Constitutional Hill

Suresh Roberts

In a democracy, suckers will be sucked

Dec 7th, 2009
by Pierre De Vos.
70 comments

When someone (like myself!) criticises the President of the day (for making homophobic statements, say, or for appointing a dishonest lackey as head of the prosecuting authority), it is often said that such criticism is wrong because it does not show respect for the incumbent head of state as an individual and also insults the Office that he holds.

Zapiro, for example, has been lambasted for drawing our President with a showerhead on his head while the Presidency appeared to get rather upset when I used intemperate language when criticising his purported appointment of Menzi Simelane as the head of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).

There are, of course, good strategic reasons for the Presidency to pick fights like this. It can change the public narrative and can divert attention from the real scandals – which would usually be the unlawful or scandalous behaviour of the head of state himself. By creating a scapegoat, supporters of the President who might have a complete lack of understanding of what vigorous debate in an open and democratic society should entail, can be made to forget that their leader has acted in a way not becoming of a person who should enjoy our trust and respect.

Similarly there may be good strategic reasons for not attacking the Head of State in over the top or intemperate language as this provides the Presidency with an opportunity to divert attention from the actions of the Head of State, actions that may appear to be illegal, blatantly self-serving or unconstitutional. Such attacks can also lower the tone of democratic debate and before we know it we might all be speaking in dumbed-down soundbites or utter thuggish threats (like Julius Malema has  a habit of doing) instead of talking about the real issues facing our nation – including poverty, crime and corruption. 

However, if one leaves such strategic considerations aside, there is a more fundamental principle regarding freedom of expression at stake in such cases. The assumption underlying statements by the Presidency and some of his supporters that one has a duty to show respect for the incumbent head of state, both as an individual and for his office, is profoundly anti-democratic.

In a constitutional democracy the Head of State is entitled to LESS respect than the rest of us, not to more respect as the Presidency and some of his supporters sometimes argue.

This is because as the Head of State, the President is also a politician and usually the head of a political party. He has chosen to embark on a career in the public eye that is at the heart of our democracy and what he says and does is of profound importance to our democracy and to our lives. If the President says or does something to endorse homophobic violence, for example, it could embolden others to attack gay men and lesbians whose very lives might be endangered by such action.

As citizens we therefore have a rights and a duty to criticise what the President says and does because without such criticism there can hardly be any talk of real democracy. If we choose to express this criticism in harsh terms or intemperate language we might be strategically dumb. However, it should really be tough luck for the President who should not have chosen a career in politics if he was thin-skinned. Just ask Barack Obama or Tony Bliar, who have both endured extraordinary viscious personal attacks over the years. (When one types “gangster” and “Barack Obama” into Google more than a million hits appear.) As my Mother used to say: “If you are a sucker you must be prepared to be sucked.”

It might be strategically dumb to call the President a gangster, but it is not necessarily unlawful or unacceptable.

Some might argue that my view cannot be squared with “African tradition” as us Africans have a culture of respecting our leaders - no matter what they do or say. (Obviously Julius Malema will not make this argument, but that is a story for another day.) They would be wrong.

You do not have to take my word for it. Instead I could refer you to a 1998 opinion of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights which dealt with just such a case. The African Commission was set up in terms of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which South Africa has signed and ratified and is bound by, and the Commission can hear individual complaints of human rights abuses by African states and can issue authoritative findings about breaches of the African Charter.

In Media Rights Agenda, Constitutional Rights Project, Media Rights Agenda and Constitutional Rights Project vs Nigeria the Commission had to deal with the actions of the then military dictatorship in Nigeria when 50,000 copies of TELL magazine were seized by heavily armed policemen and other security officers on the printer’s premises. That week’s issue was entitled: “The Return of Tyranny – Abacha bares his fangs”. The story involved a critical analysis of certain legislation enacted by the military government which ousts the jurisdiction of the courts. The magazine had in effect called the head of state a tyrant and so action was taken against them.

The Commission had to interpret article 9 of the African Charter which states that “every individual shall have the right to receive information”; and “every individual shall have the right to express and disseminate his opinions within the law”. It found that the Nigerian government had breached this article:

In the present case, the government has provided no evidence that seizure of the magazine was for any other reason than simple criticism of the government.  The article in question might have caused some debate and criticism of the government, but there seems to have been no information threatening to, for example, national security or public order in it. All of the legislation criticized in the article was already known to members of the public information, as laws must be, in order to be effective.

