Circumcision ‘death season’ claims more lives

Four more boys died this month as a result of traditional initiation rituals in the Eastern Cape, adding to the three boys in December and another earlier this month. As usual, the boys succumbed to the poor conditions of ‘illegal’ initiation schools operating outside the boundaries of hygiene and proper medical controls… in other words, traditionally.

Thanks to a strong effort by the provincial health department, the death toll is down from an average of 24 over the last three years. But it’s not just death that youths have to worry about: every year a number of boys end up having their penises amputated after botched circumcisions, and an unknown number will contract AIDS when the same blade is used on one boy after another. All so that they may be considered to be adults, a state which the mere passing of time bequeaths upon the rest of us in due course and without the prerequisite of genital mutilation.

Yet another point to raise when people ask you “what’s the harm?”

Danie Krugel expands his imaginary product line

Bloemfontein’s favourite son is at it again, folks. His new product is a mysterious device capable of detecting a substance at a distance provided it is given a sample of that substance…. hang on a second, isn’t this his last product, you ask? Oh no, this time the substance being detected is cancer, so it’s a totally different thing. Never let it be said that Danie Krugel is a one-trick pony.

The original article appeared in the Afrikaans-language Rapport, and the SA Skeptics forum have provided a translation here. In it, Danie supposedly is able to differentiate vials of blood containing cancer from those that do not. Since the ‘tests’ were performed in the office of a local internist, and then by the journos at the Rapport, I hardly think we can consider the results reliable. Perhaps now that Danie has voyaged into the realm of medicine, he will consider submitting his device to a double-blind, controlled trial? Yeah, you’re right, probably not.

To start with, I find it telling that after his spectacular failure in finding Madeleine McCann, and the subsequent pummeling he took in the internation press, Danie has moved away from body-finding and into cancer-sniffing. Allow me to remind you that Danie claimed to know where Madeleine McCann was buried, and yet there has been no digging whatsoever in the area he has marked out. Does this not strike anyone as odd, considering how ingenious Danie was at obtaining digging equipment, able bodies and cameras to upturn an area the size of two football fields, on a similar hunch about the Van Rooyen victims? Frankly, if I knew where that little girl was buried, and no one would listen to me, I would have set to digging that beach up with my bare hands to prove it to them. But not Danie. He slinks back to South Africa, stays quiet for a few months, then suddenly appears with a new shiny silver case containing yet another ‘invention’.

So let’s examine some of the details of this new article. Apparently Danie has ‘loaded’ his device with various forms of cancer already. Immediately this makes me wonder where he got it from. I don’t know about you guys, but samples of cancer are not something I come across in everyday life. Either Danie has been dumpster-diving in medical waste, or someone is supplying him – the man obviously has an accomplice in the medical community. All eyes should at this point be swivelling towards the internist who assisted him in testing the device. I would suspect that Danie did not just walk into this person’s office and claim he was looking for an objective witness with a medical degree, but rather that this is the culmination of a carefully planned scheme. Either that, or Danie is lying about the device being loaded with cancer samples.

There are also some distinct differences between this device and the last. Danie’s previous Matter Orientation Device, which worked on the same apparent principle of like communicating with like, was so sensitive that given any sample it would only detect the source of that sample, and not any other similar source. Given a sample of hair, it would react only to the person from whom that hair was taken, and not just to any hair (or poorly made wig) that happened to be in the vacinity. So I would wonder how it is that Danie’s current device is so much less precise? It apparently goes off in the presence of any cancer. However, cancer as we all know is genetically specific material, so I would expect that Danie’s technology would only register in the presence of the rest of the tumour from which the sample was taken (we look pointedly at the internist again), or perhaps in the presence of the person from which the sample was taken. Unless Danie’s lying again.

And now, this device is only able to detect cancer within 4m, whereas his previous device could find its match anywhere on the entire planet. Again, the device seems somehow weaker than the last… the claims, somewhat toned down. But then again, the case also seems smaller, so perhaps he’s using fewer fairies this time.

