Long time Oxford University political science professor RW Johnson shares his insights on what may be next for SA’s official opposition – including naming the likely next leader – local government and the Middle East. Epitomises second-level thinking. Brilliant insights.
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Highlights from the interview
In the interview, RW Johnson discusses the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, highlighting Israel’s intelligence capabilities, particularly in assassinating Hamas leaders. He mentions the killing of a Hamas leader in Iran, noting the remarkable fact that Israeli forces planted explosives in a government-provided house long before the attack. He underscores the irony of such operations and the meticulous pre-planning involved.
Johnson then shifts to the broader geopolitical picture, discussing Israel’s relationship with the United States. He believes American pressure will influence how Israel responds to Iran, especially since Israel relies on U.S. support. Johnson expects Israel to retaliate but doubts it will lead to a full-scale war. He stresses that Israel’s primary objective is to secure its citizens and avoid further conflict, particularly with Hezbollah.
Addressing the possibility of a larger Israel-Iran conflict, Johnson compares the situation to India and Pakistan’s nuclear standoff, suggesting that nuclear deterrence might prevent a direct war.
Finally, Johnson discusses a U.S.-led initiative to create a land bridge between India and the Middle East, with Israel playing a key role. He suggests that Iran and Hamas opposed this plan, leading to further tension, and questions whether the plan can be revived after the conflict.
Edited transcript of the interview ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
00:00:09:02 – 00:00:25:15
Alec Hogg
R.W. Johnson joins us for, well, an update on some rather provocative columns that he’s been writing recently. And I’d love to get his insights on what’s going on in the Middle East.
00:00:25:17 – 00:00:29:18
RW Johnson
And. You know.
00:00:29:20 – 00:01:03:13
Alec Hogg
I loved your column today, Mr. Johnson. It was really, once again, thought-provoking. You go through the Communist Party’s criticism of the government of national unity. And you explain that it really does put a different perspective on, in addition to the performance of the non-ANC ministers, especially those from the Democratic Alliance, where it does appear as though some of them are doing really well, but one in particular, not so well.
00:01:03:19 – 00:01:52:19
RW Johnson
Well, I think that, obviously, John Steenhuisen has a lot on his plate both as a leader and negotiating with Ramaphosa while also being a minister and travelling abroad to China and elsewhere. So, it’s not really too surprising, but his ministry is clearly in a considerable mess. I think that, look, if you’re a DA minister, especially a white DA minister appointed to that government, the sensible thing, which would appear to be the way that Macpherson and Schreiber have behaved, is to meet all the civil servants who work in the ministry, introduce yourself, and talk to them about what needs to be done and what they see as the main priorities for the ministry, and so on.
00:01:52:22 – 00:02:25:12
RW Johnson
Now, as we know, Steenhuisen, first of all, brought in Cabanac, which produced an enormous amount of trouble and hostility, not only within his own party, but also, of course, among the black civil servants. And it seems to have triggered a considerable amount of hostility and even sabotage from some of them because things are not working the way they’re supposed to in the department. People haven’t been paid for three months, and he can’t get rid of Roman Cabanac. It’s all a big mess. In addition to that, however, what he’s done is appoint an all-white office team, some of whom already have track records of bitter hostility towards the very civil servants they now have to work with.
00:02:50:03 – 00:03:12:12
RW Johnson
This is a very foolish thing to have done, but he doesn’t seem to have thought about it. The result seems to be that his ministry must be in a chaotic state. It’s not surprising that Macpherson and Schreiber are able to roll out already what they’ve done and the progress they’ve made. But there are no such signs in the Ministry of Agriculture. I think that, you know, he’s made some very clumsy mistakes.
00:03:12:12 – 00:03:20:08
Alec Hogg
Not for the first time.
