McKaiser didn’t earn such caustic comment

ALLISTER Sparks’s bracketing of HF Verwoerd with other “smart” white politicians dominated The Star’s letters on Friday (May 15) with loyal DA supporters defending the erstwhile Rand Daily Mail editor.

That in itself was not surprising – many South Africans considered his remark so highly offensive that it generated a Twitter storm of epic proportions.

I personally was non-committal about what I considered to be a storm in a teacup, but it seems to have hit a raw nerve among DA supporters.

Surely we have bigger fish to fry?

One of the DA’s principal praise singers George Devenish gave a well-crafted defence of Sparks.

What astounded me though was the rousing written assault of Ian Hughes against anyone with the temerity to criticise Sparks.

He was particularly scathing of The Star’s columnist Eusebius McKaiser, using fiery language like “from his moral pedestal McKaiser has sought to bring the vengeance of the PC gods down on Sparks’s head”.

And the real clanger: “How have we allowed this situation to arise when good men and women – independent freethinking and articulate spirits – are cowed into acquiescence or at least, into silence.”

It was wonderful stirring prose, but in caustic language better suited to vilifying the tyrant of a banana republic than condemning fair comment from a liberal journalist.

Could Hughes please tell us bemused readers who exactly is perpetrating the cowering?

In my understanding of political correctness, it is meekly following the dictates of what is considered the societal norm.

I venture to suggest that is the very antithesis of McKaiser’s strident writing, which rocks the boat and prods politicians out of their comfort zones.

If Hughes is so fiery in castigating a liberal free-thinker such as McKaiser, he must have been fearsome when railing against apartheid demagogue Verwoerd.

Witkoppie Ridge, Boksburg