Looking at history through African eyes

South Africa: The First Man, the Last Nation

by RW Johnson (Weidenfeld, Pounds 16.99)

SOUTH Africans have always been convinced of the uniqueness of their nation, with its racial mix and its potential for triumph or disaster; and this book celebrates its special history in its title.

It was in South Africa that the first known ape-men lived three million years ago, who moved northwards to colonise Europe and Asia; and it is South Africa which today faces the most difficult problems of building a multiracial nation.

R W Johnson is well-qualified, as an Oxford historian now living in South Africa; but he also enjoys polemical journalism, and has had changeable political involvements: he has belonged to the African National Congress and (though he doesn't mention it) the Communist Party; but he is now a scourge of the ANC and supports the white- based Democratic Party as "the main alternative to the new hegemonic nationalism". For most of this short book, Johnson shows his mastery of both the broad sweep and the complexities of history without bias.

He races through the origins of civilisation, the nomadic tribes and the first white settlements, and keeps a fair balance between the viewpoints of British and Afrikaners, of missionaries and settlers. He writes briskly and austerely, without dwelling on the colourful leaders. Unlike most earlier historians, he is also determined to see history through African eyes.

He grapples with the complexities of the black tribes with their unpronouncable names, and analyses the alphabet soup of rival black political movements, from the ICU to the SANNC to the ANC and the PAC, with careful fairness.

It is only when he comes to the influence of the Communist Party after the Second World War that he becomes more emotional, and shows some of the symptoms of a disillusioned ex-Marxist. He portrays the ANC as being virtually taken over by Moscow, which provided education and training for its exiles during the apartheid decades, and dwells on the powerful influence of Communists on the ANC executive.

But the basic appeal of the ANC was always nationalism rather than Marxism; they were using communists (as Mandela later suggested) more than the communists were using them.

The President in exile, Oliver Tambo, was himself a devout Christian, who turned to Moscow for money and weapons only after he was rebuffed by the British and Americans.

The communist influence never went very deep; and when the ANC came to power in 1994 it soon abandoned most of its Marxist recipes, reversed its policy of nationalisation and came to terms with the global marketplace.

The Christian element remained more important than the Marxist.

Johnson emphasises how the influence of Christianity on Africans in the 19th century was "stunning", but he plays down its subsequent role. He belittles Archbishop Tutu - the most influential black leader in the 1980s - as a "master of self-promotion" and condemns the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which Tutu chaired, as being obsessed with political correctness and "weighed down with clerics who turned the hearings into a quasi-religious occasion".

Johnson pays tribute to Mandela as President, for his unifying statesmanship and consistent forgiveness and reconciliation; but gives little credit to his deputy, Thabo Mbeki, who did much of the difficult negotiation; and he sees President Mbeki as a disaster.

He blames Mbeki, with some reason, for refusing to face up to Aids, but he goes on to attack him for his "imperial" presidency, for ruthlessly dominating the centralised party machine and for his defiance of the liberal constitution - which he grossly exaggerates. Finally Johnson argues that the ANC now increasingly resembles the old Nationalist Afrikaner government with its paternalist and undemocratic structure.

He wildly overstates his case in his disillusion with his old party, the ANC, and the polemicist takes over from the historian. The very fact that he is free to attack Mbeki with such venom in his journalism contradicts his account of the ANC's tight controls.

And Johnson is so preoccupied with South Africa's exceptionalism that he neglects the wider global perspective.

The real interest of South Africa is that it provides a kind of caricature - and a testing-ground - for the problems of many other multiracial countries, including Britain, in the global marketplace. An overcentralised state, racial tensions and growing inequalities - haven't we heard those concerns closer to home?

. Anthony Sampson is the author of Mandela: the authorised biography, published by HarperCollins.

(c)2004. Associated Newspapers Ltd.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.