The only person whose reputation was perhaps tarnished by the article was the head of state.  However, in the lack of evidence to the contrary, it should be assumed that criticism of the government does not constitute an attack on the personal reputation of the head of state. People who assume highly visible public roles must necessarily face a higher degree of criticism than private citizens; otherwise public debate may be stifled altogether. It is important for the conduct of public affairs that opinions critical of the government be judged according to whether they represent a real danger to national security.

The African Commission is therefore of the view that unless statements critical of a Head of State threaten national security (by inciting the overthrow of the government, say) they are protected by the right to freedom of expression. Ridiculing the Head of State by, say, drawing him with a showerhead on his head can never be said to  threaten national security.

Of course, a Head of State can embark on a politically highly risky strategy of instituting a defamation claim against the person who criticised or ridiculed him, but then – as often happens with defamation cases – the President himself will be subjected to judicial scrutiny – which could backfire quite badly. Just ask Ronald Suresh Roberts.

Do we need a jury system?

Sep 9th, 2009
by Pierre De Vos.
96 comments

Ronald Kevin Roberts (alias Ronald Suresh Roberts) published an intriguing – if wrongheaded – opinion piece in the Sowetan yesterday. In it he argues that the jury system should be reintroduced in South Africa because a “jury is the exact opposite of the sort of illiberal clique that until recently dominated key institutions of legal culture, such as the Judicial Services Commission”.

Arguing that the 2009 election was, in effect, nothing less than a rough- and-tumble referendum on the alleged criminality of Jacob Zuma, he punts juries as “the classic and humane safety valve of democratic legal systems”.  

It has been the venerable role of juries to “nullify” the sometimes pedantic harshness of the law in the interest of the legitimacy of law within the broader society. That’s one reason why even the old whites-only jury trials disappeared in 1969, as apartheid securocrats completed their takeover of the legal system under John Vorster…

The fact that we don’t have juries, nor even discussion about the restoration of juries, is the single best sign of the triumph of illiberalism over democracy in a post-1994 legal system that is otherwise so proudly progressive. Apartheid distrusted the native voter; democracy still abhors the native juror.

Of course, only the most formalistic pedant will argue that there is no interplay between politics and law (see the article by Ronald Dworkin on the Sotomayer confirmation hearing in the Seminar Room for an elegant argument in this regard).

But I am not sure the argument by Roberts holds water (to put it mildly). To argue that the 2009 election was a kind of jury trial for Jacob Zuma in which he was acquitted is preposterous. We vote for a party, not an individual. It is therefore impossible to know whether those who voted for the ANC voted to “acquit” Zuma or despite the fact that Zuma was the ANC Presidential candidate.

In any case, a jury first hears all the evidence as presented by the state and then makes a decision on whether the state has proven its case beyond reasonable doubt. Zuma, of course, managed to evade the trial (his “day in court”) that would have allowed a presentation of the evidence. In order to avoid not only a possible conviction but also having to be judged by the voters on the basis of all the evidence gathered by the state, Zuma and the NIA made sure that he would avoid a trial. A jury also operates on consensus. All members of a jury must agree to convict or acquit a defendant. Where 35% of the jury “votes” against a defendant (as happened in the 2009 election), the defendant is not acquitted and can be retried.

But this  silly comparison aside, does Roberts not have a point? After all, our legal system lacks legitimacy and it might well be argued that re-instituting juries would help to legitimise the legal system as it would introduce a democratic element into criminal trials which would give people a better understanding of the legal process and a much stronger feeling that they have a stake in it.

I would say, decidedly not. Re-introducing juries would be a disaster. This is not – as Roberts preemptively argues – because I am “illiberal” and racist and because I distrust black people to make correct factual decisions after hearing all the evidence presented by the state.

Far from it.

I do distrust South Africans in general (black and white) - who have been battered by crime and are often paranoid and fearful of “criminals” - from listening to all the evidence with an open mind and then making a fair decision. Given the discourse on crime in our society, will jurors always acquit defendants when they should? What about the fair trial rights and the presumption of innocence? I am not sure whether all South Africans – desperately wanting to see criminals behind bars – would always want to bother too much with assuming the innocence of an accused before finding him or her guilty – especially where the accused does not have high charging lawyers to look out for his or her interests.

