Mr Bill Johnson
College appointment: Emeritus Fellow
Background
I came to Magdalen as a Rhodes Scholar from Natal, South Africa in 1964 and studied for a B.Phil in Politics. After a few years at the University of East Anglia I returned to Magdalen in 1969 as a Fellow and Tutor in Politics, a post I held until 1995 when I resigned in order to become Directot of the Helen Suzman Foundation in Johannesburg. I was also Senior Bursar of the College for three years (1980-92), giving up the post after we had carried out a series of major reforms which restored the College to a healthy financial state.This was also a key period in the College’s huge programme of restoration. I have described the struggles of those years and the life of the College then in my Look Back in Laughter. Oxford’s Post-War Golden Age (2015).
I had been very involved in my youth in the anti-apartheid struggle and I returned to South Africa in 1995 to fulfil that commitment. I did not expect the ANC government to work well and I knew that South Africa was in for a difficult time. This has indeed been the case, though it has also been eventful and challenging. Inevitably, my writing after 1995 has been mainly about South Africa, though I am currently working on an update and partial reformulation of Samuel Huntington’s famous Clash of Civilisations.
Publications
- African Perspectives (ed. with Christopher Allen) (1970)
- How Long Will South Africa Survive? (1977)
- The Long March of the French Left (1981)
- Shootdown: the Verdict on KAL 007 (1983)
- The Politics of Recession (1985)
- Heroes and Villains. Selected Essays (1990)
- Launching Democracy in South Africa: the First Open Election, April 1994 (ed. with Laurence Schlemmer) (1996)
- Ironic Victory: Liberalism in Post-Liberation South Africa (ed.with David Welsh) (1998)
- South Africa: The First Man, the Last Nation (2004)
- South Africa’s Brave New World: The Beloved Country since the End of Apartheid (2010)
- The African University ? The Critical Case of South Africa and the Tragedy at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (2012)
- Look Back in Laughter: Oxford’s Post-War Golden Age (2016)
- How Long Will South Africa Survive: The Crisis Continues (first edition 2015, second revised edition 2017)
- Fighting for the Dream (2019)
- Foreign Native. An African Journey (2020)