All I can say is that I’m looking forward to seeing how this new ruse of Danie’s pans out.

Manto: Western trials not fit for traditional medicine

Well, here we go again. Our esteemed baby-killer-in-chief Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has now declared that African Traditional Medicines, while being subjected to research and development, should not become bogged down in ‘western’ clinical trials. Apparently, “We cannot use Western models of protocols for research and development… Clinical trials need protocols for traditional medicine.”

May I remind everyone again that this woman supposedly has a medical qualification? That she is a medical doctor? And yet here she stands, blatantly claiming special privilege for african medicine, referring to clinical trials as ‘western’… and then goes on to warn against “charlatans tarnishing the image of this sector … who promise our desperate help-seeking people all sorts of things that are not practically possible to deliver”. So…. all of them, then?

And then, the coup de grace of evidential reasoning, she quantifies why african medicine is so special that it does not need to be tested… because it has been used for thousands of years. Wow. Really? Under that logic, perhaps we should revert to slavery, forced marriage, human sacrifice and colonialism… all practices with thousands of years of tradition behind them. Perhaps we should go back to other traditional forms of healing: bloodletting, amputation, trepannin and electroshock therapy? Perhaps we should throw out the whole court system and bring back trial by combat? And perhaps we should bring back that wonderful old-time tradition of women not being allowed to hold public office?

Get a few things straight, Manto: traditional does not mean right. There is no such thing as ‘western’ clinical trials, there are only clinical trials, performed everywhere in the world. And there is no such thing as western medicine, chinese medicine or african medicine: there is only medicine, which is the stuff that has been tested objectively and found to work, and all the other stuff that people claim is medicine, which is the stuff that may well be helpful, harmful or placebo, but which we don’t know until we test it.

And then the Doctors for Life International group responded with one of the worst press releases ever, using as their primary argument for testing of traditional medicine, the possibility that we won’t know if it contains human body parts or not if we don’t test it. Oh, and it’s the biggest culprit in fatal poisoning in the country. Nicely done guys. While both your points are 100% accurate, all you serve to do is give her more ammunition to claim that you are only villianizing her precious african medicine and that you don’t understand it.

What needs to be addressed here is the fundamental racism that causes her to refer to all scientific advancements as ‘western’, the reverse of which is that she is basically calling africa an unscientific backwater that rejects all modern understanding of chemistry, biology and medicine. Get it straight: we are all human beings, we all have the same biochemistry, what works on a western person works on an african person works on a chinese person. We are all prone to the placebo effect, we all deserve medicine that works, and we all deserve not to be taking something that doesn’t. We all deserve for you to subject anything you suspect might be useful to clinical trials, so that if it is medicine it can be manufactured and distributed to help the world. And if it’s not, it can be outlawed, to protect the world. The only people you hurt by not doing this, is the africans already taking it.

The Secret

I’ve always grimaced every time I’ve see Rhonda Byrne’s tedious mockumentary The Secret on DVD shelves, but it hadn’t bothered me enough to actually post about. This has changed, with an email I recently received from an acquaintance calling for positive, inspirational stories about life in South Africa. Their motivation?

Living in South Africa has been very challenging. We are constantly faced with negativity about violent crime, poverty, politics, unemployment and the other negative things in our country. People seem to be living in constant fear and the only news spreading is bad news.

Everybody has the power within themselves to change this! Instead of focusing on the bad things, let’s focus on all the good things in our beautiful country. After reading and watching the movie “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne, we are not surprised at the state of South Africa. If most people focus on negative things, then the law of attraction will give us what we focus on. We want to challenge everyone to start focusing on positive things instead!

For those of you who’ve never heard of it, The Secret is a documentary-style explanation by Rhonda Byrne, covering the book by Rhonda Byrne, on a concept she stole from the New Thought movement that sprang up around the turn of the last century. They in turn stole it from the Theosophists, who stole it from the Hindus, who probably stole it from someone else, making it possibly the worst kept ’secret’ in history. The basis of this philosophy is the Law of Attraction – that people’s thoughts and feelings attract real events into their lives, and have real effects on the universe around them. It’s sympathetic magic for the new age.

