WOULD you be seen dead having lunch with David Bullard? Would you give him a platform to express and debate his views? In case you have forgotten, Bullard is the former Sunday Times columnist who was in famously sacked for a column judged to have expressed racist views about blacks and aspects of black culture.
Well, I would happily be seen having lunch with the man. And I would happily invite him to express and debate his views on a public platform. In fact, I did both those things last week. My lovely friend, Financial Mail columnist Justice Malala, rebuked me. He expressed two concerns.
One is the fear that I might have legitimised racism by playing with Bullard. The other, less sexy, fear is that I might be a catalyst for Bullard to derive financial benefit from racism.
Inviting someone to debate their views does not count as approving the content of their beliefs.
It simply signals a fearless commitment to free speech.
I enjoy debating people who hold different views to mine, including views that might be considered bigoted, rather than only wallowing in the company of those singing from the same hymn sheet as I do.
The error that Malala makes is to confuse the substantive value of debate as a dialectical process for thrashing out issues, with the independent question of what debaters on a public platform think of each others’ viewpoints.
For example, if someone convened a public debate about the morality of homosexuality and invited Jon Qwelane, the country’s most famous homophobe, I would give my gay bottom to be allowed the opportunity to debate him.
Would it be reasonable to interpret my excitement as legitimising homophobia?
All we could say, until we hear what I actually think of Qwelane, is that I, Eusebius McKaiser, am an equal opportunities interlocutor. We could not say that accepting the invite to debate Qwelane is irrefutable proof that I am a self-hating gay man.
If anything, my motivation to accept an invitation to share a platform with someone such as Qwelane would be to humiliate him by exposing the content of his beliefs as evidence-insensitive, badly formed and also immoral. Valuing everyone’s right to speak does not indicate that I regard everyone’s views as equally justified. Malala misses this critical distinction.
Furthermore, from a strategic point of view, it is important to allow uncomfortable views to be exposed to the sanitising light of public debate.
The truth is that hundreds of thousands of South Africans share Bullard’s analysis of the state of the nation, including his views about black culture.
Equally, millions of South Africans agree with the content of Qwelane’s beliefs about gay people.
These social facts, however offensive to our sectional, suburban sensibilities, are not going to go away through non-engagement.
It is a bit like hoping your drunken uncle will never come out of his room to embarrass you when your friends of more sober habits come over for a do.
Why not deal with the alcoholism once and for all, openly? Why not deal with the racism and homophobia once and for all, openly? By sweeping these views under the carpet you simply allow them to fester in dark, moist spaces conducive to fomenting further hatred.
You also become susceptible to a charge of intellectual sloppiness.
Legitimate sub-debates such as the question of what constitutes racism, for example, are likely to be ignored when we regard some views as beyond the moral pale.
For example, was the column by Bullard dark humour that failed horribly or was it straightforwardly racist?
Also, can we separate judgments about an article from judgments about a writer’s character? Or does one clear expression of racism fatally occasion a judgment of racism, regardless of a writer’s life narrative up to that point? These are terribly important questions which Malala is unlikely even to raise if his squeamishness gets in the way of his intellectual curiosity.
As for the less sexy worry about making money off racism, I indeed would be horrified if someone did that. But I am not sure it would stop me from engaging them.
In the case of Qwelane, as a taxpaying citizen I have moral political right to be angry that my government is paying him from our taxes to spread hate speech.
However, if some white, right-wing breakfast club invites Bullard to address them after his appearance on my radio show, then so be it. They can spend their money as they see fit.
After all, if I was being naughty, I could equally claim that some TV channels and some print media outfits pay some of us darkies to express the anger of rich whites (many secretly loving Bullard but publicly condemning him in a fit of insincerity and so preferring to endorse black Bullards).
These whities dare not speak for themselves lest, like Bullard, they too are ordered by their bosses to go out to lunch until Jesus comes back. Instead, they egg on the growing number of black Bullards.
Billy Joel must have foreseen democratic SA when he lyrically declared honesty to be such a lonely word.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=109642
Friday, May 21, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Beware the power of words
Language is such a bloody curse.
On the one hand it possesses the most amazing transformative power. The most palpable example from our recent history is the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa) talks in the early Nineties.In a very fundamental way it was the use of the most appropriate political language that served as a catalyst for the democratic process to get under way.
When negotiators chatted well into the early hours of the morning, they were not merely looking to achieve a practical outcome, however important that was. The very act of speaking constituted political activity.In a positive way the political negotiations were the earliest steps towards a recognition that the proverbial other is one's moral and political equal. The outcomes, a democratic election and a normative vision enshrined in the Constitution, were important concrete goals.
But the political grammar of that time constituted positive, transformative speech acts.
Sadly, the power inherent in language is also susceptible to abuse. Just as an inspirational declaration from Martin Luther King that he has “a dream!” can galvanise a people to continue its struggle for political and social freedom, so the words “kill the boer!” can instil fear in thousands of human beings accidentally born into a white skin through no fault or choosing of their own.Language can, therefore, be pernicious, violent and anti-transformative in the hands — or mouths — of irresponsible and unethical public officials and politicians.
All of which brings us, some 20 years after the Codesa talks, to teenage democratic South Africa. Political language, unbeknown to many of our politicians, betrays the state of our politics in stark, naked terms. Sadly, it is becoming self-evident that political grammar in democratic South Africa is as violent as ever, but for a brief euphoric lull in the mid-1990s and another about to hit us in the form of the World Cup.
It is important that we recognise the symptoms that betray and occasion this violent political grammar.It is not clear whether it is surprising or unsurprising that often the most violent political grammar comes from the ruling ANC.The formation of the Congress of the People (Cope) saw the break-away crowd being referred to by some of their former political bedfellows as cockroaches, baboons and, that more enduring of dated insults, enemies of the national democratic revolution. Calling a political opponent a cockroach is violent speech act.
