Johannesburg – The Covid-19 pandemic is a fast-moving health emergency that has infected millions of people and killed many other millions worldwide.
It has devastated livelihoods, education and the social development of many.
It is also a scientific and technological challenge that has seen many scientists scrambling in their laboratories to understand the virus and come up with potential cures and vaccines.
Scientists have done a fantastic job, developing eective and safe vaccines in record time, considering that vaccines usually take much longer to develop, test and deploy.
But then you have people who have never set foot in a laboratory shooting their mouths off on the pandemic based on no facts.
Donald Trump and his fellow travellers had declared the pandemic a li le u that would go away of its own accord sooner or later.
He ridiculed the wearing of masks, social distancing and denied the patently clear exponential increases in infections in his country.
As a result, the United States has the largest infections and deaths in the world.
The same man refused to accept the numbers indicating his loss of the American presidential election to Joe Biden.
He incited a mob a ack on Capitol Hill on the basis that the numbers were wrong despite no facts to back up his claims.
A lot of people were injured, five died and the American society remains divided to this day.
We have a similar situation in our country where people shoot off their mouths on the basis of no facts.
The government of South Africa has its faults, but can’t we have people criticising them on facts?
No one in the whole world knew that the AstraZeneca vaccine would be less effective on the Covid-19 501Y.V2 variant now dominant in South Africa.
Why should the authorities in this country be pilloried for ordering and receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine when nobody in the world knew that it would not be sufficiently effective at the time of the ordering and receipt thereof?
Should we not be praising our scientists for determining the potency of the vaccine before it was rolled out?
There are others, also on the basis of no facts, claiming to know how dangerous and ineffective the vaccines might be.
Some of them claim the vaccines would detrimentally change people’s DNA. They say it without proof.
These are dangerous claims. Do we not remember that scientists were killed for stating that the earth is round?
Yet others were similarly persecuted for establishing the existence of the number zero and elaborating on its properties.
Do we also remember there were people who objected to heart transplants on the basis that it would temper with religious teachings?
Mercifully, these are non-issues today. Science has se led them. But at what cost? Staying in South Africa, there is no gainsaying that former president Jacob Zuma was a veritable warrior for freedom.
He fought in the struggle and helped to negotiate the se lement that gave us the present constitution.
He voted to adopt it, he took an oath, pledging to uphold and defend the constitution in his capacity as head of state.
It is also true that he established the Zondo Commission that is probing state capture and appointed Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo to chair it. At the time of the appointment, he begged everybody to give the commission all the assistance it needs.
And now he turns around and claims that the commission was established specifically to harm him, and that Zondo is biased and has a vende a against him.
Which is which?
The stand-off from this situation might lead to a point where people are hurt.
For what? For the refusal to accept the facts, a la Trump. No-facts discourses are dangerous.
•Mosibudi Mangena was the minister of science and technology from April 29 2004 until May 10 2009.
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