"At first blush, the question may seem race-obsessed and silly," he says, "After all, a person's attitude to science surely does not depend only on his or her race. But looked at over the broad sweep of our recent history, it is in fact a vital question, for democratic and apartheid South Africa have both understood science through race, with important consequences for us all." During the years of minority rule, generations of white leaders were uncomfortably aware that they lived on the periphery of Western civilisation; the greatest achievements of their culture were always hatched by people an ocean away.
"And yet," Steinberg says "scientific achievement was one of the things that they believed distinguished white from black civilisation [...] a sign that they were more advanced than the black people over whom they ruled. "That is why white South Africans got so dizzy with excitement [... and] Chris Barnard became a national legend for performing the world's first heart transplant. It was, in a strange sense, confirmation that white South Africans were truly and meaningfully white." And so, when the ANC came to power, it was clear that South Africa's relationship with science would have to change. Initially, the signs looked good. "The ANC was a highly modernist organisation. While in exile, it invested a lot, [...] sending many of its cadres to study engineering and medicine. It seemed that the organisation was up to the task of breaking the link between race and science." Once the ANC was in power, things quickly changed. "In the real world, scientific expertise was located in institutions and people it did not trust."
Consider Thabo Mbeki's position on HIV/Aids - first in supporting Virodene, a demonstrably ineffective and toxic treatment produced by a dubious researcher. Then by attaching himself to a fringe online movement claiming that HIV did not cause Aids. [...] the ANC's uneasy relationship with science is manifest [elsewhere, when prior to] last year's global climate summit in Durban, the Department of International Relations distributed a draft position paper claiming that climate change was a hoax funded by Western governments who wanted to make money by forcing developing countries to buy green technology. The paper was eventually suppressed, Steinberg says in his Times Live piece, "but the fact that senior civil servants wanted to take it to the world as South Africa's position tells us something about the mood in the government." One wonders what it will take for South Africa's governors to get beyond the idea that scientific knowledge has been captured by forces hostile to Africans, Steinberg says.
Read the full article on www.timeslive.co.za.
