It is scarcely surprising in South Africa, where conspiracy theories thrive, that the parole of Janusz Waluś, the assassin of South African Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Chris Hani, should revive questions about the April 1993 murder. It is understandable that Hani’s family, and the party he led, should have been the first to question whether a wider conspiracy existed. Conspiracies abound, but for matters of such national importance, it is vital to do sober research, investigation, and analysis. Those, who thrust themselves to the fore with speculative, fanciful, and libelous storytelling, should at least warrant circumspection. They invariably excite the most basic of prejudices, and far from clarifying possible leads, muddy the waters. R. W. “Bill” Johnson’s latest foray on the business news site BizNews is one such aberration.

Johnson’s article is a rehash of the theory peddled in his book South Africa’s Brave New World, published in 2009, which was correctly described by a Guardian reviewer at the time as “a record of pretty well every piece of unsubstantiated gossip to have circulated South Africa’s rumor mills.” Johnson is no stranger to controversy, having outraged the likes of novelist André Brink, political scientist Roger Southall, and constitutional law professor Pierre de Vos, for his reliance on hearsay, private informants, bizarre stories, and uninformed speculation. Particularly damning was Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille’s rejection of Johnson’s claims “of doing things I have never done, or of believing things that have never entered my head, or of devising strategies that are figments of a critic’s imagination.”

In fact, Johnson’s intellectual credibility was forfeited a decade ago in liberal circles when he wrote a racist piece for the London Review of Books (LRB) in which he compared the horrific xenophobic attacks in South Africa to baboons fighting rottweilers. According to Ben Fogel, writing in Africa Is a Country, Johnson’s crude racist stereotypes provoked widespread outrage among intellectuals and academics worldwide, culminating in an open letter condemning the LRB for granting him a platform.