Denis Beckett is best known for his popular South African TV series, Beckett’s Trek and several non-fiction books. Magenta is his first novel and is set in present day Johannesburg - the high-octane, finance-rich capital of South Africa, where crime is the number one topic and security fences rise ever upwards.

Beckett’s characters speak Seffricanese, the language of Josi or Joburg as the locals call their city – an exuberant mix of English peppered with popular phrases and slang words from Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa and Sotho. Non-South Africans may find this difficult to negotiate even though he does provide a comprehensive, alphabetically-listed glossary, but South Africans at home and abroad will enjoy the witty wordplay in their familiar lingo.

Magenta is the story of Bart Dunn - a white, English-speaking South African journalist and business consultant (like Beckett himself) whose liberal values are sorely tested in a series of encounters with a number of characters who make up the rainbow nation of the country he loves and where he hopes to continue living. The story begins with news of the murder of Bart’s long-forgotten old school chum, Roger McQueen – in itself an unremarkable crime statistic among the many hundreds mentioned on the radio and in the newspapers. This event allows Bart to reminisce about the optimism of the 1980s Reform era and today’s harsh reality. It also provides the focus around which all the other characters coalesce through their past association with the dead man.

Bart and Roger were enlightened students opposed to the apartheid regime. He was once arrested at a township protest but remembers that as a white activist being arrested was a ‘badge of honour – an anti-apartheid criminal record’ and probably saved him from a worse fate.

It was at a township house party he and Roger were guilt-induced into attending that he first encountered the irrepressible Joyous Khumalo, who today is the dubious beneficiary of the government affirmative action policy to meet BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) quotas, and who, in Bart’s disapproving eye, earns a fat cat salary as a token executive on a number of big business boards. And it was at a township protest that Gert, the policeman-husband of Bart’s Afrikaans-speaking secretary Aletta, arrested him. Today, people like Gert and Aletta struggle to find the secure, state sector jobs that were once their privileged right under apartheid but to Bart’s astonishment they appear to have buckled down to life in the new South Africa with less complaint than he has and more openness than he would have credited.

Roger’s widow, Kei, entrances Bart with her unadorned beauty and her determination not to become caged behind burglar guards and security fences. At Kei’s request, he becomes the mentor to her troubled and angry son, Lud. Through Lud, he meets a far right Afrikaner group that mocks his liberal values and forces him to reacquaint himself with religion and the bible in order to talk his way out of a violent end. In the squatter camp down the road from Roger’s house, meanwhile, lives Themba the township sage and perhaps Beckett’s own idealistic alter ego, who persuades Bart to look at things in a different way.

Bart’s interaction with each of these characters changes him, and sheds light on everyday concerns about failing education standards, puppet Black executives on fat cat salaries, government corruption, potholes, deteriorating services, the lack of skilled workers, and the fear of crime that creates prisoners behind electric fences and alarms that go off inconveniently in the middle of the night. Beckett’s background in documentaries and investigative journalism give real colour and authenticity to the work. A realistic car hijack scene in Zoo Lake is hair-raising. It’s all done with ironic humour and a warm humanity; his characters always asking us to see things from another point of view.

The first half of the novel is fast paced and enjoyable, but the second half disappoints. In expounding his philosophy, Beckett’s plot becomes somewhat contrived, and a few rather implausible situations towards the end mar an exciting conclusion. The section with the right wing Afrikaners is long and clunky. Beckett wants to show that there are good and bad people in all race groups. He grapples with their idea of ‘geregtigheid’ – ‘pursuing honourable ends by honourable means’ – and suggests they can be persuaded of more progressive policies by appealing to this instinct, but he could have done it better. And Themba’s drawn out explanations about his two phases of democracy – sounding uncomfortably like the failed two-stage theory of the Communist Party – elicit complaints of preachiness even from the characters themselves.

Despite this shortcoming, I would recommend Magenta to all South Africans and anyone with an interest in the country and its future development. Beckett is after all ‘positively South African’ and even though he doesn’t provide all the answers, his humorous, thought-provoking take on modern South Africa should stimulate others to pursue the concerns and tentative solutions that he raises. A belief in the best of humanity and a trust in people, whatever their background, is a good place to start putting the world to rights.