Steenhuisen and the DA’s Covid-19 plan and merit in contemporary SA
21 April 2020
Following that very insightful, exhaustive presentation by Professor Salim Abdool Karim, explaining in detail government’s evidence-based, analytic and scientific response to the Covid-19 outbreak, I made a post on Facebook which got me into a debate with someone on my wall, that I found to be incredibly relevant.
On my Facebook, I contrasted government’s response as shown by Professor Karim’s presentation, with that of the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) presented by its leader John Steenhuisen, juxtaposing Steenhuisen’s lack of academic qualifications with the internationally renowned professor, who is a member of the elite, exclusive Royal Society based in London, which boasts such luminaries as Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Sir Isaac Newton.
I used Steenhuisen’s lack of academic qualifications to poke fun at the DAs plan all the while acknowledging that he must have had experts advising him of course, and strangely enough a fellow comrade took umbrage with this, saying that my argument was ad hominem and not sustainable as the DA could easily have gotten an expert to present its plan, nullifying my line of argument. He also highlighted the fact that we should interrogate the DAs plan on merit and not “play the man”, as I was doing.
He also argued that I shouldn’t make it about education or lack thereof, as we as the ANC are the ones who gave SA an uneducated president in Jacob Zuma as well as many uneducated deployees in government and said that billionaire Johan Rupert is also uneducated to further solidify his point. You see, ANC comrades are not all people of group think as most on this platform fallaciously assume.