Ronald Suresh Roberts

Roberts was born on 17 February 1968 in London, England.{{Cite news |date=January 2013 |title=Profile: Ronald Roberts |url=https://www.foba.fatima.edu.tt/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/FOBA-Newsletter-10_2013-January.pdf |access-date=28 September 2024 |work=Beyond the Grey Shirt |pages=5}} Born in Hammersmith to an Afro-Caribbean father and an Indo-Malaysian mother, he grew up in his father's homeland of Trinidad and Tobago.{{citation needed|date=September 2024}} He attended Fatima College in Port of Spain and went to Balliol College, Oxford in 1986 to read law on a Trinidadian national scholarship.

In 1991,{{citation needed|date=September 2024}} he completed a Master of Laws at Harvard Law School. His master's thesis, supervised by Randall Kennedy,{{citation needed|date=September 2024}} was later published by the New York University Press as Clarence Thomas and the Tough Love Crowd: Counterfeit Heroes and Unhappy Truths, a critique of black neoconservatism. After his graduation from Harvard, Roberts worked on Wall Street at Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam & Roberts.

In 1994, on a Winthrop-sponsored leave, Roberts joined an international delegation of lawyers who travelled to South Africa to monitor the country's first democratic elections. Charmed by South Africa, he remained there, working briefly at the Johannesburg law firm Deneys Reitz.{{Cite web |last=Barron |first=Chris |date=3 October 2004 |title=The unlikeable Mr Roberts |url=http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/article.aspx?ID=355301 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070215134516/http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/article.aspx?ID=355301 |archive-date=2007-02-15 |access-date=2024-09-28 |website=Sunday Times}} Thereafter he took up policy and political work full-time, beginning in 1995 with research with Tiego Moseneke about privatisation and public–private partnerships. He became a close friend of the South African politician Kader Asmal, who was the first post-apartheid Minister of Water Affairs; Roberts, Asmal, and Louise Asmal co-wrote a 1996 book about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, entitled Reconciliation Through Truth: A Reckoning of Apartheid's Criminal Governance. Between 1996 and 1999, Roberts worked in the Department of Water Affairs as a policy and strategy advisor to Asmal.

Over the next decade, Roberts became a prominent and controversial figure in South African literary and political circles. He was particularly well known for publishing scathing critiques of his adversaries in the press; in a 2007 column Mail & Guardian editor Ferial Haffajee said that Roberts "tests my commitment to freedom of expression".{{Cite web |last=Haffajee |first=Ferial |date=2007-11-15 |title=How dare he? |url=https://thoughtleader.co.za/ferialhaffajee/2007/11/15/how-dare-he/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071116191654/https://thoughtleader.co.za/ferialhaffajee/2007/11/15/how-dare-he/ |archive-date=2007-11-16 |access-date=2024-09-28 |website=Thought Leader}}

Roberts's first biography was No Cold Kitchen: A Biography of Nadine Gordimer, about the Nobel Laureate and author Nadine Gordimer. He wrote the first draft of the biography between 1997 and 2002 with Gordimer's full cooperation, several interviews, and access to her personal archives.{{Cite news |last=Donadio |first=Rachel |date=31 December 2006 |title=Nadine Gordimer and the Hazards of Biography |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/books/review/31donadio.html |access-date=28 September 2024 |work=The New York Times}} However, Gordimer withdrew her endorsement upon reading the draft in December 2002. According to Roberts, she objected to his account of her romantic relationships, to his inclusion of disparaging remarks she had made about Doris Lessing and Ruth First, and to critical passages about her contemporary political views on the Israel–Palestine conflict and the South African AIDS crisis.{{Cite news |last=Carroll |first=Rory |date=2004-08-07 |title=Nobel writer Gordimer, champion of free speech, is accused of censorship |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/aug/07/books.southafrica |access-date=2024-09-28 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}} The project was subsequently dropped by Bloomsbury Publishing in London and Farrar, Straus and Giroux in New York, who were also publishers of Gordimer's fiction.