This example is powerfully illustrative of three general facts about political grammar: It exposes your psychology; it has an impact on an audience; and it constitutes a living record of the state of a society, in particular, its political space.Calling a political opponent a cockroach, for example, is evidence of vicious ill-will on the part of the person who throws that label in the direction of another human being.
Quite apart from the public impact of the statement or what it says about the political space of the time, it reveals something deeply disturbing about the psychology of the speaker in the first instance.A useful analogy here is to think of more general instances of hate speech. If you call your black colleague a k*****, the performance of such a speech act tells us something about your own state of mind. Even in the absence of someone hearing you utter the words (say, for example, you think the word or utter it under your breath), the speech act is a powerful piece of evidence of the presence of a less than flattering moral psychology.
Sadly, the violent political grammar that is becoming commonplace in SA today means that the work done during the early 1990s in getting our politicians to see each other as fully human is being eroded by the development of a political psychology that is more vicious than virtuous.Besides telling us something about the psychology of a political actor, violent grammar also has violent consequences. Singing lyrics such as “Bring me my machine gun!” and “Kill the boer!” instil fear in others.
It does not matter whether the intention of the speaker is not to instil fear. If there is widespread perception that these words constitute a real threat to others, an attempt to direct and curtail the speech and behaviour of others, then such words take on a violent colour that cannot be wished away on the grounds that they emanate from an innocuous mindset.Our political actors need to realise that just as pointing a gun at someone is a violent act, even if you do not mean to kill them, so the uttering of violent grammar constitutes a wrong even if the intention is not to hurt.
This is not, heaven forbid, to suggest that all rhetorical flair must be taken out of political discourse. And it is important that political players across the political spectrum develop thick skins so that robust debate can be possible rather than thwarted. Why else did we fight for such civil and political freedoms as the right to free speech?
The point, however, is that moral constraints on free political speech are apt even in liberal democracies. Too many of our politicians are becoming drunk on democratic freedom and misunderstanding the moral limits of speech. Violent political grammar is, in a very real sense, non-speech.
This brings us, lastly, to the tragic historic fact that such linguistic weapons of mass destruction do not merely tell us something about the headspace of politicians nor do they “merely” have bad consequences.They also constitute a record of our times. Just as a majestic speech by Mandela that “never again” will we live in a racist society records the conciliatory mood of the early 1990s, so the violent language of our times will embarrass us in the eyes of future generations doing a stock-take of the trajectory we were on some 16 years after our first set of democratic elections.
Yes, not all political parties or all leaders within the ANC engage in these actions. But the mere silence in relation to an overzealous youngster like Julius Malema smacks of blameworthy indifference on the part of the elders. It is not only physically violent protests that could break our democracy. Violent political grammar is sometimes equally powerful.
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-05-14-beware-the-power-of-words
On the one hand it possesses the most amazing transformative power. The most palpable example from our recent history is the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa) talks in the early Nineties.In a very fundamental way it was the use of the most appropriate political language that served as a catalyst for the democratic process to get under way.
When negotiators chatted well into the early hours of the morning, they were not merely looking to achieve a practical outcome, however important that was. The very act of speaking constituted political activity.In a positive way the political negotiations were the earliest steps towards a recognition that the proverbial other is one's moral and political equal. The outcomes, a democratic election and a normative vision enshrined in the Constitution, were important concrete goals.
But the political grammar of that time constituted positive, transformative speech acts.
Sadly, the power inherent in language is also susceptible to abuse. Just as an inspirational declaration from Martin Luther King that he has “a dream!” can galvanise a people to continue its struggle for political and social freedom, so the words “kill the boer!” can instil fear in thousands of human beings accidentally born into a white skin through no fault or choosing of their own.Language can, therefore, be pernicious, violent and anti-transformative in the hands — or mouths — of irresponsible and unethical public officials and politicians.
All of which brings us, some 20 years after the Codesa talks, to teenage democratic South Africa. Political language, unbeknown to many of our politicians, betrays the state of our politics in stark, naked terms. Sadly, it is becoming self-evident that political grammar in democratic South Africa is as violent as ever, but for a brief euphoric lull in the mid-1990s and another about to hit us in the form of the World Cup.
It is important that we recognise the symptoms that betray and occasion this violent political grammar.It is not clear whether it is surprising or unsurprising that often the most violent political grammar comes from the ruling ANC.The formation of the Congress of the People (Cope) saw the break-away crowd being referred to by some of their former political bedfellows as cockroaches, baboons and, that more enduring of dated insults, enemies of the national democratic revolution. Calling a political opponent a cockroach is violent speech act.
This example is powerfully illustrative of three general facts about political grammar: It exposes your psychology; it has an impact on an audience; and it constitutes a living record of the state of a society, in particular, its political space.Calling a political opponent a cockroach, for example, is evidence of vicious ill-will on the part of the person who throws that label in the direction of another human being.
Quite apart from the public impact of the statement or what it says about the political space of the time, it reveals something deeply disturbing about the psychology of the speaker in the first instance.A useful analogy here is to think of more general instances of hate speech. If you call your black colleague a k*****, the performance of such a speech act tells us something about your own state of mind. Even in the absence of someone hearing you utter the words (say, for example, you think the word or utter it under your breath), the speech act is a powerful piece of evidence of the presence of a less than flattering moral psychology.
Sadly, the violent political grammar that is becoming commonplace in SA today means that the work done during the early 1990s in getting our politicians to see each other as fully human is being eroded by the development of a political psychology that is more vicious than virtuous.Besides telling us something about the psychology of a political actor, violent grammar also has violent consequences. Singing lyrics such as “Bring me my machine gun!” and “Kill the boer!” instil fear in others.
It does not matter whether the intention of the speaker is not to instil fear. If there is widespread perception that these words constitute a real threat to others, an attempt to direct and curtail the speech and behaviour of others, then such words take on a violent colour that cannot be wished away on the grounds that they emanate from an innocuous mindset.Our political actors need to realise that just as pointing a gun at someone is a violent act, even if you do not mean to kill them, so the uttering of violent grammar constitutes a wrong even if the intention is not to hurt.
