I've questioned UCT law analyst Pierre de Vos’
agenda and thus his legal opinions since his defence of UCT's
revocation of Flemming Rose's open lecture in 2016 (see here).
While he agreed the disinvite was "deplorable" and there was no basis
for it – it was in fact a banning of free speech which is contrary to South
Africa's constitution and all a university stands for – he still found it
tenable for irrational reasons. It's significant the Muslim community, on whose
behalf he, Max Price et al took offense, believed
the lecture ought to have proceeded.
De Vos, like most of the soft liberal-left
including intellectuals and those who write for Daily Maverick, is guided by a
strangling political correctness and paternalism – an ideological belief really
– only they have the currency for
what is and isn't acceptable.
His opinion today in Daily Maverick about the KwaZulu-Natal High Court’s call to pray ruling is another.
As an analysis of the law and
judgement, it's one of his weak ones (disclosure: I infrequently read him now).
It’s based less on the law, but on his social/philosophical beliefs which we’re
not interested in.
It's like his Rose opinion where
the law and facts are irrelevant to his political ideology, in the present case,
mistakenly conflating a neighbourly dispute with religious freedom, ironically freedoms
he does not universally support when it clashes with his political beliefs.
Proof is he foregoes objectivity and ventures into unfunny un-academic sarcasm and
irrelevance illustrated by the conclusion, "Sadly, the High Court rewarded
Ellaurie’s intransigence. But maybe it is time for the madrasah to start
teaching the pupils how to play golf?"
His logic is like those who see
disputes between whites and blacks through the prism of racism, i.e. by default
whites are racist even when the argument is not about race.
De Vos is dismissive of
neighbourly disputes like disturbing the peace complaints, which he says might clog
up the courts. It's an indication of his bias that he/Daily Maverick calls Ellaurie a “neighbour from hell” but defends or doesn’t find the madrasah
did anything wrong despite noise disturbances prohibited by law and that it can be
harmful.
Probably few noise complaints end up in court, but, for example,
the City of Cape Town’s law enforcement branch deals with many complaints about
barking dogs. So, it is a thing. (This year, after years of putting up with it,
we complained about a neighbour’s incessantly barking dog to which they were
deaf. Naturally, they took offense rather than being good neighbours.)
He appears unaware or doesn’t
care that civilised municipalities around the world have noise laws. Noise is
an unwanted, intrusive and/or harmful sound. Cape Town classifies it as “noise
pollution”, “noise disturbance” or “noise nuisance”.
From their website:
“A noise disturbance is a louder and continuous (long-term) type of noise which can be measured and comes from sources that are more permanent. Examples may include: nightclubs, industrial noise (machinery/vehicles/activity), church singing/bells, calls to mosque [etc]. A noise disturbance is measured to exceed the allowable legal noise limits.”
Cape Town imposes “harsh
fines for high noise levels” under the Western
Cape Provincial Noise Control Regulation PN200/2013, which is in accordance
with the Environmental Conservation Act, 1989. It’s likely other provinces have
the same or similar regulations.
De Vos appears not to know this and
based his specious argument on religious freedom (and golf!) rather than the
law and regulations about noise disturbances.
He appears unaware or doesn’t
care prolonged exposure to noise can have adverse medical and/or psychological
impacts, a fact the regulation takes cognisance of calling it “harmful” and “a
noise nuisance disturbs or impairs the convenience or peace of any
person”. It’s especially disruptive to sleep and rest.
He’s dismissive of noise
complaints – he calls people who make such and similar complaints
“hypersensitive and overzealous” – but likely writes as one who doesn’t live
near a mosque or church where there’s call to prayer or bells ring during the
early or late hours that can be heard from miles away, an industrial area or
whose neighbours have constantly barking dogs.
And how do errant golf balls
factor into noise pollution?
De Vos reduces valid concerns
about good neighbourliness and civic consideration – for that is what noise complaints
are always about – into his leftist, PC worldview that in this case applicant Chandra
Ellaurie is nothing more than a religious bigot
when his complaint, as the judgement says, was about Madrasah Taleemuddeen
Islamic Institute not being a good neighbour by transmitting sound, to
paraphrase the judgement, at a level which
carries beyond the boundaries of the Madrasah property. (His anti-Muslim
stance was egregious and unnecessary when his case
was strong on the merits of the law.)
De Vos is disingenuous and his
agenda transparent. He ignores the regulations on noise and the harm it can do solely
because he does not want to reward “overzealousness and hypersensitivity if it
appears to be animated by religious bigotry”.
So according to his reasoning, if
a person is a bigot and (but) medically
or psychologically afflicted, tough! And because they're bigots, they don't deserve legal rights.
This is the same perverse reasoning Fox News host Carlson Tucker used defending teen Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, charged with murdering two Kenosha protestors and injuring another, that Rittenhouse's action was justified given the violence and property damage in the city caused by protestors. This is vigilantism and how pogroms start – what dictators use to quiet those they don't agree with and like, which De Vos and the UCT cabal have used before. To them the law is justified only when protecting their interests.
Each person experiences noise
differently – some are more affected than others. But he implies his claimed
insensitivity to such disturbances is universal. We expect this hubris from
intractable ideologues: that theirs is the only accepted standard.
In the same way that he took
offense against Flemming Rose, not because of Rose’s alleged religious bigotry
when he was editor of Jyllands-Posten, but because Rose’s potential religious
audience (Muslims) might have been
offended by what he might have said had the lecture gone ahead. As some
indicated, they wouldn’t have been, but De Vos and his ilk always knows what’s best for us.
Apart from his opinion about the
law relating to noise disturbances being wrong, once again it shows his
dishonesty: he advocates freedom of association, which religious freedom is,
but when it suits his political agenda, disregards others’ freedoms – of
speech, of artistic expression and integrity of their person and property.
His madrasah opinion, and by extension Daily Maverick, is more political white noise we've come to expect from this overzealous and hypersensitive zealot who has displayed a more dangerous form of bigotry.
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