Even a multiculturalist must sometimes say no

WHY would anyone in their right mind try to kill a bull with their bare hands? I am not Zulu enough to know the answer. I am certainly not brave enough to have a go either. But this ritual appears to be a part of the fresh fruits festival called Ukweshwana, which takes place in early December in Nongoma, northern KwaZulu-Natal.

Animal rights groups, such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Animal Rights Africa, are predictably up in arms. They are desperately trying to convince the courts and the government that animals are people too. Or rather that animals have feelings too. The government is responding with loud silence. The silence is not surprising. How does one decide between upholding cultural rights and criticising the deliberate infliction of violent pain against animals?

The answer, in fact, is simple. Cultural practices that are unethical should not be allowed. They should be banned rather than being protected just because we are too cowardly to admit that ethical relativism is a poor moral theory from which to take our cue for what is right and what is wrong.

Ethical relativism does not flow logically from multiculturalism. People wrongly think that if they are committed to diversity then they have no basis for criticising the cultural norms of others. We need to look at each cultural practice independently and determine objectively whether or not the moral arguments for that cultural practice are sound.

The relationship between relativism and multiculturalism needs to be unpacked. Ethical relativism is the view that there are no objective moral truths. When you and I express ethical views, we are simply reflecting our individual moral preferences or those of the society within which we were raised.

Multiculturalism is a description of a society in which there are diverse cultural groups. It can be also be a moral principle that says we should respect these different cultural outfits.

So here is the critical question. Does a commitment to multiculturalism mean that we must be ethical relativists? No. I can respect the right of cultural groups to exist while also criticising the content of particular norms and practices that are objectively wrong. Respect for difference does not translate into “anything goes”. Torture, for example, is immoral because all people have an equal entitlement to respect. This implies that we have equal rights to freedom from the deliberate infliction of pain.

One can be a multiculturalist and still engage in crosscultural moral criticism. Such criticism just needs to be based in sound moral reasoning, such as the example of why torture is bad, in order for it to be valid. A grand theory of moral objectivity is not necessary for particular instances of moral criticism to get off the ground.

Furthermore, if we took ethical relativism too seriously, moral criticism would never be possible. So we had better make sense of how to make progress in moral debate while still respecting differences between groups.

With the right to criticise firmly established, what can we say about the business of killing bulls? Is this a cultural practice that can be defended on grounds of the general right to cultural practice?

It is important to note that the general right to participate in cultural practices is not actually at stake here. Such rights are very important. This must be the case because cultural practices constitute a critically important part of the identities of millions of South Africans. However, just as the right to free speech can reasonably be infringed, so too can the right to cultural practice.

In this case, animal rights activists are right to demand a moral entitlement to dignified treatment on behalf of bulls against Zulus. The basis for why you and I demand that we treat each other decently is because we can experience pain and pleasure. We have sentience. Nothing more, nothing less. If it was about much more than sentience, then some human beings would be in trouble. Yet if sentience is the basis of our moral status, then why do animals not have equal right to be treated decently? A failure to extend such moral entitlement to nonhuman animals is an arbitrary exclusion of those animals from the group entitled to moral consideration.

This exclusion is logically identical to racism. Just as it is arbitrary and therefore wrong to spend less on a black kid’s public education than a white kid’s, so too it is arbitrary to regard some sentient creatures as less worthy of moral concern than others — “just because”.

It is patently clear then that the deliberate infliction of pain against a bull amounts to not respecting its moral entitlement as a sentient creature to be treated with dignity. This makes the Zulu practice of bull killing during Ukweshwana unethical. Since it is unethical, it is a reasonable infringement on the general right to cultural practice to stop this unethical infliction of violence.

Animal rights activists may be the last remaining hippies but this is no reason to dismiss their arguments as equally dated or uncool. Those who think that these kinds of cultural practices are acceptable are hereby challenged to offer me an ethical rejoinder instead.

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=88254