This is not, heaven forbid, to suggest that all rhetorical flair must be taken out of political discourse. And it is important that political players across the political spectrum develop thick skins so that robust debate can be possible rather than thwarted. Why else did we fight for such civil and political freedoms as the right to free speech?
The point, however, is that moral constraints on free political speech are apt even in liberal democracies. Too many of our politicians are becoming drunk on democratic freedom and misunderstanding the moral limits of speech. Violent political grammar is, in a very real sense, non-speech.
This brings us, lastly, to the tragic historic fact that such linguistic weapons of mass destruction do not merely tell us something about the headspace of politicians nor do they “merely” have bad consequences.They also constitute a record of our times. Just as a majestic speech by Mandela that “never again” will we live in a racist society records the conciliatory mood of the early 1990s, so the violent language of our times will embarrass us in the eyes of future generations doing a stock-take of the trajectory we were on some 16 years after our first set of democratic elections.
Yes, not all political parties or all leaders within the ANC engage in these actions. But the mere silence in relation to an overzealous youngster like Julius Malema smacks of blameworthy indifference on the part of the elders. It is not only physically violent protests that could break our democracy. Violent political grammar is sometimes equally powerful.
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-05-14-beware-the-power-of-words
Friday, May 14, 2010
Why commissions are not the way to fix SOEs
WHAT does a South African do when he has absolutely no idea what else to try? Set up a commission of inquiry, a review commission or a panel of experts. These phrases are as much a part of the policy lexicon in this country as losing crunch matches is a part of our national cricket team’s psyche.
The latest commission is tasked with reviewing the roles and functioning of our various state-owned enterprises. So we can expect for the umpteenth time to hear tired ideological arguments about the merits and demerits of privatisation being rehearsed.
It does not, however, take an expensive German strategy consultant or an overzealous MBA graduate to realise that the problems with our state-owned enterprises are fundamentally practical rather than ideological. This is not to say that politics or ideology are irrelevant in making sense of, and reversing, problems within our state-owned enterprises. But these political aspects often obscure other realities of equal importance.
These other realities are much more mundane and so generate less excitement; they lie on the strategic, operational and organisational fronts. The review commission would do well to reflect on how political leadership can lend a hand on these fronts rather than mostly kicking around high-level arguments about the general pros and cons of full or partial privatisation.
A simple example illustrates the point bluntly. One of Transnet’s near permanent problems is delivering coal to Eskom in time to generate enough electricity so we can watch Generations uninterrupted. This requires Transnet to deliver the contracted amount of coal tonnage and to do so within the agreed times. Yet, every year Transnet falls short of what they need to deliver.
This is sad for a couple of reasons. First, it is cheaper to rail coal to some power stations than it is to transport the stuff by road. Second, the trucks that do the road transportation kill pedestrians more often than trains do. Third, the carbon emissions from our trains are less than those from the trucks, which is not an unimportant consideration in this green day and age . It is therefore cheaper, safer and greener to have ramped-up coal volumes delivered to Eskom by rail. This would result in a net saving on the production cost of electricity and ultimately reduce our electricity tariffs.
Transnet keeps failing to deliver. Shockingly, it fails to deliver because of embarrassingly basic operational and organisational inefficiencies that could easily be fixed. The core problem, to take our case study further, is that the turnaround time for getting trains from coal mines to a power station and back to the mines is much higher than what any optimisation model tells us it should be.
It is here, however, that common sense and practical insight overtake politics and ideology. If a train breaks down, and a driver needs an engineer, it does not help if he does not know who to call. Or, if a driver’s eight- hour driving shift is over, but the train itself has not yet reached journey’s end, then a replacement driver needs to be waiting at the spot where the current driver will get off.
This requires a manager in charge of his drivers to know every train’s journey, map out on a white-board the times when trains will reach key points along the route, and then get the drivers assigned to start at appropriate times at appropriate spots with a bakkie or kombi ready to shuffle them around.
I have no doubt that discussing such practical intervention sounds about as exciting as listening to the president deliver his state of the nation speech. But that is exactly my point. Politicians need to restrict their role to allowing career civil servants to get on with it. That should be the point of political oversight.
You do this not by deploying a cadre to head Transnet Freight Rail but rather appointing someone with a nerdish, career- long obsession with trains and goods. That is the sort of person who will get excited about what business teachers call spaghetti charts and figuring out how to untangle them. Such folks have the know-how to help a team think through the operational inefficiencies that prevent a place like Transnet from having trains that run at the optimal turnaround time when they take coal to customers such as Eskom.
Political appointees often cannot even understand the PowerPoint presentations of pricey consultants. Many are semiliterate, financially, and certainly not apt to lend a hand in brainstorming micro-level inefficiencies within their particular enterprise.
A couple of important conclusions follow. First, political leadership and oversight of our state-owned enterprises are not inherently poisonous. Rather, political oversight needs to be aimed at improving state-owned enterprises operationally, organisationally and strategically. The old privatisation debate is a red herring. Second, and related, political oversight should be provided at the highest levels, coming from directors-general and cabinet ministers. Within the state-owned enterprises themselves, appointments, right up to CEO level, should be based solely on industry knowledge and expertise.
Fewer commissions, better industry headhunting and greater capacity development are the things that the president should be insisting on. If not, the developmental state will remain a dream deferred.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=108977
The latest commission is tasked with reviewing the roles and functioning of our various state-owned enterprises. So we can expect for the umpteenth time to hear tired ideological arguments about the merits and demerits of privatisation being rehearsed.
It does not, however, take an expensive German strategy consultant or an overzealous MBA graduate to realise that the problems with our state-owned enterprises are fundamentally practical rather than ideological. This is not to say that politics or ideology are irrelevant in making sense of, and reversing, problems within our state-owned enterprises. But these political aspects often obscure other realities of equal importance.
These other realities are much more mundane and so generate less excitement; they lie on the strategic, operational and organisational fronts. The review commission would do well to reflect on how political leadership can lend a hand on these fronts rather than mostly kicking around high-level arguments about the general pros and cons of full or partial privatisation.