But there is also a flip-side to this argument. Given the fact that South Africa is a deeply divided society with deep racial fissures, those accused persons who are lucky enough to be able to afford expensive lawyers will have an even more unfair advantage. A good lawyer will be stupid not to play on the possible racism and bigotry of at least some members of the jury. Such a lawyer will attempt to sway some of either the white or black members of the jury to view the case as a racial one in order to garner sympathy for his or her client and so ultimately to prevent conviction.

Imagine a white farmer is charged with murdering a black farm worker and the jury is made up of seven township residents and two white farmers. A good lawyer will play to the possible racist fears and prejudices of the white jurors who might be eager to believe that the farmer acted in self defense. How often would the state be able to secure a conviction (convincing all nine jurors of the guilt of the accused) in such circumstances? Not all white jurors would be swayed by the lawyer’s tactics, of course, but some will.

A jury system may therefore further pervert the criminal justice system, as rich defendants with clever lawyers will often be able to escape conviction while undefended (mostly poor and black) defendants will more often than not be convicted. Juries therefore seems to me like a quick-fix that will turn in to a “no-fix”.

Of course I believe there is a great need to make our legal system more legitimate. This requires a change in the race and gender composition of the bench and a change in the race and gender composition of the advocates profession – from which judges are mostly selected. The vast majority of advocates are still white and male and this clearly hampers transformation.

But transformation for me is also about making the legal system more accessible to ordinary South Africans. It seems untenable that most South Africans do not have the money to access the legal services required to enforce their rights and the legal obligations of others towards them through the judicial system and this poses a fundamental threat to the Rule of Law.

The dramatic expansion of legal aid to civil matters would really make a big difference in this regard, but this has resource implications so is not so easy to do. Nevertheless, if access to justice is not improved the legitimacy of the legal system itself will be further eroded – with or without a jury system. Moreover, an expansion of legal aid would also provide opportunities to transform the race and gender composition of the advocates profession so it seems to me to be of the utmost importance.

A risky legal strategy?

Oct 13th, 2008
by Pierre De Vos.
32 comments

News that Judge President John Hlophe is planning to claim R10 million from the judges of the Constitutional Court for defaming him, comes as somewhat of a surprise to me.  Hlophe’s lawyer Lister Nuku is quoted saying that the constitutional court judges is being sued for making “untested allegations of gross judicial misconduct against [Hlophe].”

The letter says their media statement was “deliberate, and aimed at injuring [Hlophe's] personality rights, thus forcing him to resign from his position as a judge”. “Without conveying the factual basis for such damaging allegations, it is the only reasonable conclusion that the Constitutional Court judges were deliberately negligent and leveraged on their judicial status to mobilise vicious and vindictive public views against [Hlophe] with the sole aim of forcing him to resign from his position as a judge.”

Apart from the fact that the amount claimed is extremely high, there are some other problems with this potential claim. The Judge President will have to convince a Court that the judges of the Constitutional Court were deliberately negligent in publicizing the complaint. In effect, a court will have to find that the Constitutional Court lodge and published the complaint with the purpose of getting rid of the Judge President.

In the absence of any proof of the intention of the Constitutional Court judges, I am not sure many judges will find it easy to come to such a conclusion because it would require them to believe that there was really a conspiracy by the Constitutional Court judges to get rid of Hlophe. If one assumes – as one must – that judges should normally be given the benefit of the doubt and that not many judges are ever part of evil conspiracies, this will be a hard sell.

This is even more so given the fact that Hlophe confirmed in his submission to the JSC that he had approached judges of the Constitutional Court and had tried to convince them to decide a legal issue then before the court in a certain manner. On Hlophe’s own version of events there are therefore grounds to lodge a complaint against him and he will have to convince a court that despite this, the publication of the complaint was done with some malice and forms part of a larger plot to get rid of him.

But there are also tactical threats for Hlophe lurking in the defamation action. If this action ever gets to court, Hlophe might have to take the stand because the Constitutional Court will argue that the statements it made were true and in the public interest. Hlophe will have to argue that the statements were vague and untrue. But if Hlophe takes the stand he will expose himself to cross examination and possible humiliation and exposure as a liar.

Just ask Ronald Suresh Roberts how badly a defamation case can go wrong once one has taken the stand and has been savaged by a lawyer under cross examination.

