Eusebius McKaiser. File image.
Johannesburg - Eusebius McKaiser died on Tuesday. You probably don’t need to be told who he was, because you probably knew. Larger than life, literally and figuratively; he was loud, proud and unashamed. He had an opinion on just about everything and he would make sure you knew it.
His legions of fans adored him and hung on his every word. His many haters loathed him. There wasn’t much of a middle ground. It was part of the mix that made him, ultimately, in the words of his distraught fans and friends this week, one of this country’s foremost public intellectuals.
A good columnist has something that needs to be said, a great columnist does this consistently, especially when the tide of public opinion is going in the opposite direction. A great columnist leaves you in no doubt where they stand – ever. They do not allow dissonance to creep in between what they might believe, or do, in private and what they utter in public.
McKaiser met the metrics and more, setting out his stall in his 2012 debut, A Bantu in my Bathroom, where he discussed a range of topics, from race to sexuality. Provocative, deeply personal and poignant, it would set the scene for the following two books he would write. The start of his journey as a print polemicist overlapped with the ascendancy of his career as a radio talk show host – natural evolutions for someone who remained a world -lass master debater.
Shortly after being given the 9pm slot on Talk Radio 702, he began what would become a five-year run, penning a weekly column in The Star. Published on a Monday, it was quickly syndicated to sister newspapers; The Cape Times, the Mercury in Durban and the Pretoria News, and republished on IOL, making McKaiser one of the most widely read columnists in the country at the time.
The success of the column mirrored his own as a talk show host, moving to the brand-new Power FM for the all-important morning slot, before being fairly quickly hired back by 702 as Redi Tlhabi’s replacement. He would eventually leave 702 in 2020, going on to carve out a career for himself as a podcaster, writer and analyst on a variety of platforms, locally and abroad.
Having been an author himself, he was unstinting in his support for authors; young and old, new and veteran. He was generous to those he worked with and for. He instilled great loyalty and affection among his friends, which he reciprocated unstintingly and he spoke up unflinchingly for causes that were close to his heart.
During the state capture era and the false promise of the New Dawn, he broke new ground, proving himself an astute and capable analyst, one of the best in the country, of the highly technical and conceptually demanding lawfare that was being waged between Nkandla, the Union Buildings and Parliament.
His death has robbed us of an important, independent and increasingly dissenting voice, at a time of growing group think and intolerance.
We will all be a lot poorer for that.
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