In The Secret, we are told in a series of interviews and dramatic reenactments that there are three steps to achieving all your wishes and goals in life. These are:

1. Ask
2. Believe
3. Receive

Of course, there are hints within the movie, and more explicit statements have been made in later interviews, that there is actually a step 2a: Get off your lazy arse and work for it. This system is what we lay people have been referring to for centuries as ‘Common Sense’.

Would you be surprised if I told you they try to explain this theory with a) quantum mechanics and b) E=MC²? No, I thought you wouldn’t be – the metaphysical movement have exactly two tools in their arsenal, and I’ll be damned if they don’t try to use them for every single task at hand. The fact that using QM to explain their theories is the argumentative equivalent of trying to drill a hole in a wall with a drill-bit made out of jello, is hardly going to stop them from trying.

You should also not be surprise at the cherry-picking, rah-rah denialism displayed by proponents of the theory – what we like to call ‘hypocrisy’, but which the experts insist on referring to as ‘faith’. They all applaud the ’secret’ for its positive power, but do everything they can to play down the nastier side of the Law of Attraction. The inevitable consequence of a theory that claims positive thoughts attract positive effects is that negative thoughts attract negative effects . We are also all responsible for everything that happens to us in life. All. Everything. The logical extension of this sort of argument is that all victims were asking for it, and on some level deserve what they get, because it’s only a function of the negative vibes they were so obviously putting out into the universe. So if you Secreteers out there truly believe in the Law of Attraction, allow me to pose a challenge to you: find your closest local rape shelter, find the youngest victim there, and tell her that everything that happened to her is her fault, because of her toxic thinking, but if she only thinks positively from now on, it will never happen again.

So what do I think of the suggestion that we can improve the state of South Africa by holding the online equivalent of a campfire sing-a-long? Even those who follow the Law of Attraction must admit to the proviso that there has to be some sort of action involved on your part before the universe can give you what you’re looking for. If all you do is sit on a couch saying over and over “I will get a million dollars!” then you’ll still be sitting on that couch when the repo men come to take it away. Therefore sending in positive stories is no more than talking about helping, no better than sitting on that couch telling yourself “I will make the country a better place!” and then tuning in to your favourite soapie, satisfied that you have made a difference already.

So on that note, I would counter that there is a lot you can do to make South Africa a better place: get involved with an organization like Habitat for Humanity, Childline or the Treatment Action Campaign. Volunteer at a local shelter. Get on your local council, or if that’s too much, at least get on the PTA or school board at your kids’ school. Train as a volunteer fire fighter. Start a neighbourhood watch. Pick a worthy organization that does good work and donate some money to them. All of these things are far more likely to have a real effect than telling your positive stories to each other and then congratulating yourselves on a job well done.

But if it makes you feel better, you can donate your time or money while thinking positive thoughts.

For futher reading on The Secret and the Law of Attraction, Skeptic Magazine gave a fairly thorough review.

Gareth Cliff faces BCC tribunal for blasphemy

Gareth Cliff recently reported on the “Teddy Teacher” Gillian Gibbons, who was sentenced to 15 days in jail in Sudan, for the crime of allowing her class to name a teddy bear ‘Mohamed’. The case in itself raises a few questions, or at least eyebrows. Given that the children chose the name democratically, that the parents raised no issue with the name, that the entire school was aware of the name, and that the incident itself happened months ago, one may wonder what this single woman did to deserve this punishment when her entire class of six- and seven-year-olds, their parents, and the rest of the school staff, should have been in jail with her. Also, one may wonder why it is so terrible to name a bear Mohamed, but fine to name a child Mohamed? But I digress…

The point of this post is that 5fm DJ Gareth Cliff dared to say on his show that if a God is offended by the use of his name by a mere mortal, offended enough to make it a commandment, then that God is petty (can i get a gasp?). Personally, I find Cliff’s logic infallible. I would add that if a God is so injured by the taking in vain of his name that he has to ban people from doing so at peril of their eternal peace, then that God must truly be a weak, snivelling thing to boot. I would like to thank Gareth Cliff for his excellent insight.