I will be very surprised if this claim ever reaches the courts. The dangers for Hlophe of being exposed to cross examination are just too great. A cross examiner will obviously explore the difference between the statement made by Hlophe in the media when the complaint became public and the version presented by him in his papers to the JSC.

The Judge President stated to John Matham on Cape Talk Radio that it was rubbish that he ever approached any of the jduges on the Constitutional Court on the Zuma matter but in his papers he admitted that he discussed this matter with the two judges concerned.

I can imagine Wim Trengove asking Hlophe: “So Mr Hlophe, please tell the court which of these contradictory statements are true. Tell the court whether you lied when you spoke to the media or  whether you rather lied in your submission to the JSC? Judge President, why are you a liar?”

Hlophe might also be asked about previous contradictory statements he had made and why he claimed that Oasis was only paying him “out of pocket” expenses before it was revealed this amounted to more than R500 000. I suspect the defamation letter is a political tactic to place pressure on the JSC. Maybe Hlophe and his lawyers is angling for a deal?

Ronald Suresh Roberts may be a plagiarist says Press Ombudsman

Jul 17th, 2008
by Pierre De Vos.
15 comments

The Press Ombudsman panel dismissed a complaint by Ronald Suresh Roberts (also known as Robert Kevin Roberts) against The Weekender newspaper this week. The paper reported late last year that Roberts had been charged with plagiarism by Aids denialist Anthony Brink for lifting passages from Brink’s unpublished book and using it in his “biography” of President Thabo Mbeki, Fit to Govern.

Roberts was particularly upset by the poster of the newspaper titled Suresh Roberts caught cribbing because, he argued, it elevated the claims by Brink to the status of fact. The Press Ombudsman panel rejected his argument, stating that it was a fair reflection of the story and that the story was fair.

Significantly The Weekender editor, Peter Bruce, argued that this was so because the:

The Weekender believes that the publication was true or at least that they reasonably believed the facts to be true. The evidence appears on a balance of probabilities in relation to the plagiarism charge to bear fruit. The same applies to the billboard.” Bruce repeated this at the hearing: “The poster was true – he (Roberts) is a plagiarist.”

The Ombudsman panel found in favour of the newspaper, in effect endorsing the view of the newspaper that Roberts is a plagiarist.

Denialism = dissidence = Mbeki = death

Nov 22nd, 2007
by Pierre De Vos.
No comments yet

On Thought Leader Ronald Suresh Roberts again tries to argue that President Thabo Mbeki is neither an Aids denialist, nor an Aids dissident, but merely a poor misunderstood and maligned man with a deep passion for the lives of the vulnerable and the poor living with HIV. This, after Mark Gevisser said Mbeki was the latter (dissident) but not the former (denialist).

This whole debate seems rather absurd and deeply offensive to me. It is like discussing whether George W Bush is intelligent or not, while every day hundreds of Iraqi’s die in Iraq after the illegal invasion by America. Who cares whether he is intelligent or not: all we know is that he is a dangerous man who has caused untold death and destruction and that he should be stopped. I feel the same way about Mbeki and Roberts – and Mark Gevisser for that matter. Don’t these people know anyone who has died of Aids or are living with HIV? Have they no compassion?

For me this whole sorry saga once again shows that Mbeki and Roberts will rather be right and win an argument, than admit to having been wrong – even if that would have saved the lives of poor and vulnerable South Africans. This is a harsh statement, but I am deeply angered by this whole pathetic intellectual masturbation by the likes of Suresh Roberts on the corpses of poor people.

Surely, whether Mbeki is a “denialist” or a “dissident” or merely a man who questioned the medical and scientific orthodoxy around HIV/AIDS, must be of little interest or comfort to the families of the hundreds of thousands of people who died needlessly because they could not afford anti-retroviral drugs which was not made accessible in the public health sector or because they decided not to take such medication because the President had created the impression that the medication was dangerous and that “a virus cannot cause a syndrome”.

Fact is that President Thabo Mbeki is not the victim of some conspiracy of people twisting his words. He is merely the victim of his own, arrogant, know-it-all questioning of the medical orthodoxy, which if it was followed, would have saved countless lives. No, he is not the victim, we are. This arrogance at the very least created confusion and emboldened quacks and charlatans who could then exploit the fears of ignorant people by selling them snake oil cures for HIV when the only way they could be helped would have been through taking anti-retroviral drugs. This is why the debate is irrelevant: the confusion was created long ago and has led to the deaths of thousands of South Africans. Suresh Roberts can write for a million years and can write two million pages, but like Lady Macbeth that spot of blood will never be rubbed out.