00:03:20:10 – 00:03:52:19
RW Johnson
Well, look, you know, another oddity is that the people he’s appointed are all people that he has to ask for special dispensation because, like him, they only have matric certificates, and they’re supposed to have higher qualifications than that for the posts they’re in. And it seems to be that Steenhuisen is very conscious of his own lack of formal qualifications relatively, and he seems to prefer appointing others with the same. But it’s only producing more problems.
00:03:59:18 – 00:04:24:16
Alec Hogg
What does this mean if you look ahead to the leadership of the Democratic Alliance? It does appear that Steenhuisen has some very strong points. He, for instance, went and got a second-hand Prado to try and show that he wasn’t a spendthrift. But on the other hand, his leadership of his own department isn’t going so well. That can’t stand him in good stead when there are others who could stand up to become the next leader of the Democratic Alliance.
00:04:24:16 – 00:04:59:18
RW Johnson
Yeah, well, you know, it’s no secret that Geordin Hill-Lewis would be a much-preferred candidate, even against Steenhuisen. I don’t think there’s any doubt. You just talk to any normal ANC activist or MPs, and that’s what you’ll hear. I think it would be very unwise for Geordin Hill Lewis to go for the leadership. He’s much too young. He only started a few years ago in Cape Town, and he’s got an awful lot of work left to do there. It’s a job he loves, and he’s very good at it. Whereas, being the leader is a thankless job, not a particularly pleasant one, for classic South African reasons, because the DA is by far the most multi-racial vote.
00:05:25:01 – 00:06:03:01
RW Johnson
And that means the leader has got to be continuously sensitive to all the different communities represented by that party. It’s relatively easy to be an ANC leader—I mean, you just have to keep Black people happy. And, that’s how they talk about all people, etc. But, a DA leader has got to—well, you could see how disastrous it was that Mmusi Maimane clearly had sort of inherited ANC notions about Afrikaans-speaking people and was very dismissive of them and their interests.
00:06:03:03 – 00:06:27:05
RW Johnson
And this backfired on him, and they lost an enormous number of Afrikaner votes in the next election. The 2019 election cost him his job. You simply cannot afford to behave like that if you’re a DA leader—you’ve got to be very, very sensitive to all these different groups. Keeping them happy is a full-time job.
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00:06:27:07 – 00:06:43:12
Alec Hogg
So, what happens? Well, how important is it that the DA leadership is in the hands of someone like Steenhuisen or Jordan Hill-Lewis? How much of a difference would that actually make at the polls?
00:06:43:14 – 00:07:19:01
RW Johnson
Well, I think South African voters, as far as I can see, are very leadership-focused, and they tend to identify parties with their leaders to an extreme degree. You could see that in the last election, where the IFP, with Buthelezi, who had been dead for a while by then, performed quite remarkably. So, I do think it matters. I mean, I remember when I first came here, you’d meet people all the time who’d say, “I’m a Smutsman.” That’s how they identified themselves politically—not “I’m United Party,” but “I’m a Smutsman.”
00:07:19:03 – 00:07:42:00
RW Johnson
They were looking for leadership, and they were always keen to discover it, to find someone who could show strong leadership. So, a good leader becomes very deep in the national psyche. I do think the personal popularity or charisma of particular leaders is important in South Africa. When the DA had Tony Leon, for example, that was very noticeable—he was hugely popular, and it lifted the party.
00:07:42:02 – 00:08:07:01
RW Johnson
When Leon ran for the Rondebosch seat, which was a safe United Party seat, he won it easily because people were really attracted to his charismatic personality. It makes a difference. But, look, the DA has 87 MPs, so there really should be a choice of possible leaders. There must be a number of capable people, like Ghaleb Cachalia, who could step forward.
00:08:07:01 – 00:08:33:16
RW Johnson
If he’s not going to be mayor of Joburg, he looks like a pretty able and courageous man to me. Some others should be seriously considered as well.
00:08:33:16 – 00:08:44:17
Alec Hogg
You’ve opened that door on coalition politics. What’s your reading of how it’s being handled, particularly by ActionSA?