A simple example illustrates the point bluntly. One of Transnet’s near permanent problems is delivering coal to Eskom in time to generate enough electricity so we can watch Generations uninterrupted. This requires Transnet to deliver the contracted amount of coal tonnage and to do so within the agreed times. Yet, every year Transnet falls short of what they need to deliver.
This is sad for a couple of reasons. First, it is cheaper to rail coal to some power stations than it is to transport the stuff by road. Second, the trucks that do the road transportation kill pedestrians more often than trains do. Third, the carbon emissions from our trains are less than those from the trucks, which is not an unimportant consideration in this green day and age . It is therefore cheaper, safer and greener to have ramped-up coal volumes delivered to Eskom by rail. This would result in a net saving on the production cost of electricity and ultimately reduce our electricity tariffs.
Transnet keeps failing to deliver. Shockingly, it fails to deliver because of embarrassingly basic operational and organisational inefficiencies that could easily be fixed. The core problem, to take our case study further, is that the turnaround time for getting trains from coal mines to a power station and back to the mines is much higher than what any optimisation model tells us it should be.
It is here, however, that common sense and practical insight overtake politics and ideology. If a train breaks down, and a driver needs an engineer, it does not help if he does not know who to call. Or, if a driver’s eight- hour driving shift is over, but the train itself has not yet reached journey’s end, then a replacement driver needs to be waiting at the spot where the current driver will get off.
This requires a manager in charge of his drivers to know every train’s journey, map out on a white-board the times when trains will reach key points along the route, and then get the drivers assigned to start at appropriate times at appropriate spots with a bakkie or kombi ready to shuffle them around.
I have no doubt that discussing such practical intervention sounds about as exciting as listening to the president deliver his state of the nation speech. But that is exactly my point. Politicians need to restrict their role to allowing career civil servants to get on with it. That should be the point of political oversight.
You do this not by deploying a cadre to head Transnet Freight Rail but rather appointing someone with a nerdish, career- long obsession with trains and goods. That is the sort of person who will get excited about what business teachers call spaghetti charts and figuring out how to untangle them. Such folks have the know-how to help a team think through the operational inefficiencies that prevent a place like Transnet from having trains that run at the optimal turnaround time when they take coal to customers such as Eskom.
Political appointees often cannot even understand the PowerPoint presentations of pricey consultants. Many are semiliterate, financially, and certainly not apt to lend a hand in brainstorming micro-level inefficiencies within their particular enterprise.
A couple of important conclusions follow. First, political leadership and oversight of our state-owned enterprises are not inherently poisonous. Rather, political oversight needs to be aimed at improving state-owned enterprises operationally, organisationally and strategically. The old privatisation debate is a red herring. Second, and related, political oversight should be provided at the highest levels, coming from directors-general and cabinet ministers. Within the state-owned enterprises themselves, appointments, right up to CEO level, should be based solely on industry knowledge and expertise.
Fewer commissions, better industry headhunting and greater capacity development are the things that the president should be insisting on. If not, the developmental state will remain a dream deferred.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=108977
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Mbeki government's Aids denialism in chilling detail
Debunking Delusions; The inside story of the TAC
by:Natahan Geffen
Jacana Media 2010
review: Eusebius McKaiser
Nathan Geffen's admirably balanced and meticulously crafted Debunking Delusions; The inside story of the Treatment Action Campaign is a proverbial page turner.
The book is a permanent public record of our country's shameful recent history of state-sponsored Aids denialism, and highlights the proliferation of quack remedies for HIV and Aids.
You walk away with a palpable sense that we ought, in Mandela-speak, "never again" to allow a South African government to get away with callous disregard for evidence-informed health policy interventions in the face of a public health challenge.
Geffen tells the denialism story in chilling detail. It is bad enough that quacks may emerge of their own accord, courtesy of delusions of ideological grandeur. But the lifespan of such evidence-averse quacks, not unlike flies attracted to a dustbin promising sustenance, can be lengthened by a culpable political leadership whose wayward beliefs and actions conduce to their existence. The middle chapters are self-contained studies of some of the bigger names in Aids denialism like Tine van der Maas and Matthias Rath, individuals who are not merely destructive on their own but particularly so in the context of a state machinery that legitimised their pseudo-scientific gobbledegook.
Geffen quotes Van der Maas in an exchange about her methodology for testing the efficacy of her garlic and olive oil remedy. Asked whether she had monitored the remedy's impact on patients, she responded, "when you do not hear from patients, they usually are doing well. If they have a problem, they usually phone...".
Besides these remedies not being endorsed by any peer-reviewed, respectable scientific journal, sheer commonsense would suggest that a needlessly dead human being cannot pick up a phone. It is truly mindboggling that supposedly educated folk with reflective capacities, including Thabo Mbeki or Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, could have been enthralled by the likes of Van der Maas.
These quacks are not the cause of political denialism. The relationship between quacks and other denialists is one of mutual dependency. The quacks found a political environment that enabled them to peddle their wares. The political denialists, in turn, were given pseudo-scientific language to justify irrational conspiracies about racism-fuelled, Western-led pharmaceutical attacks on black Africans.
Geffen reminds us, for example, of a former provincial health minister, Peggy Nkonyeni, who once claimed "... that there is this thing called bioterrorism or biological warfare. This is where people can manufacture a virus and target a particular community that will be spread amongst a group of the population".
The ridiculous implication, of course, is that HIV is an invented weapon of mass destruction.
The book includes some honest discussions that give it intellectual balance. There is a remarkable discussion, for example, about shortcomings of the first AZT trial. This trial lasted less than six months and consequently the medium-term impact of the drug was not well-understood. This, in turn, resulted in the initial marketing of the drug being based on an exaggerated set of claims about its efficacy, side-effects, and so on.
Needless to say, treatment for HIV and Aids have come a long way since, and the overall efficacy of AZT and other anti-retroviral drugs are beyond medical dispute.
The book suffers two excusable shortcomings. The minor shortcoming is that it was a literary mistake to try and weave into the overall analysis a subtext about the life of one Andile Madondile.
