I am an atheist, I do not believe in the existence of God or any gods. I am also not spiritual, so I do not believe in ancestors and spirits. I believe that there is a scientific explanation for everything in the universe and that where no scientific explanation is clear, it is because the phenomenon is not adequately understood.
In my world, nothing is unexplainable and for this reason, I do not seek answers from spiritual or religious realms. When I was younger, I used to dismiss religion as nothing more than the opium of the masses, and spirituality as nothing more than an affair with the mystical. You could never have a discussion with me about religion in particular – I dismissed it with contempt and viewed religious people as unintellectual, unscientific figures of pathos.
As I grow older, I am no longer as contemptuous as I used to be. I remain an atheist and that is unlikely to ever change. But I do not think religious people are unintellectual or piteous. Instead, I have resigned myself to the idea that we exist in different realms and we hold different beliefs that are informed by different experiences, or different interpretations of similar experiences.
Religious people are not unintellectual, their intellectualism is simply one that I do not identify with or understand. But my lack of understanding does not inherently mean something is senseless – it only means that I do not possess the requisite experience or knowledge to comprehend and rationalise it, and the same applies to them with regards to my “objective” scientific realm.
I wish people could employ this perspective in their analysis of ANC voters. I have observed with great curiosity how many people in our country hold the belief that those who vote for the ANC are ignorant, unintelligent or simply devoid of morality. It is a perception most pronounced on social media and online news platforms.
It has been especially pronounced over the past few days as the nation contemplates local government election outcomes. The social media sphere has been condemning residents of the Eastern Cape province in particular, who have once again given the ANC a mandate to govern in most municipalities, including the Buffalo City metropolitan municipality which is now one of only two metros in the country where the ANC obtained a majority. Some argue that the people of the EC deserve the poverty and underdevelopment they endure, because they keep voting for an ANC government characterised by corruption and maladministration.
This is a simplistic and arrogant argument no different to the one I held a few years ago that religious people are unintelligent and irrational. It disregards the fact that poor people make rational decisions based on their own experiences and knowledge. It infantilises the poor, as though they need middle-class supervision to think.
It is also grounded in a politics of absolutism – the idea that a party is either completely good or completely bad. This characterisation is apolitical and completely false. The ANC is a deeply flawed organisation that has presided over a lot of rot in society. But it is also an organisation that has done a lot of good in our country and has bettered conditions for many people.
While it sounds radical to scream “1994 changed fokol”, it is also dishonest. In many parts of our country, change has happened at a glacial pace, but in many parts of our country, change has happened. These two things can exist together – something which is incomprehensible to the absolutists in our midst who want to believe that they hold a monopoly on reason. They don’t.
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