Roberts accused Gordimer of censorship, saying that she "wanted complete control, tsar-like, which would have turned the manuscript into pious crap". The resulting "low-intensity war" between Roberts and Gordimer caused a major stir in South African literary circles.{{Cite web |date=2004-09-05 |title=Sorry, I should've said 'Mother Teresa' |url=https://mg.co.za/article/2004-09-06-sorry-i-shouldve-said-mother-teresa/ |access-date=2024-09-28 |website=The Mail & Guardian |language=en-ZA}}{{Cite web |date=2005-11-11 |title=Forensic biography |url=https://mg.co.za/article/2005-11-11-forensic-biography/ |access-date=2024-09-28 |website=The Mail & Guardian |language=en-ZA}} The book was ultimately published in South Africa in 2006 by STE Publishers, and it was a finalist for the that year's Alan Paton Award.{{Cite web |date=2006-05-12 |title=Limitless is the world of make-believe |url=https://mg.co.za/article/2006-05-12-limitless-is-the-world-of-makebelieve/ |access-date=2024-09-28 |website=The Mail & Guardian |language=en-ZA}} In later years, the relationship between Roberts and Gordimer became the subject of Craig Higginson's play The Imagined Land,{{Cite web |author=Mathe |first=Sam |date=26 November 2015 |title=New play looks at souring of a literary collaboration |url=http://www.africanindy.com/chillout/new-play-looks-at-souring-of-a-literary-collaboration-1404697 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160509103859/http://www.africanindy.com/chillout/new-play-looks-at-souring-of-a-literary-collaboration-1404697 |archive-date=9 May 2016 |access-date=1 June 2016 |website=African Independent |df=dmy-all}} the inspiration for Patrick Flanery's novel Absolution,{{Cite web |author=Robson |first=Leo |date=29 March 2012 |title=Absolution: No Time Like the Present |url=http://www.newstatesman.com/africa/2012/03/absolution-no-time-present |access-date=1 June 2016 |work=New Statesman}} and a case study in Hermione Lee's Biography: A Very Short Introduction;{{Cite book |last=Lee |first=Hermione |url=https://archive.org/details/biographyverysho0000leeh |title=Biography: A Very Short Introduction |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2009 |isbn=978-0199533541 |location=Oxford |url-access=registration}} these and various other sources treated the dispute as emblematic both of ethical quandaries in biographical writing and of broader cultural tensions in post-apartheid South Africa.{{Cite web |last=De Waal |first=Shaun |date=2004-08-13 |title=The authorised version |url=https://mg.co.za/article/2004-08-13-the-authorised-version/ |access-date=2024-09-28 |website=The Mail & Guardian |language=en-ZA}}{{Cite journal |last=Lenta |first=Margaret |date=2007 |title=De-authorising a biography: Suresh Roberts versus Gordimer |url=http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1013929X.2007.9678263 |journal=Current Writing |language=en |volume=19 |issue=1 |pages=87–102 |doi=10.1080/1013929X.2007.9678263 |issn=1013-929X|url-access=subscription }}{{Cite journal |last=Twidle |first=Hedley |date=2018 |title="A Very Strange Relationship": Life Writing, Overwriting, and the Scandal of Biography in the Gordimer-Roberts Affair |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/690280 |journal=Biography |volume=41 |issue=1 |pages=91–115 |doi=10.1353/bio.2018.0010 |issn=1529-1456|url-access=subscription }}

Shortly after publishing No Cold Kitchen, Roberts was approached by South African President Thabo Mbeki to write the first authorized account of his intellectual and policy agendas. Called Fit to Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki, the book was controversial for its insistent post-colonialism and focus on Mbeki as an African leader as opposed to a Western one. In the book Roberts argued that Mbeki's view on the link between HIV and AIDS, was not one of ignorance or denial but scientific curiosity—and that many of the points raised by Mbeki and initially controversial have since entered the orthodoxy.[http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/letters/2014/06/02/letter-mbeki-hivaids-and-memory "Letter: Mbeki, HIV/AIDS and memory"], Business Day live, 2 June 2014.

