Mark your words carefully, Mogoeng

One would like to say that Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng was unrepentant after his prayer this week that vaccines with the “mark of Satan” should be destroyed by God … but for him, and many others, there has been no sin.

The judge said yesterday his remarks about the vaccine had been “honestly misunderstood”, or “deliberately misunderstood”.

But what is there to misunderstand about a religious zealot – for that is what he is – warning people that some vaccines may contain “666”, which is from Satan and will corrupt their DNA?

His prayer and his subsequent explanation – referring to the “end times”, which Christians believe mark the return of God to take back humanity – have worrying echoes of the Christian fundamentalist dogma spouted by extreme right-wingers around the world, but most prominently in the US.

Many of them believe vaccines have within them some way of controlling people, or poisoning them. Mogoeng’s prayer taps right into that absurd paranoia.

The result of his prayer could be that people refuse to be vaccinated – and that is a reality, no matter his spin about being “misunderstood” – and thereby exacerbate the Covid-19 crisis.

Mogoeng is unapologetic about his in-your-face Christianity and his belief that it is not incompatible with his role as the country’s most senior jurist. Indeed, there has been no suggestion that his judgment or his judicial opinions have been in any way coloured by his unshakeable personal beliefs.

However, public spectacles like this raise the prospect of problems in future if there is a constitutional court case which has religious elements to it. That is because, as Mogoeng correctly says, the constitution allows for freedom of religion and also provides that South Africa is a secular state.

The chief justice needs to be more circumspect in his public utterances.

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