SynapsesJacques Rousseau teaches critical thinking and ethics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and is the founder and director of the Free Society Institute, a non-profit organisation promoting secular humanism and scientific reasoning.
Readers of a certain age (in this case, I suspect this means anyone over 30 or so) will remember that there was a time when nobody started an email with the sentence “I hope this finds you well”.
Sometime in the last 5 or so years, some evil cabal has decided to tell secondary school pupils – and even (theoretically) fully-hatched people in the workplace – that all emails have to begin with this sentence.
South Africa will move to level 3 of our Coronavirus lockdown on June 1. More economic activity will be permitted, we can exercise anytime (within the curfew hours), buy alcohol, and attend religious services (in groups of 50 or fewer). We won’t be able to buy tobacco, even though the state’s case for this restriction is threadbare.
But even as the gradual resumption of something resembling normal life picks up pace, there sometimes seems little room for optimism. There are widespread riots in the USA after more black citizens were killed by police, and here at home, Collins Khoza is one of many who have been killed by overly zealous members of the police and army while enforcing their interpretation of lockdown.
South Africa has been under lockdown for seven weeks now, in what seems to be one of the most restrictive Covid-19 lockdowns anywhere in the world. And while most people I talk to still support the lockdown in general, there seems to be increasing dissent regarding some of its regulations – even outside of the Twitter echo chamber of outrage.
Professor Tim Noakes has published a response to Nathan Geffen’s criticism of a recent radio interview, where Geffen argued that Noakes was running the risk of misleading the public and “demean[ing] the scientific and medical community”.
One reason I haven’t written about Noakes for 18 months or so – despite his recent interest in climate-change scepticism, and his continued misrepresentation of his critics – is that I thought he was doing enough to demonstrate his epistemic irresponsibility without people like me having to point it out.
Last week, I suggested on Twitter that Capetonians might want to comment on the City’s “management of public spaces” by-law amendments before the deadline of May 17, but didn’t say why, hoping that people would read the amendments and decide for themselves.
But in case it’s useful, here is a short summary of my concerns. You are free to copy and paste them into your responses if you choose, or to submit a version of them under your own name.
When I was selling books on the floor of a branch of Olsson’s Books, an independent bookstore in Baltimore, MD 30 years ago, Robert Pirsig’s Lila: An Inquiry into Morals arrived in one of our regular shipments from the distributors. Lila was the sequel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1992.
Today is day 10 of South Africa’s coronavirus lockdown, which has been implemented with a resolve rarely seen in our country, with the military deployed to assist the police in keeping people in their homes. Unfortunately, neither they – nor the police – are (in general) accustomed to much besides being authoritarian. They certainly don’t have a history of “shower[ing] our people with guidance [and] leadership”, as President Ramaphosa asked of them when they were sent into the streets.
Eusebius McKaiser (host of a show on Radio 702) and I were meant to be part of a public discussion at WiSER (based at Wits University) on COVID-19 and its social implications later this week. The conversation was in the end postponed – not because of health risks (although that is now an utterly sensible reason for postponing) – but because some people thought that a philosophical conversation was inappropriate, and that WiSER should include epidemiologists, virologists and the like on any panel related to this coronavirus.
Sometimes a technical definition of something matters significantly less than the demonstrable effects it has had. If Harvey Weinstein is acquitted of the various rape charges he’s facing, that would have no implications for the women he has abused (if he is indeed guilty, as I believe he is).
One of the few positive recent developments for the Democratic Alliance is the fact that Mbali Ntuli will be contesting for leadership of the party at their elective conference in May this year.
I say this because, as a current ex-supporter of the party, I’ve long been trying to persuade friends that there are still liberals of the “right” sort in the party, but that they are mostly younger leaders who have not yet (for the most part) occupied the top positions in the party.