Helen Zille's campaign to discredit the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) is the latest example of hysteria in our South African body politic. Happily the SAIRR has previously had to endure castigation from politicians, not least from Verwoerd and his generation. It is perfectly capable, simply on its record from 1929, and the quality of its work and its Council, to withstand the pernicious assault from Helen Zille.
Another example was the ANC grabbing hysterically onto the word "refugees" when used by Zille about people who came from the Eastern Cape to the Western Cape, allegedly, to escape poor education there.
Whites develop an almost instant hysteria around Malema even though the ANC have marginalised him and most blacks dislike him. It was the same kind of hysteria that Terreblanche excited - interesting but unimportant.
Tony Leon became a victim of a hysteria, deliberately generated by the ANC, over his use of the "Fight Back" slogan.
Another is the use by Jacob Zuma of the well recognised Zulu idiom "until Jesus returns". In English the term "until Kingdom come", means exactly the same, but the name of Jesus is not mentioned. No hysteria around the use of that English idiom.
Jacob Zuma, himself, is a victim, not wholly undeserved, of hysteria.