Logical sledgehammers can miss their targets

A recent opinion piece by Khaya Dlanga caught my eye, mostly because of a couple of blog posts written in response to it. Dlanga wrote on abortion, and reflected on whether a couple could sometimes desire an abortion for reasons too “frivolous” to be considered morally acceptable. Now, Khaya Dlanga is an ad-man and a columnist – not a philosopher (at least in the academic sense). His piece was also a opinion piece, and as someone who writes those on a fairly regular basis for The Daily Maverick, I’m well-aware of how difficult it can be to cover enough bases so that pedantic commentators won’t start foaming at the mouth, while also keeping things accessible to people who might only have a broad interest in the topic at hand.

Freedom and dignity, in life and in death

As submitted to The Daily Maverick

Professor Sean Davison returned to South Africa in mid-December last year, after the New Zealand high court revised his bail conditions and allowed him to return to his family and to his job at the University of the Western Cape. He is currently awaiting trial in a case of attempted murder, after he gave his mother a lethal dose of morphine four years ago, at her request.

His mother, Patricia, had been terminally ill from a cancer diagnosed in 2004, and no longer thought life worth living. She had tried and failed to starve herself to death, and eventually resorted to asking her son to kill her. But voluntary euthanasia is illegal in New Zealand, as it is in South Africa. It’s time for that to change,

T4ProBalance – if you want headaches, burns and allergies

As many of you would know, I recently (on behalf of the Free Society Institute) submitted a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority regarding PowerBalance bracelets and their particular brand of woo. Next up should surely be the scamsters who sell T4 ProBalance bracelets, who offer you 4 “technologies” in their magic bracelet. Four whole technologies, starting at just R369! Here’s what you get:

  • Bioenergetic scalar energy
  • 1200 negative ions
  • 100% surgical silicone
  • Antitstatic [sic]

That “antitstatic” alone is surely worth the price. But if you’re still not convinced, take a look at what the “benefits of T4 Pro Balance bracelets are“:

Alongside “power”, “focus” and “recovery”, they offer “burns”, “allergies” and “fatigue”. Oh, and don’t forget that “depression” you’ve been yearning for. Their website is a bit light on independent double-blind studies (i.e. there are none), so it’s unclear whether these bracelets are a good thing to wear on balance. But I suppose we have to assume that you get enough of the good stuff to outweigh those scarier-sounding “benefits”.

Or, alternately, what this shows is that they are simply too lazy, exploitative, incompetent or stupid to worry about details like having a poorly edited website. When you have fans defending the product saying things like “mabey [sic]you should look into something called science”, it seems that it doesn’t really matter what the website says. As P.T. Barnum reminded us, “there’s a sucker born every minute”, and those who sell these magic bracelets will keep on shamelessly exploiting those suckers for as long as they are able.

Guns, booze, rednecks and traffic cops don’t mix (well)

I’d be very uncomfortable saying that anyone deserves to die, or be killed, mostly because I don’t know what the word “deserve” might mean in that claim. Regardless of this, though, it’s nonetheless sometimes the case that people do things that are more likely to cause harm to befall them. This is why Formula One drivers would pay higher insurance premiums than professional cricketers. It’s also sometimes the case that people might have the sort of character that leads them into situations of increased potential harm. Risk-takers would be an example, as would people who make a habit of causing offense.

Eugene Terre’Blance was one who caused offense, due to his racially divisive views. He was more likely to be killed than most of us are, other things being equal. Given his racist views, one can imagine that he might well say more inflammatory things, and provoke greater hostilities, if he was involved in an altercation with a black person. Yet we can still sympathise with the grief experienced by those who happened to look upon him fondly, for whatever reason, once he had been killed.

Defaming President Jacob Zuma

As submitted to The Daily Maverick

We would all prefer to be able to respect the President of South Africa, but he certainly doesn’t make it easy for us. I’m aware that – as Ray Hartley pointed out in a Times Live editorial last week – some South Africans may believe that Jacob Zuma’s elected position demands respect, because he is something more than an average or typical citizen.

But there is no necessary symmetry between respecting an office and respecting the person who happens to hold that office. And whatever symmetry might exist is counterbalanced by the responsibility those in high office hold to set an example for the rest of the country – not in their private lives, where I’m happy for them to do what they like, but rather in how they think it appropriate to relate to criticism, and how they choose to deploy the resources available to them.

Should Assange be anybody’s “Man of the year”?

In a column for The Daily Maverick (insert obvious disclosure here), Brooks Spector reports that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is the Maverick’s “Man of the Year”. In closing, the article notes that Assange is awarded this honour for “his sheer impact on the world and the lives of ordinary people”. And since the article was published a small battle has been raging on Twitter, involving myself and other Maverick columnists, along with a few (mainly one) vocal reader.

