The disgrace of South Africa’s post-colonial ‘mimic men’​

Dougie Oakes

IN 1967, a book by Caribbean writer VS Naipaul examined how newly-created elites in newly-independent countries that had laboured under colonialism began acting with as much greed, cruelty and ruthlessness as their former colonial masters. Naipaul named his book ‘The Mimic Men’. It was an appropriate title then – and, in many ways, ‘post-colonial mimic […]