This was Geffen's attempt to pull a Johnny Steinberg by offering us a bit of narrative journalism. We were supposed to see the human side of the quackery story. But this device does not work. One long soliloquy is placed in the mouth of Madondile. His story does not span the book. We do not get to know him. This tactic was unnecessary. There is a place for that kind of narrative and it's in a project where the person's actual life takes centre-stage in a full study of the human impact of denialism.
Most importantly, the subtitle of the book is inaccurate. As Geffen states: "After nine years of non-stop fighting with the pharmaceutical industry and government, the TAC leadership, worn out and cranky, had an unpleasant internal fight in 2007, resulting in several high-profile resignations.
"Having been involved in that argument, and having the utmost respect for my colleagues with whom I fell out, I will not say more on this."
It is therefore a marketing ploy to describe the book as the inside story of the TAC. That story has yet to be told. But this is not a big tragedy. What the book is actually about is something of greater public importance, a well-written account of a social movement's brilliant role in holding a stubborn state and government responsible for its immoral political actions. Geffen can be more than proud of this illuminating effort.
http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5461716
by:Natahan Geffen
Jacana Media 2010
review: Eusebius McKaiser
Nathan Geffen's admirably balanced and meticulously crafted Debunking Delusions; The inside story of the Treatment Action Campaign is a proverbial page turner.
The book is a permanent public record of our country's shameful recent history of state-sponsored Aids denialism, and highlights the proliferation of quack remedies for HIV and Aids.
You walk away with a palpable sense that we ought, in Mandela-speak, "never again" to allow a South African government to get away with callous disregard for evidence-informed health policy interventions in the face of a public health challenge.
Geffen tells the denialism story in chilling detail. It is bad enough that quacks may emerge of their own accord, courtesy of delusions of ideological grandeur. But the lifespan of such evidence-averse quacks, not unlike flies attracted to a dustbin promising sustenance, can be lengthened by a culpable political leadership whose wayward beliefs and actions conduce to their existence. The middle chapters are self-contained studies of some of the bigger names in Aids denialism like Tine van der Maas and Matthias Rath, individuals who are not merely destructive on their own but particularly so in the context of a state machinery that legitimised their pseudo-scientific gobbledegook.
Geffen quotes Van der Maas in an exchange about her methodology for testing the efficacy of her garlic and olive oil remedy. Asked whether she had monitored the remedy's impact on patients, she responded, "when you do not hear from patients, they usually are doing well. If they have a problem, they usually phone...".
Besides these remedies not being endorsed by any peer-reviewed, respectable scientific journal, sheer commonsense would suggest that a needlessly dead human being cannot pick up a phone. It is truly mindboggling that supposedly educated folk with reflective capacities, including Thabo Mbeki or Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, could have been enthralled by the likes of Van der Maas.
These quacks are not the cause of political denialism. The relationship between quacks and other denialists is one of mutual dependency. The quacks found a political environment that enabled them to peddle their wares. The political denialists, in turn, were given pseudo-scientific language to justify irrational conspiracies about racism-fuelled, Western-led pharmaceutical attacks on black Africans.
Geffen reminds us, for example, of a former provincial health minister, Peggy Nkonyeni, who once claimed "... that there is this thing called bioterrorism or biological warfare. This is where people can manufacture a virus and target a particular community that will be spread amongst a group of the population".
The ridiculous implication, of course, is that HIV is an invented weapon of mass destruction.
The book includes some honest discussions that give it intellectual balance. There is a remarkable discussion, for example, about shortcomings of the first AZT trial. This trial lasted less than six months and consequently the medium-term impact of the drug was not well-understood. This, in turn, resulted in the initial marketing of the drug being based on an exaggerated set of claims about its efficacy, side-effects, and so on.
Needless to say, treatment for HIV and Aids have come a long way since, and the overall efficacy of AZT and other anti-retroviral drugs are beyond medical dispute.
The book suffers two excusable shortcomings. The minor shortcoming is that it was a literary mistake to try and weave into the overall analysis a subtext about the life of one Andile Madondile.
This was Geffen's attempt to pull a Johnny Steinberg by offering us a bit of narrative journalism. We were supposed to see the human side of the quackery story. But this device does not work. One long soliloquy is placed in the mouth of Madondile. His story does not span the book. We do not get to know him. This tactic was unnecessary. There is a place for that kind of narrative and it's in a project where the person's actual life takes centre-stage in a full study of the human impact of denialism.
Most importantly, the subtitle of the book is inaccurate. As Geffen states: "After nine years of non-stop fighting with the pharmaceutical industry and government, the TAC leadership, worn out and cranky, had an unpleasant internal fight in 2007, resulting in several high-profile resignations.
"Having been involved in that argument, and having the utmost respect for my colleagues with whom I fell out, I will not say more on this."
It is therefore a marketing ploy to describe the book as the inside story of the TAC. That story has yet to be told. But this is not a big tragedy. What the book is actually about is something of greater public importance, a well-written account of a social movement's brilliant role in holding a stubborn state and government responsible for its immoral political actions. Geffen can be more than proud of this illuminating effort.
http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5461716
Friday, May 7, 2010
Zuma's thoughts and other metaphysical puzzles
BETWEEN Jacob Zuma and the African National Congress (ANC) we are presented with some really cool metaphysical puzzles.
The best way to make pretentious concepts such as “metaphysics” come alive is to use real-world examples. I tried this the other day while waiting in vain for Julius Malema to reappear on the news circuit. Well, it turns out Zuma and the ANC do not just provide useful material for the comedy circuit; it struck me that they also provide pretty useful material for teaching purposes.
Some black humour might add a little bit of ayoba flavour to a discipline that must be traditionally white if it is called metaphysics. After all, there is no Pedi word for metaphysics, so it must be a subject with a white tendency.