The reader is incensed at the lack of “gender sensitivity” that she feels the column betrays – in her view, Assange is not worthy of being should not be named man of the year, despite the significant impact he has had in 2010. This is of course because of the allegations of rape against Assange. The situation is further complicated by the fact of the #Mooreandme trend on Twitter, kicked off by Michael Moore publicly expressing the view that the charges against Assange are bunkum, and simply an excuse to bring him to justice of other sorts.

Unfortunately, #Mooreandme has gone much further than that. Women (and men) who have protested the trivialising of the rape charges, and especially the disclosure of the identities of the rape accusers, have been subjected to a stream of invective and insult. Some of those doing the abusing are perhaps no more than abusers of the verbal rather than sexual sort, but many are cloaking their tirades behind a conviction that Assange must be innocent, and that these attempts to smear him must be false.

But we don’t know either way, yet, and I’m fully behind those who argue that we shouldn’t dismiss or trivialise the accusations of rape, whether or not they end up being true. Kenan Malik wrote about this on December 18, saying more than I intend to here. As for the Daily Maverick, and the Man of the Year award, I would not be at all concerned if the award was for something like “Newsmaker of the Year” – that’s a claim that is difficult to dispute, and easy to defend.

“Man of the year” can suggest that the award is for the man as person, not only his work or impact. And even in terms of impact, if the rape allegations end up being true, that impact includes that felt by the women that he raped. So it is a risky time to give Assange this honour, and this is perhaps part of the reason why Time chose not to do so this year. Nevertheless, there’s a history of making a separation between the impact a man like Assange has had, and unfortunate truths about a person’s private life or beliefs. Ivo Vegter reminds us that Time chose Hitler once, Stalin twice, and in that Twitter conversation, I agreed that we should be able to separate endorsement of a person’s actions or character from an award like this, which we all know to be given for newsworthiness and impact.

Sipho Hlongwane challenged us to do so, saying that a “higher standard is the @dailymaverick not treating its readers like they are children”. And again, I agree, for paternalism is most often odious, especially in the case of paternalism directed at a presumably intelligent target audience. Having said that, it is also true that with such an emotive issue, and in the context of #Mooreandme, there is scope for justified sensitivity. And if I were awarding Assange “Man of the Year”, I’d feel compelled to at least mention the allegations and court case as complicating factors in Assange’s current and future reputation. Spector doesn’t do so[ref]see his comment at 20:37 on the original article, where he points out that he does in fact allude to them – quite indirectly though[/ref], and I wish that he had. But at the same time, I can’t be sure that I’m not being oversensitive myself. Any thoughts on this?

Sala’s knee-jerk moralism on Annelie Botes award

As submitted to The Daily Maverick

There is a difference between being moral and being moralistic. Whether or not we ever reach consensus on what it means to be good, I don’t think it could ever be a good thing to replace debate and discussion on morality with simple – and simple-minded – tut-tutting and finger-wagging that is premised on a belief in moral certitude.

Examples of individuals who claim this sort of moral authority are easy to find. From Mary Whitehouse’s campaign against the “permissive society” in Britain to local examples like the homophobic Errol Naidoo, these individuals tend to treat moral dilemmas as black or white issues, and are always at the ready with unambiguous solutions to those dilemmas.

How should we respond to racists?

As submitted to The Daily Maverick

There are various undeniable facts that should inform any thinking or talking about racism, and South African racist attitudes and behaviour in particular. Key among these is the fact that white privilege persists, and that any number of high-profile tenderpreneurs who are black cannot elide the reality of race-based class inequality in South Africa.

As a result of this historical and current inequality, as well as population demographics, black South Africans are statistically more likely to be poor than white people. This also means that black South Africans are less likely to have equal access to educational facilities, and also that they might receive lower levels of service, and have access to goods of inferior quality.

Food blogging and critical competence

As submitted to The Daily Maverick

The truth is not subject to resolution by democracy. Nor is it established by appeals to majority, popularity or tradition. In cases where the truth is knowable, some opinions will be correct, and others incorrect, regardless of how popular or entrenched they may be. Of course, the fact that a majority of people do share an opinion is not a worthless datum – it’s instead often an invaluable timesaver, allowing us at least some reason to believe one thing rather than another.

More on Gareth Cliff, Mngxitama (and now Magaxa)

Khaya Magaxa, SACP provincial secretary for the Western Cape, has responded to my column in the Mail&Guardian on November 12. His letter was printed in the Mail&Guardian of November 26, and is available online. However, I’m also pasting it here, so that my response (below) can be read in context.

Racism is still a reality

The fact that Jacques Rousseau (“White supremacy rant against Gareth Cliff sullies rational political debate“, November 12) could not identify any evidence of racism in Cliff’s letter to the president is precisely because his defence of Cliff is racist itself.