But not so, 5fm listeners. No indeed, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and one listener wrote in to Cliff personally about his blasphemous ways, and then was shocked and apalled when he did her the courtesy of reminding her that there is no God, no Tooth Fairy, and no Santa Claus either. Given the number of exclamation marks in her original email, and her inability to spell the word ‘you’, I could have guessed that her reaction to that factual dissemination would not be good, and indeed it was not. Cliff is now facing a tribunal of the broadcasting complaints commission over the whole incident.

What amazes me is that people genuinely believe that the commission is meant to step in to shield them from insults against their imaginary friend, just because he’s popular. People honestly believe that religion, for some reason, deserves more respect than any other position a person may hold. You can insult people’s politics, their taste in movies and their choice of music, but woe betide anyone who dares to insult their made up stories about how the world works! No, indeed, as soon as someone starts going on about religion, we have to shut our mouths and nod respectfully. May I add that the next time someone expects this, you give them the respect they truly deserve: fix a smile on your face, hold your hands up to show they are empty, nod vigorously, and slowly start backing away until you are about 4 metres away from them, then break into a flat sprint in the opposite direction.

Because if the religious deserve any kind of respect, it’s the same respect you would give to the clinically insane.

Rapport fires columnist for objective opinion on Satanism

The sad state of freedom of expression in South Africa: columnist Deon Maas was just fired after his article provoked readers to threaten a boycott of the paper. What was it that this columnist said that so sparked the ire of the public?

In his article, Maas wrote that satanism is “just a different philosophy”.

“Satan does not necessarily represent evil; it is just a different philosophy. You still pray, but only to another god. If Muslims think they are having a hard time, they should look at satanism. They really have a bad deal.”

He said the Constitution gives people the freedom to practise the religion of their choice.

Yes, that’s right, Maas dared to point out the hypocrisy of people who call for freedom of religion and denounce Satanism in the same breath. He dared to explain that along with freedom to practice your religion comes the freedom of others to practice theirs, no matter how much you might not like it. And I’m sure the Christian readers didn’t like that one bit.

The Rapport has of course made it impossible to search for this article on their site, but they didn’t do a very good job of actually removing the page, and luckily Google’s habit of caching pages made it easy for me to resurrect the link. Here it is, although in Afrikaans. And, because I’m sure the Rapport will be toasting it as soon as they realise it’s still up there and people can still get to it, I’ve reproduced the entire article below the fold. If anyone is interested in providing a translation into English, I’d be very happy to post that too (update: English translation here courtesy of andrewdotcoza, and another in the comments below courtesy of residentRsole).

Bones found near Van Rooyen’s house

In the papers this week:

Material suspected to be human bones have been unearthed at a home in Capital Park, next door to the home of paedophile Gert van Rooyen, Pretoria police said on Wednesday.

Captain Percy Morokane said the owners of the home were installing a swimming pool when the discovery was made on Tuesday evening.

They immediately contacted the police.

Forensic experts visited the site and the material would be sent for forensic testing, said Morokane.

Morokane goes on to elaborate in another article:

The matter is currently under investigation and at this stage we do not know whether what was found are indeed human bones or not. Our forensic experts will analyse the find to determine whether it is human or animal bones.

I’m a little excited about this for a couple of reasons, although Captain Morokane is correct in advising patience. If the bones turn out to be human, and if they are in good enough condition for DNA sampling, and if they can then be matched to one of the missing girls, we will have plenty of reason to celebrate.

Firstly, it’ll be the biggest break in the case in 15 years, will give important closure to at least one family, and may lead to the discovery of the rest of the girls’ remains. I’m sure no one would disagree that this would be the stuff movies are made of, and an enormous relief to the families and the country at large.