Metaphysics is that branch of philosophy that tries to make sense of the fundamental nature of reality, including such migraine- inducing questions as whether there is a reality beyond what we can sense and, if so, what the nature of this reality might be. Deep stuff indeed. Not to be trotted out at an ANC branch meeting. Though, mind you, it might well be confused for struggle-speak, so perhaps becoming a metaphysician is an as yet unexplored first step towards tenderpreneurship. A metaphysician may well manage to come across like a comrade whose pocket size does not determine his social consciousness. Who knows? But I digress.
Enters Bra Jacob. One of our senses, the auditory one, tells us the man can speak. We can trust our senses, despite Descartes’ silly protestations that we should not. We hear the president speak all the time . But, here’s the big problem nevertheless, does the man actually have any thoughts? Now there is a tricky metaphysical puzzle.
I genuinely don’t know whether Zuma has any thoughts. A new close friend of mine, who is an excellent researcher and public commentator, ventured a confident “No, Zuma has no thoughts!” over a highbrow dinner the other night. But maybe she was just being tjatjarag or acting like a coconut intellectual. And she is from Cape Town which, as cities go, really is a bloody agent.
You see, we usually assume that words strung together coherently and uttered through a man’s lips must be evidence of mental activity, even if we cannot observe thoughts. But usually you and I say things that at least hint at our private convictions that we can think. Zuma does not even hint at believing he has thoughts.
Malema, for example, certainly thinks he has thoughts, as in when he might say: “I, Kiddie Amin, am in the possession of the revolutionary thought that all mines should be nationalised.” Or, as Matthews Phosa, ANC treasurer-general might say: “I think the thought that this Hitachi deal with Chancellor House should be ended, comrades, lest other dodgy deals get exposed soon too!”
Obviously claiming you have thoughts does not guarantee you have them. For all we know, Malema may not be in possession of a naughty thought at all but may merely be in possession of an empty vessel. In fact, that might even be likely since it would perfectly explain the noise we are subjected to.
Still, there is something to be said for a man or woman at least asserting that they have self-knowledge about the inside of their heads. And I would have thought that any political leader worth his salt had better be sure he possesses thoughts about things such as mining, nationalisation and party funding. For all his silliness, Malema puts stuff on the debate table for us to shred to logical pieces. Bra Jacob, on the other hand, gives us nothing because he has nothing to give. He has no thoughts, by his own admission.
That much was made clear the other day, for example, in an interview carried by City Press. Asked for his view on the whole Chancellor House embarrassment, he chuckled and said: “You want me to enter the fray?” It was meant as a rhetorical response, Bra Jacob’s way of telling the interviewers not to embarrass themselves by asking questions that assume that he, Zuma, the president of the most powerful country in Africa, possesses thoughts. Zuma helped them out by suggesting that some other person, called the “ANC”, has a view on the matter, to which he defers.
Now that brings me to the second puzzle. Who and what the hell is the ANC? I’m seriously confused. These comrades talk about the ANC like it is some human being with a body and mind of its own. It exists. Everywhere. And has thoughts. Not unlike an omnipresent Higher Power. Which explains why all ANC cadres fear the ANC. The ANC must be a scary, elusive, dictatorial father figure. I wonder if he or she has ever revealed themselves to anyone?
Whether the ANC exists and what its true nature is remains a metaphysical migraine my small analyst mind can’t solve. The same goes for determining the nature of what lurks (or not) in Zuma’s head. It’s much easier to learn to blow a vuvuzela.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=108295
The best way to make pretentious concepts such as “metaphysics” come alive is to use real-world examples. I tried this the other day while waiting in vain for Julius Malema to reappear on the news circuit. Well, it turns out Zuma and the ANC do not just provide useful material for the comedy circuit; it struck me that they also provide pretty useful material for teaching purposes.
Some black humour might add a little bit of ayoba flavour to a discipline that must be traditionally white if it is called metaphysics. After all, there is no Pedi word for metaphysics, so it must be a subject with a white tendency.
Metaphysics is that branch of philosophy that tries to make sense of the fundamental nature of reality, including such migraine- inducing questions as whether there is a reality beyond what we can sense and, if so, what the nature of this reality might be. Deep stuff indeed. Not to be trotted out at an ANC branch meeting. Though, mind you, it might well be confused for struggle-speak, so perhaps becoming a metaphysician is an as yet unexplored first step towards tenderpreneurship. A metaphysician may well manage to come across like a comrade whose pocket size does not determine his social consciousness. Who knows? But I digress.
Enters Bra Jacob. One of our senses, the auditory one, tells us the man can speak. We can trust our senses, despite Descartes’ silly protestations that we should not. We hear the president speak all the time . But, here’s the big problem nevertheless, does the man actually have any thoughts? Now there is a tricky metaphysical puzzle.
I genuinely don’t know whether Zuma has any thoughts. A new close friend of mine, who is an excellent researcher and public commentator, ventured a confident “No, Zuma has no thoughts!” over a highbrow dinner the other night. But maybe she was just being tjatjarag or acting like a coconut intellectual. And she is from Cape Town which, as cities go, really is a bloody agent.
You see, we usually assume that words strung together coherently and uttered through a man’s lips must be evidence of mental activity, even if we cannot observe thoughts. But usually you and I say things that at least hint at our private convictions that we can think. Zuma does not even hint at believing he has thoughts.
Malema, for example, certainly thinks he has thoughts, as in when he might say: “I, Kiddie Amin, am in the possession of the revolutionary thought that all mines should be nationalised.” Or, as Matthews Phosa, ANC treasurer-general might say: “I think the thought that this Hitachi deal with Chancellor House should be ended, comrades, lest other dodgy deals get exposed soon too!”
Obviously claiming you have thoughts does not guarantee you have them. For all we know, Malema may not be in possession of a naughty thought at all but may merely be in possession of an empty vessel. In fact, that might even be likely since it would perfectly explain the noise we are subjected to.
Still, there is something to be said for a man or woman at least asserting that they have self-knowledge about the inside of their heads. And I would have thought that any political leader worth his salt had better be sure he possesses thoughts about things such as mining, nationalisation and party funding. For all his silliness, Malema puts stuff on the debate table for us to shred to logical pieces. Bra Jacob, on the other hand, gives us nothing because he has nothing to give. He has no thoughts, by his own admission.
