The generous tributes paid by the first two black presidents of South Africa to one-time arch foe PW Botha have left many compatriots bemused and warning against a rewrite of apartheid’s history. Botha, regarded as an international pariah during his 11-year leadership of a whites-only government, died last week.

Their prose did much to expose the moral bankruptcy of apartheid to the outside world but the literary elite of white South Africa has now turned ferociously on the rainbow nation’s new rulers. Following the departure of Nobel laureate JM Coetzee to Australia, authors such as André Brink, Rian Malan and Christopher Hope have delivered searing indictments of the state of the nation.