But secondly, it may provide proof that Danie Krugel’s super-satellite-DNA-finding machine is worthless. Here are a few extracts from the transcript of the Carte Blanche show where the intrepid investigator with the magic box takes readings to determine the position of the bodies:

To refine the search Danie needed to get at least one more reading on each of the two hair samples from another location.

He travelled to Pretoria and went straight to 227 Malherbe Street, Capital Park, the empty stand where Van Rooyen’s house once stood and the last place where the missing girls are thought to have been.

The data compiled from Yolanda Wessels’ hair was tested again.

Danie: “The first signal I got showed is a line running along the side of Capital Park. Then I went up a few kilometres and the second signal came back to an area very, very close to the railway area in Capital Park.”

At the site Danie also tested Anne-Mari’s data and within ten minutes determined that the signal he’d picked up for her was coming from the same place.

Danie: “Both readings lead me to this area. If you take the reeds and the dam area and you assume you have an accurate reading then this is the correct area. But if there is a slight deviation I would include the railway line. But both readings pointed to this side.”

Ruda: “It was just too much of a coincidence: identical readings for both Yolanda and Anne-Marie pointing to a secluded area less than two kilometres from Van Rooyen’s house. If this empty stretch of land now being developed is indeed the correct location, it can only mean one thing: the two girls are no longer alive.”

Yes, that’s right. If the bones recently found in Capital Park prove to be those of either Yolanda Wessels or Anne-Marie Wapenaar, then Krugel failed to pick them up when he was standing metres away from them, on the plot next door. If he can’t even do that, why would you think he could find people anywhere in the world?

And I find that sort of ironic, because there will be a lot of people who would think that was proof that it did work. I mean, he was only 2 km off. What’s 2 km amongst friends?

Carte Blanche: messing up the science since 1988

A couple of weekends ago, Carte Blanche decided to broadcast yet another uninformed, one-sided pretense at science reporting, with a feature about the proposed Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) program. Typical of Carte Blanche, their piece can roughly be summarized as:

• Start out wasting time with an emotionally-charged but utterly irrelevant history of South Africa’s Cold War nuclear weapons program. Blame everything on apartheid and completely ignore the Mutually Assured Destruction scenario that the world existed in at that time.
• Bring on an environmental sociologist and political economist, who chairs an anti-GM organization and stirs up anti-nuclear energy hysteria professionally, to talk about SA’s nuclear program. But, most importantly, imply that he’s an unbiased, independent nuclear energy researcher.
• Talk about the PBMR program, give exceedingly brief air time to the people who designed, commissioned and okay’ed the thing, but give lots of air time to detractors, and definitely don’t give air time for responses to their comments. Imply conspiracies and cover-ups, but don’t show any hard evidence of either.
• Question the level to which Eskom has listened to public opinions on the reactor, then interview some members of the public whose level of education and personal research into nuclear energy and its environmental effects proves exactly why Eskom shouldn’t be listening to these people’s opinions.
• Harp on about Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, North Korea, Lybia, Hiroshima and any other scare tactic you can think of. Use this opportunity to mention apartheid again.
• End on a dramatic note: that the South African Government will almost certainly use the nuclear program to throw out the non-proliferation treaty and build a bomb at its earliest convenience.

This was hardly a balanced report on the state of nuclear energy in SA – it was a hysterical, sensationalist opinion piece fueled by anti-nuclear lobbyists and environauts with an agenda. It was bad reporting, plain and simple.

Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t potentially issues with the PBMR design, or that nuclear power doesn’t bring with it inherent safety guidelines that need to be strongly followed. I’m also definitely not saying that there couldn’t have been some miscalculations on the government’s behalf about the cost and timelines for getting these plants online. But I am definitely saying that if you are going to run a report that asks questions about whether the government’s current nuclear power plan is a good idea, intimating that the government’s reason for building it is to create a front for nuclear weapons manufacture is just plain stupid.