00:08:44:19 – 00:09:15:03
RW Johnson
Well, the way ActionSA has behaved is peculiar. I’m still waiting to see what someone like Athol Trollip has to say about this. He’s a very sensible, intelligent man, and he’s been very careful in what he says. I haven’t noticed him say anything at all about this, which probably means that he doesn’t agree with what’s going on. But I don’t know, I’m guessing.
00:09:15:05 – 00:09:41:23
RW Johnson
It seems that ActionSA has got itself in a peculiar situation. They align with the DA and then announce they’re going to provide the next mayor. The ANC immediately denies this and says there’s no agreement. It doesn’t seem like ActionSA is very much in charge of the situation, and I don’t know what will ultimately happen.
00:09:42:00 – 00:10:03:18
RW Johnson
Zille, however, has played a strong card by saying, “We want to continue talks to stabilize the metros. If you want to play games like this, we had a good mayor in place, putting things right, and now you’re getting rid of him.” Of course, the problem is partly the ANC flexing its muscles.
00:10:03:18 – 00:10:15:15
Alec Hogg
How do you think that will play out, given that the ANC seems to be flexing its muscles against the national grouping?
00:10:15:17 – 00:10:58:02
RW Johnson
Well, it really depends on whether Ramaphosa imposes his authority. We all know that while Panyaza Lesufi is a very determined populist, ultimately, the person most influential in controlling the ANC’s behavior is Paul Mashatile, the deputy president, who is playing a different game from the president. Frankly, Ramaphosa needs to assert himself.
00:10:58:04 – 00:11:13:10
Alec Hogg
I guess we will see that happening in the next few weeks. Something else that we’ll see happening on a global scale in the next few weeks is developments in the Middle East. They have escalated dramatically in the past few days. How are you reading this?
00:11:13:12 – 00:11:55:09
RW Johnson
Well, look, a lot of this has followed a sort of predictable pattern of response and retaliation. But what I’m very struck by is the extent to which the Israelis, in particular, have planned ahead. They are actually carrying out moves that they had planned a long time ago. I was very struck when it turned out that some time ago, the Israelis approached the Americans, saying they wanted 50 F-15 Strike Eagles. Instead, the Americans were puzzled and asked, “Come on, that plane first flew in 1972—old stuff. Why do you want that?”
00:11:55:09 – 00:12:19:05
RW Johnson
They looked at it and said, “Look, what we want is the Strike Eagle, the latest version. We want to clear out all of its avionics and electronic equipment, and we want you to supply the very latest that you have. We’ve got some of our own stuff, and we’re going to put that in, which will revolutionize the capabilities of the aircraft.”
00:12:19:06 – 00:12:44:17
RW Johnson
The point is that the F-15 is very fast—Mach 2.5—and it’s considerably bigger than the F-16 or F-18. It can carry nearly 12 tons of bombs and has a much longer range. It’s a two-engine plane, unlike many others. They had studied this very carefully and decided that there were specific missions they needed this plane for.
00:12:44:19 – 00:13:23:17
RW Johnson
I think they used a whole squadron of F-15s for the attack that killed Nasrallah. They worked out that the bunker was deep beneath the building and that they needed to drop a whole lot of bombs in a highly directed, cumulative way to not only destroy the floors above but keep going down. They seem to have dropped something like 80 bombs in a short time. People reported hearing eight bangs, but a lot of that must have just been the cumulative effect of the bombs.
00:13:23:19 – 00:13:46:10
RW Johnson
The interesting thing to me is that they had planned that meticulously. They must have trained those pilots like the Dambusters were trained before their mission. This had clearly been worked out long ago, and they had even gone as far as ordering those planes specifically, at a cost of something like $16 or $18 billion.
00:13:46:12 – 00:14:09:19
RW Johnson
Now, if you think about what other missions they might have in mind for a plane like that, the answer must be highly protected targets—probably underground—and the prime example is Iranian nuclear installations. Frankly, it looks to me like they have been planning this for years.
