Anyone who lived through the 80s in South Africa will remember that he was toxic waste. Unless, of course, they supported Apartheid, but who would possibly admit to that, now?
Surprising, then, to see that bastion of good liberal values, The Cape Times, offering such sycophantic drivel on yesterday's front page. Reading it, one would picture some ardent reformist, thwarted in their every attempt by a confoundingly resistant mass of opposition, rather than the violent and pugnacious bloodletter who ruled with an iron fist.
Interesting, too, that News24 played it quite differently. Former lapdogs of Apartheid like Die Burger came out with headlines like "Even Colleagues Feared PW" and the focus of the text was not on how PW had "opened the door" to kill Apartheid, but instead on how he was "a diffiult man to like". Recognisable descriptions, not revisionism.
Is this all due to superstition, some fear of speaking ill of the dead, on the part of the English-speaking press?
I suspect it goes deeper than that. That the Afrikaans press feels a need to prove its bona fides under a new dispensation, to counteract the Apartheid fawning of their history. And to continue their noble tradition of fawning to the new regime.
And the English press? Perhaps the revisionism is merely a mirror, a reflection of the trend toward recasting the past in a new light, against the harsh, Afropessimist glow of the present. "Were things really that bad, back then?" mutter the erstwhile opponents of Apartheid from their polite suburbs. "At least crime was less. And the trains ran on time..."
The wagging finger wags, and having wagged, moves on...