Let’s start with a basic bit of logic: we already have two nuclear reactors. If the government wanted to extract weapons grade plutonium from nuclear materials used in power plants, they wouldn’t have to build a new nuclear plant to do it. Here’s another idea: it’s a hell of a lot easier to buy a nuclear weapon than to build one, and it’s even easier to just hang on to the ones you had during the Cold War and not report them. So frankly, if the government really wanted a nuclear weapon, chances are they already have it, which makes objecting to the PBMR on the basis of nukes utterly pointless. Finally, PBMR reactors are within a class of reactors considered to be proliferation-resistant i.e. it’s a damn side harder for the men in black hats to get weapons grade plutonium from these reactors than from traditional reactors like Koeberg. So really, if the government wanted to build a nuclear plant to use for making weapons, it would make more like Koeberg, not invest time and money in a plant that will make it harder to make nukes!

The PBMR design has its shortcomings, but so does every other design of power plant ever, nuclear or otherwise. That doesn’t mean that we should have no power plants, or that no design is worth building. Don’t throw the entire nuclear power baby out with the PBMR bathwater.

Nuclear power has safety issues, but I challenge you to name even one accident other than Chernobyl and Three Mile Island off the top of your head. Then compare that to the hundreds of reactors around the world, and you maybe get some perspective for the safety figures. Comparing every nuclear power plant to Chernobyl is like arguing to ground all aeroplanes on the basis of the Hindenburg disaster.

And finally, whatever your issue with nuclear power, it’s very telling that not a single person ends their anti-nuclear tirade with a better solution.

Mbeki still an AIDS Dissident

In a new biography entitled Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred, author Mark Gevisser brings forth new evidence that Mbeki is still firmly entrenched within the dissident movement. Givesser writes:

“In June 2007 … I received a phone call late one Saturday night from Thabo Mbeki.” Mbeki, it seems, wanted to know if Gevisser had seen the Castro Hlongwane document. He said he had and asked Mbeki “whether he was its author.”

“[Mbeki] declined to confirm this, stating that it had been written by a ‘collective’ of ANC leaders, but agreed that it was an accurate reflection of his views. The following day, a Presidency driver delivered a hard copy almost twice as long as the one circulated in 2002, with citations from publications as fresh as August 2006. Mbeki had never previously contacted me unsolicited, and my reading of this unusual interaction was that he wished the record to reflect that – despite his near-silence since it was initially distributed – he still held to the views expressed in ‘Castro Hlongwane’, which clearly remained a living, breathing document on his desktop.”

Of course, Mbeki was lying through his teeth, because he wrote it himself, using his own computer, which kindly and helpfully imprinted his name and ‘Office of the President’ on the document properties. Apparently in an attempt to win Worst Monograph Title in History, the document was called Castro Hlongwane, Caravans, Cats, Geese, Foot & Mouth and Statistics: HIV/AIDS and the Struggle for the Humanisation of the African. It was circulated anonymously within the ANC, but made its way out of the circle of trust thanks to fellow AIDS dissident and Mbeki ear-whisperer Anita Allen, who apparently forwarded it on to the known world, which eventuall included the Mail & Guardian.

The document is a 100-page tirade where Mbeki speaks about himself favourably in the third person, speaks of AIDS scientists like they were Nazi concentration camp doctors and portrayes black people who accept orthodox Aids science as “self-repressed” victims of a slave mentality. If you really want to know what Mbeki thinks about AIDS, I suggest you take the time to glance at it. Here are a few choice quotes:

This monograph… accepts the determination that AIDS stands for Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. It accepts that a Syndrome is a collection of diseases. It proceeds from the assumption that the collection of diseases generally described as belonging to the AIDS syndrome have known causes. It rejects as illogical the proposition that AIDS is a single disease caused by a singular virus, HIV. In other words, it accepts that AIDS is either a syndrome or a disease. It cannot be both. Its acronym correctly describes it as a syndrome. For this reason, it is not described as AIDD.

 This monograph… rejects as baseless and self-serving the assertion that millions of our people are HIV positive.

