means we can apply for that election to be declared null and void too. But frankly I can’t look forward to contesting it again, not if it means Zanu-PF is going to go round beating and torturing people who support me.’ You can’t blame him: his home village is near Buhera and many of his family live there.‘
Getting to Dave Lewis’s farm was not easy, even though I had instructions. Travelling any distance out of Harare is fairly tense stuff because you can never be sure you’ll have enough fuel to get back (I freewheeled on all the downhill stretches, keeping a careful eye on the engine revs) – not to mention what’s been happening on Mashonaland farms these last three months. After you get to Norton, you make several fancy turns and then find yourself on a long stretch of dirt road overgrown with trees and with ruts so deep you really need a 4x4. On my humble Mazda 323 the oil sump and exhaust were very vulnerable, so I drove on the verges and hoped. I saw two African women on their way to church – an independent Zionist sect, inevitably – and gave them a lift. Even without knowing Shona, I thought I’d get directions to Dave’s farm out of them. This was indeed a cinch and in no time I was rolling into a beautiful farm with spreading lawns and large thatched buildings in perfectly maintained gardens.’
R .W. Johnson is a long-standing contributor to the LRB. His first appearance was on the letters page in 1981, where he took ‘mild issue’ with a review of his most celebrated book,
Anyone in South Africa, white or black, rich or poor, who reads R.W. Johnson’s new book could be forgiven for rushing to the airport. It’s a familiar tale of African hopelessness,...
This Johnson is an energetic essayist. His energy is not simply physical, though he has plenty of that: it is mental too. He seems to write quickly – how else the productivity? – but...
Profound embarrassment has greeted the publication of R.W. Johnson’s book on the shooting-down of a Korean airliner over Russian airspace. Even its serialisation in the Sunday Telegraph...
As late as 1951, the British economy was the strongest in Western Europe. Only the wartime neutrals, Sweden and Switzerland, surpassed us in income per head. In his magisterial new history of the...
‘Is it easy to be a Marxist?’ Louis Althusser put this question to a crowded audience at the University of Picardy in 1975. Is it possible to be an Althusserian? The question has to...
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