Science on the frontline as Abdool Karim challenges power at Bio26 South Africa

By Siqhamo Jama

 

When the nation’s world-renowned epidemiologist took the stage at the Bio26 South Africa Congress in Makhanda, we expected a pandemic post-mortem and a research-based roadmap forward. We expected charts, data, best practices and policy. What we did not expect was a warning about an entirely different crisis: the Infodemic, a war on truth, orchestrated by those in power. But Professor Salim Abdool Karim did not come to Bio26 to play it safe.

Speaking to a rapt auditorium, the man who guided South Africa through the HIV-AIDS and COVID-19 crises delivered a message that felt less like a lecture and more like a call to arms. He warned that the world has moved beyond the era of random and mostly harmless social media misinformation. We have entered something far darker, he argued: the age of ‘institutionalised disinformation’, where governments manufacture falsehoods to protect their power.

“The state is now becoming the source of incorrect information,” Prof Abdool Karim told the hushed room. “If the truth becomes the enemy, then those who speak the truth become the enemy too.”

Before this sharper turn, the audience shared a moment of reunion as Conference Chair, Professor Rosemary Dorrington, a microbiology researcher at Rhodes University, introduced Abdool Karim. At the height of the COVID-19 crisis, the two scientists were effectively generals in the same war. Prof Abdool Karim commanded South Africa’s national scientific response, while Dorrington helped steer Rhodes University and the Eastern Cape through its fiercest waves of infection.

In 2021, Rhodes University conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Science on Prof Abdool Karim virtually, recognising his immense contribution to infectious disease control and his steady, level-headed leadership during the pandemic. This week, he stood where that honour would have been received in person, had social distancing not intervened.

From there, and in keeping with Rhodes University’s long-standing ethos of speaking truth to power, Prof Abdool Karim shifted his focus from the battlefield of public health to the political terrain of the United States.

He argued that political leaders are increasingly using disinformation to obscure the accumulation of wealth and influence. He did not mince words, using the US as a cautionary tale of how political power can blur the lines between public service and private gain.

“[President Donald] Trump is doing so, not just in his Trump Version 1, but also in his second [administration],” Prof Abdool Karim told the audience, offering his own analysis of the relationship between power, wealth and information.

He drew a sharp line between political authority and the corruption of truth, warning that when wealth and power are accumulated in this way, the truth becomes “inconvenient”. It was a stark, unapologetic critique of global power structures.

The scientific method as resistance

The shift in tone was absolute. Prof Abdool Karim looked out at the room of researchers, students and academics and effectively deputised them. He framed the scientific method not merely as a career path, but as a form of resistance.

“Each one of you, as scientists, are powerful people,” he said. “Because you are the purveyors of truth. You make it your job to search for the truth. That remains for us our main weapon.”

He pointed to sustained attacks on figures such as Anthony Fauci as evidence that science itself has become a frontline in the war against disinformation. The implication was clear: in a world shaped by state-sponsored falsehoods, factchecking is no longer a neutral act. It is a form of defiance.

The evening closed with a quiet acknowledgement of the burden carried by those who have spent years holding the line for truth. In a moment of recognition between battle-weary, seasoned scientists, Prof Abdool Karim presented Prof Dorrington with a personally inscribed copy of his book Standing Up for Science. “Because that’s what she does,” he said.

As the delegates spilled out of the auditorium into the Makhanda sunshine, the message lingered with uncomfortable clarity. Bio26 was not just a scientific congress; it became a reminder that science does not exist in a vacuum of neutrality. In an era where truth itself is contested terrain, Prof Abdool Karim’s warning landed with urgency: the work of scientists now extends beyond laboratories and journal publications into the public square. To pursue evidence, to insist on scientific rigour, to speak plainly in the face of disinformation is no longer simply good science; it is civic duty. On that afternoon, the frontline was unmistakably drawn, and science, once again, was asked to stand its ground.