But let me mention just a few examples of how our beloved President created confusion and how he created the impression that HIV is not the (sole) cause of AIDS and that anti-retroviral drugs are poison.

Mbeki said more than once that HIV on its own cannot cause Aids. In an interview with Tim Sebastian on the BBC HARDtalk on 6 August 2001 President Mbeki responded as follows to questioning about the 7 million people living wth HIV in South Africa:

TM: From what I read which is what the scientists are saying, you have here an acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Now a syndrome is a collection of diseases whose causes are known. You can’t say one virus causes a syndrome.

If one virus – the HI virus – cannot cause a syndrome, as Mbeki said here, he must mean other things must contribute to that syndrome called Aids. That means HIV does not on its own cause AIDS. Mbeki has argued that those things are lack of nutrition, clean water, sanitation etc. He has not suggested that once one is HIV positive the virus more vigorously attacks the immune systems of those who do not have proper food to eat or clean water to drink (which would have been correct). No, he said that the virus is just one thing that we must look for when we look at the causes of Aids (which is deluded rubbish that gave sustenance to denialists and dissidents).

This view was underlined on October 4 2001 in Business Day, when the head of the ANC presidency, Smuts Ngonyama, took issue with an article in which the newspaper’s parliamentary correspondent, Wyndham Hartley, had called for the pressure to be kept on cabinet ministers to acknowledge the causal link between HIV and AIDS. Ngonyama (or Mbeki) stated that:

“Hartley should read President Mbeki’s speech at the Durban international AIDS conference and his comments in the recent issue of Time magazine. He will see that, among other things, what the president is challenging is the assertion that AID, AIDS without S, is the exclusive fault of a single virus. To substantiate his opinion, Hartley must produce evidence that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS.”

For an ordinary person, for the average journalist and for almost every concerned observer except Ronald Suresh Roberts, this can only mean that the President does not believe that HIV=AIDS. Merely being HIV positive would not lead to one having Aids (and dying). Something more was required: It must mean that AIDS also come from other things and therefore the scare stories about having to use condoms and the stories about this one virus killing millions is wrong and can be ignored. Why use a condom then if we are going to die of hunger or lack of clean water which will also give us AIDS or if we have good food and clean water and the one virus alone won’t kill us?

Even if that is not what Mbeki meant, that is how it was understood by the vast majority of South Africans and as any President with even a smidgen of humanity and compassion would have known, such a belief would cause people to act in ways that would be detrimental to them and would eventually kill many of them. It is criminal that Mbeki would rather win an intellectual argument than see this basic human truth, and it is criminal that Roberts still wants to defend him for doing this.

President Mbeki has also questioned the use of anti-retroviral drugs. As Andrew Feinstein has reported in his book, After the Party, the President addressed the Parliamentary caucus of the ANC and said the following (the correctness of this report has never been denied by the President or anyone else):

If we say HIV=AIDS then we must say = drugs. Pharmaceutical companies want to sell drugs which they can’t do unless HIV causes AIDS, so they don’t want this thesis to be attacked. That is one problem.

The other one is the international political environment where the CIA has got involved. So, the US says we will give loans to Africa to pay for US drugs.

It is therefore all a CIA plot to make us buy drugs that will not save lives but will kill us. Maybe this is not denialism. Maybe it is not dissidence. But is is paranoid and it is criminally irresponsibles for a head of state to question the efficacy of the only treatment shown to successfully combat HIV and to question the motives of those who manufacture or call for the use of these drugs.

If President Mbeki was a scientist or some Professor at an obscure University, this all would have mattered very little – he would have just been another maverick questioning orthodox doctrine and he would have scored good debating points against the pharmaceutical industry, an industry in need of severe criticism. But he is the head of state with enormous influence on the way people think and behave and therefore has a responsibility to lead and to act in a way that would fight the spread of HIV and help those living with HIV. This he failed to do.

Instead he rather chose to questioning the orthodoxy on HIV/AIDS, which might have been intellectually clever but heartless and disastrous from a human perspective because it confused ordinary people. Those ordinary people who have made a difference to the spread of the disease and to its effective treatment if they had not been so confused. We all know what the consequences of this confusion led to.