That much was made clear the other day, for example, in an interview carried by City Press. Asked for his view on the whole Chancellor House embarrassment, he chuckled and said: “You want me to enter the fray?” It was meant as a rhetorical response, Bra Jacob’s way of telling the interviewers not to embarrass themselves by asking questions that assume that he, Zuma, the president of the most powerful country in Africa, possesses thoughts. Zuma helped them out by suggesting that some other person, called the “ANC”, has a view on the matter, to which he defers.
Now that brings me to the second puzzle. Who and what the hell is the ANC? I’m seriously confused. These comrades talk about the ANC like it is some human being with a body and mind of its own. It exists. Everywhere. And has thoughts. Not unlike an omnipresent Higher Power. Which explains why all ANC cadres fear the ANC. The ANC must be a scary, elusive, dictatorial father figure. I wonder if he or she has ever revealed themselves to anyone?
Whether the ANC exists and what its true nature is remains a metaphysical migraine my small analyst mind can’t solve. The same goes for determining the nature of what lurks (or not) in Zuma’s head. It’s much easier to learn to blow a vuvuzela.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=108295
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Real freedom still eludes most South Africans
I DESPERATELY wanted to give a feel- good answer when asked by a talk show host what I made of Freedom Day on Tuesday. There is so much we have achieved since apartheid’s demise that counts in favour of warm and fuzzy celebrations.
We are free to sleep with someone who looks different from ourselves. We are free to roam the streets of any suburb. We are free to buy property anywhere. We are free to vote in regular elections. We are free to write what we like. We are free to speak our minds. We are free to form political parties.
We are, it would seem, free to be who we truly want to be.
Freedom seems alive and well in this weird and wonderful country of ours. Add a vuvuzela, a Bafana Bafana shirt and a 750ml bottle of Castle Lager all set to the Toto song, Miss the rains down in Africa, and only pre-prison Eugene TerreBlanche would not feel positively drunk with the insatiable taste of democratic freedom.
But, sorry to spoil the image folks, it is all a big fat lie. A big, fat, unsustainable lie. We’d better own up to reality and step up our national game if we are to avoid looking like a team ranked 90th in the world.
The vast majority of Saffers have not yet experienced Uhuru. The rest of us have no right to celebrate. We have only a right to feel survivor’s guilt.
Freedom is a tricky concept that has kept nerdish political philosophers busy for centuries. Isaiah Berlin, a former Oxford philosopher, distinguished between positive and negative liberty way back in 1958.
For our purposes, we can think of liberty as more or less a fancy term for freedom. Negative freedom means there are no obstacles in your way.
I am not, for example, preventing you from forming a political party by passing a law that says whoever reads this week’s column by McKaiser in Business Day is forbidden from forming a political party. That kind of law would rob you of negative freedom. It would place an obstacle in your path.
Positive freedom, on the other hand, is the presence of something as opposed to the absence of an obstacle. For example, if I give you money to form a political party and to put together a campaign, I am thereby giving you positive freedom. I am placing you in a position to use your negative freedom to effectively pursue goals you value but which could not be pursued in the absence of certain enabling conditions. It is because we value positive freedom that public goods such as education are important. They constitute positive freedom. They enable you to live a full life of your own choosing rather than leaving you free merely to dream.
Here is the unsexy result of this Politics 101 detour. The reason I experience survivor’s guilt on Freedom Day as a black middle-class intelligentsia type is that the vast majority of South Africans do not enjoy positive freedom. They merely enjoy negative freedom.
But negative freedom is pointless. Or, at the risk of self-declared elders rapping me over the knuckles, negative freedom is important but should not be the ultimate point of why we destroyed apartheid.
Yes, the freedom to vote, to live where you want to, to have sex with whoever agrees, to form political parties, to speak your mind and to associate with whom you wish to, are critically important. But we fought for positive freedom. Surely?
If a young Rolihlahla in Qunu is free to live in Houghton but lacks access to goods such as decent education, which would enable him to have a shot at earning power that would in turn lead to him being able to afford a house in Houghton, then Rolihlahla may as well as still be living in an apartheid state.
Negative freedom is what we get excited about on Freedom Day. It is what we wash down our braaied meat with. But we should keep our eye on the deeper goal of liberal democracy, which is the enjoyment of positive freedom by every single South African. In a slogan, we still need social justice for all before we can declare SA a country in which substantive, positive freedom is enjoyed across the country. But how the heck do we get there?
This is a complex question that deserves more than a blog inch or three devoted to it. Forgive my terse suggestion for now. We will get to substantive freedom by doing at least two things.
First, our state is sickly. It suffers from systemic corruption, cronyism and tenderpreneurship.
This needs to stop and be replaced with a new culture of merit- based, career civil service. If there is no political will to effect this change, then let’s vote for a different government.
Second, we need to take responsibility for our own wellbeing. Yes, it is false to claim that most poor people are poor due to laziness or unstrategic life choices. But a mix of a welfare cushion and Steve Biko-inspired psychological independence and self-actualisation could make a huge difference. Democratic SA may have turned 16 this week but it was far from a sweet birthday occasion.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=107592
We are free to sleep with someone who looks different from ourselves. We are free to roam the streets of any suburb. We are free to buy property anywhere. We are free to vote in regular elections. We are free to write what we like. We are free to speak our minds. We are free to form political parties.
We are, it would seem, free to be who we truly want to be.
Freedom seems alive and well in this weird and wonderful country of ours. Add a vuvuzela, a Bafana Bafana shirt and a 750ml bottle of Castle Lager all set to the Toto song, Miss the rains down in Africa, and only pre-prison Eugene TerreBlanche would not feel positively drunk with the insatiable taste of democratic freedom.
But, sorry to spoil the image folks, it is all a big fat lie. A big, fat, unsustainable lie. We’d better own up to reality and step up our national game if we are to avoid looking like a team ranked 90th in the world.