In 2007 the controversialKamini Padayachee, [http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/aids-dissident-loses-job-battle-1.1755841 "Aids dissident loses job battle"], IOL, 25 September 2014. author and AIDS denialist Anthony Brink accused Roberts of using elements of his own unfinished work in Roberts' biography of Mbeki.{{Cite web |date=2008-07-16 |title=Press ombudsman rejects Roberts complaint |url=https://mg.co.za/article/2008-07-16-press-ombudsman-rejects-roberts-complaint/ |access-date=2024-09-28 |website=The Mail & Guardian |language=en-ZA}} Roberts countered that Brink had no relevant research given that as late as 2005 Brink remained a "complete stranger to the president at a personal level".Ronald Suresh Roberts,[http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/ronaldsureshroberts/2007/11/28/aids-denialist-brinks-loony-letter-to-mbeki/ "Aids denialist Brink’s loony letter to Mbeki"], Thought Leader, Mail & Guardian, 28 November 2007. For the full article see Fit to Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki.

In 2006 Leslie Weinkove, Acting Judge of the Western Cape High Court judgement, found against Roberts in a defamation case Roberts instituted against the South African newspaper The Sunday Times.{{Cite news |last=Beresford |first=David |date=2007-01-09 |title=Judge berates Nadine Gordimer's biographer |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jan/09/books.southafrica |access-date=2024-09-28 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}{{Cite web |date=2007-01-30 |title=Roberts hits out at SA's 'colonial media' |url=https://mg.co.za/article/2007-01-30-roberts-hits-out-at-sas-colonial-media/ |access-date=2024-09-28 |website=The Mail & Guardian |language=en-ZA}} The judgment gives detailed descriptions of his behaviour in dealing with a complaint against the South African Broadcasting Corporation.[http://www.saflii.org/cgi-bin/disp.pl?file=za/cases/ZAWCHC/2007/1.html&query=%208677/04 "Roberts v Johncom Media Investments Limited"] (8677/04) [2007] ZAWCHC 1 (8 January 2007). South Africa: Western Cape High Court, Cape Town. Roberts' response to the judgment was published in an extensive interview in the South African Mail & Guardian, which cites a suppressed letter from Ken Owen, a previous editor of The Sunday Times, which recognised The Times′ "eagerness to smear Ronald Roberts" and repudiated the words the newspaper had attributed to him, adding: "I must say that on matters within my knowledge [its] reporting is false."{{Cite web |last=Moya |first=Fikile-Ntsikelelo |date=2007-01-25 |title='I'm like Oscar Wilde' |url=https://mg.co.za/article/2007-01-26-im-like-oscar-wilde/ |access-date=2024-09-28 |website=The Mail & Guardian |language=en-ZA}}

In 2007 the same newspaper incorrectly placed Roberts, Christine Qunta and others in a group of 12 signatories to an article supposedly supporting AIDS denialism. Roberts complained and the Times issued a retraction and apology to the group. Roberts accepted the apology but maintained that the newspaper's conduct was "shameful but not surprising."[http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/sunday-paper-apologises-to-qunta-roberts-1.373914 "Sunday paper apologises to Qunta, Roberts"], IOL, 8 October 2007.

As of 2021, Roberts was a student at the University of Liverpool School of Law and Social Justice and a visiting senior fellow in the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics.{{cite web |title=Ronald Suresh Roberts |url=https://www.lse.ac.uk/sociology/people/ronald-roberts |access-date=28 June 2021 |website=London School of Economics |publisher=}}

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Category:Living people

Category:1968 births

Category:21st-century Trinidad and Tobago writers

Category:21st-century British writers

Category:Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford

Category:Trinidad and Tobago non-fiction writers

Category:Male biographers

Category:Harvard Law School alumni

Category:People educated at Fatima College

Category:Lawyers from London

Category:Writers from London