00:14:09:21 – 00:14:42:08
RW Johnson
If you watch that recent Tom Cruise film, Top Gun: Maverick, the mission is clearly to take out an Iranian nuclear facility. They don’t explicitly call it that, but it’s obviously what it is. Everything in the film, right down to the fact that the opponent still has old F-14s, hints at Iran.
00:14:42:08 – 00:15:04:13
RW Johnson
It seems to me that they’ve been planning these missions for years, ordering and equipping their planes accordingly. It’s very impressive when you consider the level of foresight and preparation involved. The Israeli response, especially in terms of their use of technology and tactics, is really quite remarkable.
00:15:04:15 – 00:15:31:11
RW Johnson
They’ve not only booby-trapped the pages, but they’ve also got Hamas and Hezbollah to foot the bill for them.
00:15:31:13 – 00:16:04:16
RW Johnson
I mean, really, if you look at the Hamas leader who was killed when he was in Iran, the thing that’s really remarkable about that is he was staying in an Iranian government village of housing provided for foreign dignitaries. The Israelis had placed explosives within that house—God knows how long before, maybe when it was being built.
00:16:04:18 – 00:16:15:01
RW Johnson
And it’s those explosives that killed him. Later on, people seemed to forget the extraordinary irony.
00:16:15:03 – 00:16:20:14
Alec Hogg
Lots of pre-planning. But what’s the endgame? How do you see this ending up?
00:16:20:16 – 00:16:46:10
RW Johnson
Well, I think that American pressure will guarantee that, look, the more Israel gets involved in the fight with Iran, the more it needs American support. I don’t think Netanyahu will… He’s in a very strong position to keep pushing that. If Biden says, “We’ve got your back,” then he’s going to back them because Iran is a very serious opponent.
00:16:46:12 – 00:17:22:10
RW Johnson
So I think the Americans do have the ability to control that to some degree. I expect the Israelis to launch some sort of retaliation, but I don’t know how serious it will be. I think the Americans will want them to stop after that. After all, the main objective for the Israelis is, having dealt with Hamas, to not have to deal with Hezbollah as well, and to make their people safe and secure, able to return to some normalcy. They didn’t ask to have a fight with Iran.
00:17:22:12 – 00:17:24:21
Alec Hogg
But isn’t it inevitable that at some point, Israel and Iran, given how much they dislike each other—or at least the leadership—will come to serious blows?
00:17:24:23 – 00:18:05:03
RW Johnson
Well, yes and no. Look, they’re talking about a nuclear war. The Israelis have certainly got nuclear weapons, and the Iranians are very close to having them. But as we can see with India and Pakistan, when both sides have nuclear weapons, it also becomes a good reason not to start a war. So I don’t know if it’s inevitable.
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00:18:05:03 – 00:18:34:19
RW Johnson
I think the hostility between them is not going to go away—at least not while the Iranian regime is in power. But the other point is that what I think really triggered a lot of trouble for Hamas, quite likely with Iran behind them, was this determination—led by the Americans—to launch a sort of land bridge between India and the Middle East.
00:18:34:21 – 00:19:04:12
RW Johnson
There’s a large Indian population in the Middle East, and India has a strong economic reason for further involvement there. That land bridge was going to involve Israel in a crucial role. It would have been important for the Saudis, the UAE, and so forth, and would likely involve recognition of Israel by the Saudis, which was the key to the whole thing.
00:19:04:14 – 00:19:32:08
RW Johnson
I think that was very much the point of contention, and Hamas and Iran wanted to stop that at all costs. The game was beginning to run away from them. So the real question is, once we have some sort of peace—however strained and difficult—whether that plan can be resurrected. There will be costs and forces wanting to oppose it.
00:19:32:10 – 00:19:40:09
Alec Hogg
Second-level thinking, as always. RW Johnson, the favorite columnist of the BizNews tribe. I’m Alec Hogg from BizNews.com.
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