No matter what Ronald Suresh Roberts or anyone else say now, the end result was that one man’s intellectual arrogance had set back the anti-HIV campaign and the campaign for treatment with several years. It did so in a way that future generations would find perplexing, heartbreaking and criminal.

It is absurd and sickening to even argue, then, about whether Mbeki is a dissident on an HIV or a denialist or whatever. Who the hell cares except people with bigger egos than hearts? All that the families of those who died needlessly of Aids in South Africa know, is that Mbeki was wrong. Pity he or his praise singer Roberts would never have to look those people in the eye and admit it.

After the party…. (I)

Nov 3rd, 2007
by Pierre De Vos.
3 comments

I am busy reading Andrew Feinstein’s book After the Party and it seems so far to be quite an honest book and quite scathing of President Thabo Mbeki and the ANC that he now leads. Of course, I immediately turned to the chapter on HIV/AIDS to see if there was anything new there.

Feinstein includes the verbatim notes he took of a speech President Thabo Mbeki gave to the ANC caucus two days after he announced he was withdrawing from the debate on HIV/AIDS. It was the same notes he leaked to the Mail & Guardian, so the speech became public knowledge and was widely reported on.

These notes remind us of what really happened and counter the arguments put forward by revisionists like Ronald Kevan Roberts who now claims the President never questioned the link between HIV and AIDS. How would the unlikeable Mr Roberts respond to the following statement by the President?

 

There is a huge amount of literature on these issues that we must read so that when we are bombarded with huge propaganda we can respond.

And what is the propaganda the President is talking about? Well, that HIV causes AIDS and that drugs can help stop the progression to AIDS. Thus:

 

If we say HIV=AIDS then we must say = drugs. Pharmaceutical companies want to sell drugs which they can’t do unless HIV causes AIDS, so they don’t want this thesis to be attacked. That is one problem.

The other one is the international political environment where the CIA has got involved. So, the US says we will give loans to Africa to pay for US drugs.

This clearly shows that the President is attacking the assumption that HIV causes AIDS and that he thinks there is a conspiracy out there to ensure that this line of questioning does not succeed. Reading this drivel I became so cross that when the President later complains about the British Press calling him “deranged”, I laughed.

For me the most interesting thing is the way in which President Mbeki and his supporters have tried to rewrite the history in this regard. When Stalin decided to get rid of an opponent for whatever paranoid reason, the official pictures were doctored so as to erase the man in question. Like a pictorial version Haydn’s Farewell Symphony, the pictures over the years became more sparely populated. Crowd scenes turned into intimate portraits of two or three people.

In a way President Thabo Mbeki’s supporters like Ronald Suresh Roberts are trying to do the same thing. The worst part is that these efforts are having some success. I was starting to doubt my own memory of 1999 and 2000 and was wondering whether Mbeki had really questioned the link between HIV and AIDS. Was this not another case of a “generally corrupt relationship” – a phrase we all thought was uttered by judge Hillary Squires in the Schabit Shaik case, but was not?

The fact is that President Thabo Mbeki did question the link between HIV and AIDS and Feinstein’s notes once again starkly remind us of this tragic and scandalous fact. We all lived through it and knew that it had happened, but the Stalinists among us are trying to deny us our own lived truth.

The tragedy is, of course, that many people believed the President and thus also started questioning the link between HIV and AIDS and questioned whether ARV’s could work. They did this because of their own denialism, convenience or out of a deep respect for authority – and consequently many of them died needlesly. Long after we are all dead, the historians who write our President’s biography will point this out and will conclude that Mr. Mbeki was a disastrous and tragic leader.

What the Feinstein book also reminds us of is that no one else in the ANC spoke out. In fact Trevor Manuel, the darling of the liberal press called ARV’s Voodoo medicine and ridiculed those who argued for its use. We should therefore not only condemn Mbeki but we should condemn our other leaders and ourselves for not speaking up. For fearing to speak up against our President.

Aids denialism (II)

Jul 12th, 2007
by Pierre De Vos.
3 comments
A reader points out that my post two days ago suggests that Mbeki did not deny that HIV causes AIDS, but only that there are other issues that affect immune deficiency. I would contend that this is mere semantics.

