I do not have much regard for Jamie Kirchick as a commentator on African Affairs. His Africa resume is so thin you could not hang a hat from it. But he has positioned himself well, especially at The New Republic, where he is assistant editor, by writing the occasional article on Zimbabwe or South Africa that allows him to spew forth his particular version of contrarian neoconservatism. This review of RW Johnson’s Brave New World, about what Johnson sees as South Africa’s post-Apartheid political crisis (this is an overwrought book, which makes it perfect for Kirchick, whose default setting is overwrought) provides the perfect setting for Kirchick’s smug Afro-pessimism. Admittedly it is difficult to discern where Kirchick’s argument begins and Johnson’s ends. Let me provide just one example:
Reading South Africa’s Brave New World, R.W. Johnson’s magisterial, sober, and horrifying assessment of South Africa 15 years since its first fully democratic election, it is difficult not to agree with his controversial conclusion that Mbeki was the worst leader this benighted country has endured, a startling assessment given its four-decade subjection to racist authoritarians.
This is just batty. And while I realize Kirchick draws this from Johnson, by agreeing to it he simply loses credibility. South Africa has its problems, but I visited South Africa regularly, annually, sometimes more than once a year, for weeks and even months at a time, for the entirety of Mbeki’s presidency. The idea that Mbeki’s leadership of a free and democratic country represented worse leadership than that of the men who implemented grand Apartheid and petit Apartheid, that engaged in forced removals and “Dirty Tricks” and “Total Strategies” and States of Emergency, that opened fire on the children at Soweto and the unarmed men and women at Sharpeville and Langa, that orchestrated the killings of teve Biko and the Cradock Four and the PEBCO Three and Griffiths Mxenge, that kept Nelson Mandela imprisoned for nearly three decades is simply so bizarre on its face that it cannot be taken seriously.
