DA leaders should follow Premier Winde’s example on vaccines

During the height of the Covid pandemic, there was one outstanding leader holding political office in South Africa: Western Cape Premier Alan Winde. His messages were clear and science-based. He supported the provincial health department’s initiatives which involved making sure hospitals had the capacity to deal with the surges in Covid cases.

Winde’s leadership is one of the reasons why the Western Cape led the way with the speed of its vaccine rollout and, as importantly, the quality of the data it produced, which showed how effective the vaccine rollout was.

So it’s a great pity that Winde’s work, which one would think the DA leadership would be proud of, is being undermined by several of the party’s top people, including John Steenhuisen, Helen Zille and, most of all, Beverley Schäfer. They have been cosying up to Dr Aseem Malhotra, a prominent anti-vaxxer from the UK who has been touring South Africa and causing confusion here, spreading misleading information.

According to News24, the anti-vaxxer Malhotra was invited by Schäfer to present at the Western Cape legislature’s auditorium on 15 March. He has been photographed one-on-one with Steenhuisen, and is in a video with Zille. A transcript of the conversation between them was placed on Twitter.

Winde, again to his credit, reacted appropriately: “I hope that how this event happened will be investigated,” he told News24. “The international scientific evidence clearly shows that Covid-19 vaccines are the best tools to manage the virus and have saved and continue to save lives.”

I don’t wish to deal with the numerous misleading claims made by the British anti-vaxxer. GroundUp has several times previously presented the overwhelming evidence from the Western Cape that Covid vaccines have saved many lives. Here is a graph from Our World in Data that screams: “The anti-vaxxer from England talks nonsense.”

One of our reporters asked Steenhuisen to explain why he met with this particular anti-vaxxer. Steenhuisen responded with a long exposition of liberalism. He wrote: “As a leader and a legislator, I regularly meet with people with different views and opinions. This traverses a number of topics and issues from the legalisation of rhino horn, the death penalty, to the situation in the Middle East. I am always available to listen to the views and opinions of others, even when these are contrary to mine.”

This is at best naive. For one thing, the demands for meetings with Steenhuisen must far exceed his available time. More importantly, every formal meeting a senior political leader has with someone sends a message to the public; not necessarily that you agree with the person but that you consider their views or position in society sufficiently important to be worth your time. By meeting with the anti-vaxxer Malhotra, Steenhuisen has disrespected the health workers across the country, and especially the medical leaders in the battle against Covid. It was entirely unnecessary.

At least Steenhuisen reaffirmed his support for Covid vaccines, but Schäfer, who is the Deputy Speaker in the Western Cape legislature, continues to publicly express misinformation about vaccinations on her Twitter account. One would think this violates DA policy. People have been disciplined in the DA for far less.

Anti-vaccination nonsense was virtually absent from the South African discourse before Covid. It is a terrible idea imported mostly from American and European charlatans. Unfortunately, not only bad ideas, but measles also crosses borders. We are in the midst of a measles outbreak, in part because not enough people are vaccinated against this disease. This is a time when all major political parties should be united in promoting vaccination unequivocally.

Published originally on GroundUp | By Nathan Geffen