Independent Media columnist and author Eusebius McKaiser has rejected claims that the public were deliberately misled - in the past - about the nature of his academic qualifications. This is in response to questions raised on social media following his epic Twitter rampage against Helen Zille on Wednesday. This was triggered by the DA leader asking "Did @Eusebius doctor his degree??" in reaction to David Bullard's comment on Twitter that McKaiser had a "wildly inaccurate CV. Oxford degree.....yeah right?"
As reported earlier SANDU's Tim Flack noted on Twitter, and then in a News24 article, that McKaiser's biography on the PanMacmillan website had stated that "He holds law and philosophy degrees from Rhodes and Oxford universities." PanMacmillan were co-publishers in 2012 - along with Louise Grantham's Bookstorm - of McKaiser's first book "A Bantu in my bathroom." McKaiser's second book, "Can I vote DA?", was published (in English) by Bookstorm alone. On Thursday, this page was pulled from the PanMacmillan website.
McKaiser entered Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship in the 2003/2004 academic year. According to his account on Twitter on Wednesday he was initially registered for a BPhil in Philosophy (a degree preparatory to a doctorate) but was able to convert to the DPhil proper. His initial press writings described him as a "Rhodes scholar and a PhD Philosophy candidate at Oxford University" (Dec 2005), a "Rhodes scholar at Oxford University" (July 2006) and a "Doctoral Philosophy Candidate, Oxford University, and freelance commentator" (Oct 2007).
In early 2011 McKaiser told Grocott's Mail that he was still working on his DPhil. A profile in the newspaper quoted him as saying: "I also did philosophy research at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship. I will continue to work on my doctorate this year. My Ph.D focuses on the question, ‘Are people morally responsible for their beliefs?'"
In late 2012 McKaiser's first book "A Bantu in my Bathroom" was released. Some of the publicity material for the book did incorrectly state that McKaiser held "law and philosophy degrees from Rhodes and Oxford universities." This claim was also appended to extracts from the book that were published in various newspapers at the time. The biography on the PanMacmillan website dates from this period.
In a long posting on his widely-read Facebook page on Thursday McKaiser stated that he is "TRULY not scared of the DA's attempt to discredit me academically" as his achievements speak for themselves. One reason for posting his CV on Twitter on Wednesday, he wrote, was that he wanted to rehearse "the fact that I am not shy about my excellent achievements so far. White arrogance won't change that, and sometimes as blacks we are too shy to own our brilliance. When whites do, they are just stating facts or projecting confidence. When we do, we are either arrogant or - ironically - deemed insecure."