POLITICS

You madam, are a racist, and my achievements are extraordinary

Politicsweb |
18 March 2015
Eusebius McKaiser goes on epic Twitter rampage over DA leader Helen Zille's Oxford degree sneer

Independent Media columnist Eusebius McKaiser tore into Helen Zille on Twitter on Wednesday after the DA leader mocked his academic credentials. In a series of Tweets McKaiser accused Zille of embodying the "worst of whiteness" and of being a "racist". He then went on to outline his stellar intellectual and academic accomplishments.

On Tuesday McKaiser had published a long critique on IOL online - headlined "Zille showing ANC tendencies" - of the Western Cape cabinet's decision to put a halt to the provincial government's renewal of subscriptions to the Cape Times, allegedly for shoddy journalism. In a Twitter thread reacting to the piece David Bullard described McKaiser as having a "wildly inaccurate CV. Oxford degree.....yeah right?" Zille in turn asked: "Did @Eusebius doctor his degree??"

McKaiser attended Oxford University in the United Kingdom, on a Rhodes scholarship, from 2003/2004 to 2007/2008, studying towards a DPhil in Philosophy. The insinuation that he may have falsely claimed to have completed this degree provoked an outraged reaction from McKaiser. He tweeted:

And:

And:

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A short while later, before posting a link to his IOL piece, McKaiser commented again:

And then:

A number of hours later, following a weights session in the gym, McKaiser outlined his CV to Zille in a further series of Tweets.

And challenged her to compete:

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Addressing Zille directly, he then stated:

This string of comments attracted various reactions on Twitter. Vukani Mde a senior editor in the the Independent Media group commented:

To which Zille replied:

Mde hit back:

Amy Musgrave commented:

However, Tim Flack noted:

Update (20/3): See a report on Eusebius McKaiser's reply on this last point here. 

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