26 July 2010, 01:00 p.m.

Race row after South African author linked migrants to baboons

 A race row has erupted in the London Review of Books after a South African author has likened African immigrants to baboons.

The London Review of Books issued an apology late last week after 73 prominent academics demanded that the publication remove an online article written by the prominent South African author, R.W. Johnson citing his alleged "racist" opinions.

Johnson, 67, a former director of the Helen Suzman Foundation, an organization fighting racism, writes for the London Sunday Times and for the Review. 

Baboons and rottweilers

In his article “After the World Cup” he first described how a pack of Rottweilers attacked baboons in Cape Town. He then wrote about a xenophobic attack on African migrants: "We are being besieged by baboons again," he wrote describing how they looked for food before being chased off by dogs. The piece then continues: "Meanwhile in the squatter camps, there is rising tension as the threat mounts of murderous violence against foreign migrants once the World Cup finishes on 11 July. The migrants - Zimbabweans, Malawians, Congolese, Angolans, Somalis and others - are often refugees and they too are here essentially searching for food." 

Prominent writers and academics complained

The letter of complaint included signatories like the award-winning writer, Caryl Phillips, poet Michael Rosen, playwright and broadcaster Kwame Kwei-Armah and London School of Economics professor Paul Gilroy and Professor Achille Mbembe from the University of the Witwatersrand. In the letter, quoted in the Guardian newspaper, they wrote: "We find it baffling that you continue to publish work by RW Johnson ... Whilst it might be unfair to pick on a man for his inability to be funny, we believe that it would be wholly wrong to stay silent when he resorts to peddling highly offensive, age-old racist stereotypes."

The LRB initially said that readers were imagining the “explicit connection”  between baboons and the migrants.

 

Apology issued

In an apology issued last week Mary-Kay Wilmers, the editor of the London Book Review, said: "We have had a number of complaints about a post on the LRB blog on 6 July on the grounds that it was racist. The LRB does not condone racism, nor does the author of the post, RW Johnson. We recognize that the post was susceptible of that interpretation and that it was therefore an error of judgment on our part to publish it. We're sorry. We have since taken the post down." 

Author denies racist intent

Speaking to the Guardian, Johnson denied any racist intention saying the campaign to stop him writing for the Review was "the sort of demand one associates with the authors of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie".

According to the Guardian Johnson explained that he had linked threats faced by both baboons and black immigrants in his neighborhood because he "realized the common thread was of innocent interlopers just trying to survive, but it all ending in violence anyway". "If that juxtaposition causes some people to have racist thoughts, it's regrettable, but I had no racist thoughts or associations myself."

Johnson's most recent book, South Africa's Brave New World, came under fire for its relentless negativity.