Most South Africans would not make this distinction and would believe Mbeki to have denied the link and would have acted accordingly. Also, there is evidence to suggest that Mbeki did question the link between HIV and AIDS specifically. Moneyweb has published an interesting article relating the whole saga and concludes:

It was on July 9 that Mbeki first publicly questioned the causal link between HIV and AIDS. In his address to the International AIDS conference in Durban he stated that it seemed to him that the phenomenon of immune collapse among black Africans could not be blamed on a single virus.

In an interview with Time Magazine, September 4 2000, Mbeki stated that, “the notion that immune deficiency [AIDS] is only acquired from a single virus [HIV] cannot be sustained.” When asked whether he was prepared to “acknowledge that there is a link between HIV and AIDS?” he replied, “This is precisely where the problem starts. No, I am saying that you cannot attribute immune deficiency solely and exclusively to a virus.”

Over the following days various ministers were asked whether they believed HIV caused AIDS. Most refused to answer in the affirmative – clearly out of fear of being seen to contradict Mbeki. Tshabalala-Msimang, Kader Asmal, Trevor Manuel and Essop Pahad himself, were all reported to have evaded answering the question directly. It was only on September 13 that Labour Minister Membathisi Mdadlana broke ranks to publicly state, “Yes, of course HIV causes AIDS.”

In his written reply to a question posed to him in parliament on the September 20 Mbeki reiterated his position: “There is no doubt that there are many factors that result in the breakdown of the body’s immune system. Repeated infections, malnutrition, lack of access to clean water, impact negatively on the immune system.” For Mbeki the contention that HIV contributed to this immune deficiency was an unproven one, although he was keeping an open mind on the matter. “There may well be a virus that also results in a breakdown of the immune system”, he added.

In his spoken reply he answered derisively to the question of whether HIV caused AIDS: “When one asks a question: does HIV cause AIDS, the question is: does a virus cause a syndrome? How does a virus cause a syndrome? It cannot, really, truly….I think it is incorrect from everything that I read to say immune deficiency is acquired exclusively from a single virus.”

On September 28 Mbeki addressed the ANC caucus in parliament behind closed doors. Howard Barrell reported in the Mail & Guardian the following week that, in the meeting, Mbeki had spoken approvingly “of a conference of about 60 dissident scientists held in Uganda in September; quoted from a document from that conference challenging the view that HIV causes AIDS; said (again) that the HI virus had never been isolated.” (The declaration of the conference can be accessed here.)

He also “told ANC MPs that it was their duty to inform themselves so that they could counter the huge propaganda offensive that was being mounted to say that HIV caused AIDS.”

He also, “repeated his view that if one agrees that HIV causes AIDS, then it must be treated with drugs, and those drugs are produced by the big Western drug companies; these drug companies therefore need HIV to cause AIDS, so they promote the thesis that HIV causes AIDS.”

He also, “said the CIA had become involved in covertly promoting the view that HIV causes AIDS; as part of the same effort, the US government was ignoring what the dissidents’ conference in Uganda had demonstrated….”

He also said it was not “clear that members of his Cabinet supported him on the HIV/AIDS issue; he wanted to know where they stood”. At this point, apparently, “there was some muttering in the caucus from some MPs who pointed accusingly at, among others, Membathisi Mdadlana.”

The report was so accurate a number of ANC MPs canvassed by Angela Quintal for Sapa “discounted that the information was acquired by way of routine leaks by ANC MPs, and insisted their caucus had somehow been bugged.” The week after it was published the police swept parliament for bugs.

On October 4 in Business Day the head of the ANC presidency, Smuts Ngonyama, took issue with an article in which the newspaper’s parliamentary correspondent, Wyndham Hartley, had called for the pressure to be kept on cabinet ministers to acknowledge the causal link between HIV and AIDS. Ngonyama (or Mbeki) stated that:

“Hartley should read President Mbeki’s speech at the Durban international AIDS conference and his comments in the recent issue of Time magazine. He will see that, among other things, what the president is challenging is the assertion that AID AIDS without S is the exclusive fault of a single virus. To substantiate his opinion, Hartley must produce evidence that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS.”

If AIDS is not solely caused by HIV, it suggests other factors also causes AIDS. This is not the same as saying that, say, bad nutrition hastens the onset of AIDS in individuals who are not treated with ARV’s. It is saying that the link between HIV and AIDS is not as clear and direct as scientist believes and suggests that to treat AIDS patients may require something different from ARV’s – like garlic, olive oil and lemon. This seems like classic denialism to me.

Sunday Times advert circa 1985. . .

