Shaun Johnson (1959-2020) was South African, and an international award-winning author, in 1994 he published Strange Days Indeed, the bestselling book on South Africa’s transition, which was introduced by Nelson Mandela. In 2007 his first novel, The Native Commissioner, published by Penguin books, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book in Africa, the MNet Literary Award, and the Nielsen Booksellers’ Choice Book of the Year.

Shaun spent his early years in the Transkei, a rural area of South Africa, and was later educated at Hyde Park High School in Johannesburg, Rhodes University in Grahamstown, and at the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar (South-Africa-At-Large, 1982). He won academic and sporting awards at both universities, but did not complete his doctorate. In 2004 he was awarded the Centenary Old Rhodian Award by Rhodes University.