01478nam a22001577b 450000500170000000800410001702000230005804000140008104100060009508200120010110000170011324500350013026000520016530000210021750010820023820240911125021.0240911b        sa ||||| |||| 00| 1 eng d  a9781868427710qpbk  aRDAcOCLC  2E  aEF JOHN  aJohnson, R.W  aForeign nativecby R.W Johnson  aJohannesburg;bJonathan Ball Publishers;c2020.  a280 pagesc23 cm  aIn Foreign Native, RW Johnson looks back with affection and humour on his life in Africa. From schooldays in Durban – fresh off the aeroplane from Merseyside – to later years as an academic, director of the Helen Suzman Foundation and formidable political commentator, he has produced an entertaining and occasionally eye-popping memoir brimming with history, anecdote and insight.

Johnson charts his evolution from enthusiastic, left-leaning Africanist to political realist, relating the episodes that influenced his intellectual worldview, including time spent among the exiled liberation movements in London during the 1960s, a sojourn in newly independent Guinea and more recent forays into Zimbabwe. There are wonderful stories, some hilarious, others filled with pathos, about the multitude of characters – Harold Strachan, Tom Sharpe, Ronnie Kasrils, Helen Suzman, Frederik van zyl Slabbert, among many others – that he met along the way.

Perceptive, critical and full of verve, Foreign Native is leavened with a deep humanity that makes it a pleasure to read.