ALBIE Sachs must be one of the sprightliest nonagenarians you’re likely to find. I was at a well-attended birthday celebration at Constitution Hill the other day, and it was

invigorating. He shared reflections on the massive achievements of our early constitutional processes in defending the rights of the marginalised – he was particularly proud of his role in advancing constitutional protection and equal rights to same sex couples. And he is an art lover – just visit the Constitutional Court to see his hand in bringing the beauty of human creativity into a courtroom. He is one of our outstanding legal minds in his ability to apply the dry tools of the law in defence of humanity. And his survival of a car bomb explosion that nearly claimed his life inspired him to find something in himself that would not let him give in to the hatred and vengefulness of violence. His book ‘The soft vengeance of a freedom fighter” was a declaration to the world. That celebratory night in Johannesburg he spoke about cold knowledge – the hard evidence of fact that has informed so much of his

life as a socialist, and about warm knowledge – that tapping into another realm to enable him to say that soft vengeance is not revenge but the antithesis of what caused the pain for which we so often seek retribution.

We must have a scientific, evidence base for our decisions about how we manage our world. Medicine, as inexact as it may be, offers enough evidence that interventions by our health care workers can make us better. The climate crisis exists – there is hard evidence that the world is changing because of human conduct, and not in a good way. The evidence is there that society’s pursuit of increasing wealth and consumption is not the way to make sure everyone has enough to live. Researchers in public systems collate and analyse data to try to understand how systems work, a key part of planning and designing policies to deal with

societal challenges.

Cold empirical knowledge allows us to plot a course based as much as possible on the consideration of incontrovertible facts about our current situation. It should enable us to find a way towards solutions, perhaps out of a difficult position we find ourselves in.

The warm knowledge Albie Sachs was talking about tells us a different story. It is no less important than the empirical stuff. It is the truth of those who live it every day. It includes how we adapt to survival by caring and forming social connections. The archaeologist Margeret Mead said that the earliest signs of civilisation was a healed femur, because that told a story of compassion. For that femur to heal, someone would have taken care of the injured being when they might have been left to die.

Warm knowledge talks of the spiritual realm that allows people to connect with ancestors and those who have gone before. We can’t explain it with cold facts, but you know that this connection to that realm is an ever-present part of our reality. There’s the cultural connection to our early formative years that shape us and hold communities and families together, and that shape the values and beliefs of entire society.

Both cold and warm bring their challenges. Culture and religion have been used to divide, to alienate, to separate, to favour parts of our community over others. An almost religious adherence to empirical evidence has been used for ages to justify social and economic systems that are just plain bad for humanity. Systems based on unrestrained consumption in pursuit of economic growth are killing us.

I guess what this tells me is that humans are made – warts and all – to be able to use the tools at their disposal to shape the world, their destiny. We have to use the hard evidence of fact, stuff that has been proved through experimentation, observation, and proof of causality. We’d be dead as a species long ago otherwise. But this is insufficient if we are to impact our world in a more progressive way. We have to open ourselves to the beauty of art and be inspired. We must embrace the spiritual in our lives that allow us to breathe, to connect, to find the beauty in our connects.

sachs

Green Shoots: Lessons from a freedom fighter’s soft vengeance