[T]he HIV/AIDS thesis as it has affected and affects Africans and black people in general, is also informed by deeply entrenched and centuries-old white racist beliefs and concepts about Africans and black people. At the same time as this thesis is based on these racist beliefs and concepts, it makes a powerful contribution to the further entrenchment and popularisation of racism.

Such scientific knowledge as was possible two decades ago must be supported by all and sundry, including scientists, as part of a religious dogma. Accordingly, to establish his or her credentials, everybody must answer the ballad question – do you believe that HIV causes AIDS! Belief about a scientific matter, and not empirical evidence, thus becomes the criterion of truth.

But, as in the UK, it is precisely this scare mongering that is condemning millions of our own people to ill-health, disability and death because of a refusal to recognise the critical importance of the diseases of poverty and other illnesses that afflict our people, including STDs. This is done to sustain a massive political-commercial campaign to promote anti-retroviral drugs.

We say this because exactly the same generic system (the ELISA test) that is used to “test for HIV” in human beings, is also used to test for Foot and Mouth Disease in cattle!

For centuries we have carried the burden of the crimes and falsities of ’scientific’ Eurocentrism, its dogmas imposed upon our being as the brands of a definitive, ‘universal’ truth.

Ah yes, that would be the leader of our nation talking. No wonder we’re in the state we’re in.

Evolution comes to SA schools

Things are about to get interesting for South African biology teachers – as of next year, they will be charged with teaching evolution in Grade 12.

Yes, strange as it may seem, up until now one of the most elegant concepts in science, one of the greatest achievements of human thought, has been avoided as a subject in SA schools. Children have learned about Galileo and Newton and Einstein, but when in comes to Darwin, they have been left in the dark. No longer, says the education department, but it is well aware it’s going to have a fight on its hands.

You see, SA is no different than some other countries we won’t mention directly, in that we have a fairly large religious contingent who similarly believe that their made up stories about the origin of man should somehow compete with, or even overshadow, all that the human race has learned about the world in the last two millenia. Yes indeed, there are going to be plenty of parents who will eagerly point out to any who will listen that they are determined to ensure their children remain as ignorant as they are.

But what you wouldn’t expect is for teachers to be opposed to improving children’s education, yet that is exactly what the education department is facing already:

At a recent conference on teacher training, a teacher said: “I am disappointed about the fact that evolution attacks God’s creation. It also mixes Genesis with idol worshippers of Babylon, which were never there when God created planet Earth.”

Another said he thought the topic should be voluntary because he didn’t think it suitable for people who believe in God. “I am totally against evolution,” another teacher said.

Matters came to a head after snippets of a video, Tiny Humans: Finding Hobbits in Flores, was shown. The video traces the origin of tiny prehistoric humans somewhere on an Indonesian island. They are depicted as short and dark-skinned people. This offended some black teachers. They said that evolution was a racist theory. It “terribly undermines black people, everything bad gets a black colour. It means blacks were apes,” they said.

Right, why not? I mean, it’s not as if their job is to educate people, implying that they might actually be educated themselves. I’m sure ignorance and rash assumption is a requirement for people charged with the edification of our children.

And what is the education department’s response?

The department had been “sensitive to the views of a wide range of persons and attempts at all times to demonstrate this sensitivity” in introducing evolution…

No child would be compelled to “adopt” or “defend the viewpoint or any way subscribe to evolution”. So there could be no reason for parents to take legal action, Vinjevold said.

The department took into account the fact that different theories offered a variety of explanations on the origin of human beings. Evolution was one of such explanations and learners were not expected to believe it, but to see it as one school of thought, she said.

What kind of namby-pamby, bullshit response is that? Can you imagine if they were saying that no child would be compelled to “adopt” or “defend” or “subscribe” to the theory of gravity? That different theories offered a variety of explanations for why masses were attracted to each other, but gravity was only one of such explanations and learners were not expected to believe it? The thought isn’t silly because the theory of gravity is somehow more solid or factual than evolution… it’s just because there isn’t a major world religion that believes the reason planets are attracted to each other, and we to them, is due to Intelligent Falling.