The vast majority of Saffers have not yet experienced Uhuru. The rest of us have no right to celebrate. We have only a right to feel survivor’s guilt.
Freedom is a tricky concept that has kept nerdish political philosophers busy for centuries. Isaiah Berlin, a former Oxford philosopher, distinguished between positive and negative liberty way back in 1958.
For our purposes, we can think of liberty as more or less a fancy term for freedom. Negative freedom means there are no obstacles in your way.
I am not, for example, preventing you from forming a political party by passing a law that says whoever reads this week’s column by McKaiser in Business Day is forbidden from forming a political party. That kind of law would rob you of negative freedom. It would place an obstacle in your path.
Positive freedom, on the other hand, is the presence of something as opposed to the absence of an obstacle. For example, if I give you money to form a political party and to put together a campaign, I am thereby giving you positive freedom. I am placing you in a position to use your negative freedom to effectively pursue goals you value but which could not be pursued in the absence of certain enabling conditions. It is because we value positive freedom that public goods such as education are important. They constitute positive freedom. They enable you to live a full life of your own choosing rather than leaving you free merely to dream.
Here is the unsexy result of this Politics 101 detour. The reason I experience survivor’s guilt on Freedom Day as a black middle-class intelligentsia type is that the vast majority of South Africans do not enjoy positive freedom. They merely enjoy negative freedom.
But negative freedom is pointless. Or, at the risk of self-declared elders rapping me over the knuckles, negative freedom is important but should not be the ultimate point of why we destroyed apartheid.
Yes, the freedom to vote, to live where you want to, to have sex with whoever agrees, to form political parties, to speak your mind and to associate with whom you wish to, are critically important. But we fought for positive freedom. Surely?
If a young Rolihlahla in Qunu is free to live in Houghton but lacks access to goods such as decent education, which would enable him to have a shot at earning power that would in turn lead to him being able to afford a house in Houghton, then Rolihlahla may as well as still be living in an apartheid state.
Negative freedom is what we get excited about on Freedom Day. It is what we wash down our braaied meat with. But we should keep our eye on the deeper goal of liberal democracy, which is the enjoyment of positive freedom by every single South African. In a slogan, we still need social justice for all before we can declare SA a country in which substantive, positive freedom is enjoyed across the country. But how the heck do we get there?
This is a complex question that deserves more than a blog inch or three devoted to it. Forgive my terse suggestion for now. We will get to substantive freedom by doing at least two things.
First, our state is sickly. It suffers from systemic corruption, cronyism and tenderpreneurship.
This needs to stop and be replaced with a new culture of merit- based, career civil service. If there is no political will to effect this change, then let’s vote for a different government.
Second, we need to take responsibility for our own wellbeing. Yes, it is false to claim that most poor people are poor due to laziness or unstrategic life choices. But a mix of a welfare cushion and Steve Biko-inspired psychological independence and self-actualisation could make a huge difference. Democratic SA may have turned 16 this week but it was far from a sweet birthday occasion.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=107592
Thursday, April 29, 2010
This house believes that the state is right to ....
Peeps, you are all invited to this debate; it promises to be fascinating!
FREE entry, and great food and drinks served afterwards while we all schmooz pretentiously...
FULL MOTION: This house believes that the state is right to place state-owned enterprises at the centre of economic growth...
FOR THE MOTION: 1) Jak Koseff (brilliant, and brilliantly flamboyant speaker (no, not gay!) & economic policy geek of late .... a comrade now, sans his Hegel days, working for Joburg City);2) Neva Makgetla (excellent economist: chief economist at Development Bank of Southern Africa; Business Day columnist & a speaker that, uhm, one might describe as brutally honest, or as a TV producer friend said, "curt" ... which bodes well for this parliamentary-style debate)
AGAINST THE MOTION: 1) Joe Roussous (weirdo. translation: into maths, and physics. and stuff. Excellent speaker...surprisingly not boring, despite being trained at the Wits Debate Union...should ruffle Koseff's feathers nicely. Fresh from the World Debate Champs);2) Leon Louw (Right Wing par excellence...yet surprisingly respectful of other human beings; a great natural debater and - in my view - the economist type who puts the argument for a small state most compellingly in public debate; executive director of Free Market Foundation. 'Nuff said.)
MODERATOR: One Eusebius McKaiser
TIME: 530pm for 6pm
WHEN?: TODAY!!!!! (Thursday, 29th April)WHERE? Gibs Business School; Meville Road, Illovo, Joburg
RSVP Katie McNally mcnallyk@gibs.co.zaBe there or be square!
FREE entry, and great food and drinks served afterwards while we all schmooz pretentiously...
FULL MOTION: This house believes that the state is right to place state-owned enterprises at the centre of economic growth...
FOR THE MOTION: 1) Jak Koseff (brilliant, and brilliantly flamboyant speaker (no, not gay!) & economic policy geek of late .... a comrade now, sans his Hegel days, working for Joburg City);2) Neva Makgetla (excellent economist: chief economist at Development Bank of Southern Africa; Business Day columnist & a speaker that, uhm, one might describe as brutally honest, or as a TV producer friend said, "curt" ... which bodes well for this parliamentary-style debate)
AGAINST THE MOTION: 1) Joe Roussous (weirdo. translation: into maths, and physics. and stuff. Excellent speaker...surprisingly not boring, despite being trained at the Wits Debate Union...should ruffle Koseff's feathers nicely. Fresh from the World Debate Champs);2) Leon Louw (Right Wing par excellence...yet surprisingly respectful of other human beings; a great natural debater and - in my view - the economist type who puts the argument for a small state most compellingly in public debate; executive director of Free Market Foundation. 'Nuff said.)
MODERATOR: One Eusebius McKaiser
TIME: 530pm for 6pm
WHEN?: TODAY!!!!! (Thursday, 29th April)WHERE? Gibs Business School; Meville Road, Illovo, Joburg
RSVP Katie McNally mcnallyk@gibs.co.zaBe there or be square!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
