OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday
THE office of the South African has declared war on an internationally syndicated journalist, author and former Oxford professor, RW “Bill” Johnson, for suggesting that Thabo Mbeki is “off his rocker,” The Sunday Independent reports.
Johnson, the director of the Helen Suzman Foundation and a freelance journalist who writes a regular column about South Africa for London’s Sunday Times, wrote in the 26 August edition of the British magazine, The Spectator, that “many now believe that Mbeki is no longer playing with a full pack – that he’s off his rocker” and that “he may really be suffering the nervous breakdown that some suspect,”.
Essop Pahad, the minister in the presidency, and other presidential advisers are miffed by the anti-Mbeki slant in the overseas press, a sentiment that they consider Johnson to have ignited, said the newspaper.
Last week, while in London, Pahad hit out at what he called the “persistent, poisonous attacks” being launched by the British press against Mbeki over his utterances on Aids and his handling of relations with President Robert Mugabe.
Pahad was thought to be referring to recent articles in the Daily Telegraph in which Mbeki was labelled “eccentric” and “hypersensitive” to criticism.
Johnson has denied that he called Mbeki crazy. He says he was merely reporting what some people say, and that his article is in fact an attempt at an explanation for Mbeki’s behaviour over racism, HIV/Aids and his attack last month on the Democratic Alliance’s Tony Leon.
Johnson said: “I write in my own name. I have never purported to represent Helen Suzman or, indeed, anyone else’s views. Pahad, as a leading member of the South African Communist Party is, of course, used to a situation where everyone has to take the same line on pain of expulsion.
“Liberals are quite different and enjoy the convention of agreeing to disagree quite happily on occasion. Helen has her own views and her own ways of making them known. Incidentally, I have met the president on a number of occasions.”
He said the words connecting him with the Suzman Foundation in an article that appeared in the Toronto Star in Canada were a mistake on the newspaper’s part.
Suzman said on Friday that she thought Johnson’s 26 August article on Mbeki had been “good in parts” but “over the top” in some places. “What I worry about more is a president’s office that is unable to deal with criticism,” she said.