Jul 11th, 2007
by Pierre De Vos.
2 comments
If only Ronald Suresh Roberts had seen this TV advert for the Sunday Times made in 1985 he would have had more to say about the sexism, racism and deeply obnoxious prejudice of this newspaper. Particularly shocking is the headline: “Exclusive picture interview with South African dying Aids victim…” Almost as bad as a headline in Huisgenoot several years ago: “Seuntjie met die pers gesig: kleurfoto’s”.

¨Them¨ and ¨Us¨ mindset primitive

Jul 3rd, 2007
by Pierre De Vos.
5 comments
Ok, I promise this is the last word on the topic. I have now finished the tome by Ronald Suresh Roberts on the train back from Machu Picchu and a few things strike me about this vigorous defense of President Thabo Mbeki.

According to the unlikable Mr. Roberts, President Mbeki is always right and his detractors always pig headed settlers from the colonial tradition – no matter what the topic. This seems rather simple minded and unbelievable. No person – no matter how well disposed to the President – could believe every word of this book. It is just too over the top.

It is also interesting that Roberts, who often lauds Mbeki for his subtlety, and obviously thinks that subtlety is a virtue, does not do subtle himself. The most grating and intellectually problematic aspect of the book is the duality set up between ¨them¨ and ¨us¨.

He argues that one is either a native (a sort of state of mind that flows from one never criticising the President) or one is a settler (which means one criticizing the President or one has family who once slept with somebody who criticized the President).

Of course, anyone who has read any 20th century Continental philosophy or who has some common sense (native or otherwise), would cringe at such a simplistic dichotomous analysis. Surely we know that there are always far more than two sides to any question or controversy.

He does a disservice to the President by arguing in this way because it suggests the President is not subtle at all, but is a bit of a paranoid bully, who sees the world in stark terms but hides it from time to time to outfox the settlers. If this is true, well, then rather Jacob Zuma.

Mr. Roberts refuses to see issues as complex and refuses to admit that one can criticize the President without being a racist colonialist pig. He often goes on an entertaining riff about the colonial or imperialist mindset and I cheer him on. But then, in a lazy sleight of hand he links the critic of the President to this analysis to prove the bad motives of the critic, sometimes in the most tenuous way.

But what is lacking is an engagement with the actual critique. A settler´s arguments is invalid per se.

This kind of them or us arguments are insulting to the intelligence of the reader and will discredit the good points made in it about the often implicit racism and assumptions of white/European superiority that forms part of our public discourse.

Having said all this, I am intrigued enough to want to spend a night at a dinner party with a lot of red wine and Mr. Roberts as an adversary. It will be highly entertaining. It will also allow me to question him on those passages in his book that suggests that he might have a bit of native homophobia in his bones.

On colonialism and Ronald Suresh Roberts

Jul 1st, 2007
by Pierre De Vos.
2 comments
It is the most disconcerting experience to be reading Ronald Suresh Roberts´book on Thabo Mbeki while also reading the Rough Guide to Peru. Roberts talks at lenghth about the way Western discourse has infected our world view and at times he is actually quite interesting.

I like the fact that he is trying to create an alternative intellectual universe in which Thabo Mbeki always makes perfect sense and is really an intellectual hero. When he talks about the ways in which what we see as normal is really situated, he is rather good.

The problem is that he often argues like a little boy. For example he points out that Tony Leon (not his favourite man!) quotes Lord Acton. He then argues that Lord Acton was a dreadful man. Then this must inevitably mean in his book that Leon is also a terrible racist pig. Nee what, this is lazy reasoning of the worst kind.

The book also gives the impression of a rush job. It is not clear whether this is because he knocked it off in the past few months when the sponsors started asking questions about the million Rand they gave for the project or whether it is because he has such a busy mind that he cannot fix on one thing for long enough to actually build a sustained and coherent argument.

In any case, to read Suresh Roberts and then the guidebook makes the colonial mindset of the guidebook jump out at you. White people from Europe invariably ¨discovered¨all the great tourist attracions – as if locals did not live here and actually built the very same attractions. It is deeply irritating and almost puts me off travel.

The guidebook us aklso deeply patronising about local culture and politics. When pointing out some problem with Macchu Picchu they add that the authorities are aware of the problema nd claim to be doing something about it. The guidebook would surelñy not say the Italians are aware of the fact that the tower of Pisa is falling over.

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