How sad that Human Rights Day was overshadowed by recent acts of police brutality, and how drearily predictable that President Jacob Zuma could respond to same with nothing other than a reductive explanation that, hey, not all cops are bad, and that it was only a few rotten eggs that are, you know, like, rotten.
And so an opportunity to explore what exactly it that we as regulars here at the Mahogany Ridge should expect from our Bill of Rights and the constitution must sadly wait until next year.
To put it another way, just as we may believe we should enjoy the right not to die in a puddle of our own waste on the floor of a police cell after a sustained, two-hour assault for supposedly resisting arrest, so too does the SA Pagan Rights Alliance believe its members should be allowed to go about their various practices free of interference from those who are convinced they're up to no good.
According to the Citizen, the alliance plans to lay a hate speech complaint against Gauteng education MEC Barbara Creecy following comments she made at a signing ceremony with religious groups concerning an "anti-harmful" religious strategy in schools. As Creecy put it, "The practitioners from faith-based organisations are developing an anti-harmful religious practice strategy to guide and protect learners from spiritual attacks and abuse." Satanism and occultism were cited as examples of such "harmful practices", she added.
Naturally the pagans are quite upset. Octarine Valur of the SA Vampyre Alliance told the newspaper that Creecy was creating hostility towards religious minorities. "This encourages prejudice and intolerance towards these groups," she said, "and may even contribute to violence against those whose dignity and right to religious freedom is being made out to be a criminal offence."
Personally, I would have felt much better had Creecy signed a declaration with educators in which they all committed themselves to teaching children in an environment free of all forms of religion, superstition and the lunatic instruction of bearded weirdies and bothersome clerics. But hey, that's just me.