A race row has exploded on the web pages of one of the world's most prestigious literary reviews, with a South African author accused of comparing African immigrants to baboons.
This week, the London Review of Books issued an apology after 73 prominent academics demanded the removal of both an online article by writer RW Johnson, and of Johnson himself, due to his alleged "racist" opinions.
Known as South Africa's foremost "prophet of doom", Johnson, 67, writes for the London Sunday Times and the Review, and is a former director of the Helen Suzman Foundation, which is dedicated to fighting racism.
In a report entitled "After the World Cup", Johnson described in the first paragraph how rottweilers attacked invading baboons in Cape Town - then told how "local black shopkeepers" attacked African migrants.
Having described the baboons as "looking for food", he continued: "Meanwhile in the squatter camps, there is rising tension as the threat mounts of murderous violence against foreign migrants once the World Cup finishes on 11 July. The migrants - Zimbabweans, Malawians, Congolese, Angolans, Somalis and others - are often refugees and they too are here essentially searching for food."
Patrick Bond, professor of development studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said the link between blacks and baboons in the article were "as explicit as you can get", and that Johnson's negative writing on South Africa reflected a "meanness of spirit".
But Johnson denied racism, saying the campaign to stop him writing for the Review was "the sort of demand one associates with the authors of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie".
Johnson - who is sheltering two Zimbabwean refugees at his home - explained that he had linked threats faced by both baboons and black immigrants in his neighbourhood because he "realised the common thread was of innocent interlopers just trying to survive, but it all ending in violence anyway". "If that juxtaposition causes some people to have racist thoughts, it's regrettable, but I had no racist thoughts or associations myself."
Intellectuals like playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah, Professor Achille Mbembe from the University of the Witwatersrand and Professor Paul Gilroy of the London School of Economics, told the editor of the review: "We find it baffling that you continue to publish work by RW Johnson ... Whilst it might be unfair to pick on a man for his inability to be funny, we believe that it would be wholly wrong to stay silent when he resorts to peddling highly offensive, age-old racist stereotypes."
Ironically, it was the letter of complaint - and not Johnson's article - that was initially banned, with editor Mary-Kay Wilmers saying she did not wish to be the cause of anyone seeking a link between blacks and baboons in the article.
After a further deluge of protest, Wilmers purged the article this week, saying: "The LRB does not condone racism, nor does the author of the post, RW Johnson. We recognise that the post was susceptible of that interpretation and that it was therefore an error of judgment on our part to publish it. We're sorry."
Johnson, who lost a leg after contracting an infection last year, said: "I was extremely surprised by this. I cannot easily imagine that anyone who knows me, or my writing or, indeed, my family circumstances - quite a few members of my family are black - would think that I am a racist in any sense at all."
John Battersby, UK country manager of the SA International Marketing Council, said Johnson had "considerable influence" in the UK due to his credentials as an academic and anti-apartheid activist, but that his "negative approach" had "damaged South Africa's image internationally".
Johnson's most recent book, South Africa's Brave New World, was criticised for its relentless negativity, and was ridiculed for claims that the former minister of defence, Joe Modise, had murdered Chris Hani, and that Robert Mugabe knew about the 9/11 attacks in the US before they happened.
However, Frans Cronje, deputy director of the SA Institute for Race Relations, suggested there were "other agendas".
"I think Bill Johnson makes an important contribution to South Africa - he says things that others are not prepared to say, and they are very often true," said Cronje. "Obviously, in this case, he slipped up. He needs to be more careful. But I think there is a long-running spat between commentators on the Left and Bill on the Right, and this is their opportunity to take him down."
Author Rian Malan said: "These people hate (Johnson) mostly because he's been mostly right on so many issues for so many years, and they so wrong. Yes, he's prone to brute-force generalisations ... but that's what free speech is for."
. It just ain't PC, you know. It obviously doesn't occur to them that he was an anti-apartheid activist and part of the Helen Suzman Foundation and therefore the possibility of him holding 'white supremacist' views are basically null. But let the facts not get in the way of a good story...
Everything which is not racist is racist. Just in case the previous sentence confuses you: Basicaly everybody is racist unless is African or is a vehement anti-racist campaigner. Remember: last soccer world cup anti racist photo session before the mach, comes to mind. WTF serves him well - he is a racist, isn't he?
