Space for women astronauts

– Space, the next frontier for gender equality? Europe’s space agency launched a mission this week to take on more women astronauts as it kicked off its first recruitment campaign for more than a decade.

Nearly 60 years since the first human blasted off into space, women account for just 11% of the 560 people who have travelled beyond the earth’s atmosphere, according to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.

But following in the footsteps of Nasa, the Paris-headquartered European Space Agency (ESA) said it wanted to ensure greater diversity among its astronauts.

“Representing all parts of our society is a concern that we take very seriously,” said David Parker, the agency’s director of human and robotic exploration.

“Diversity at ESA should not only address the origin, age, background or gender of our astronauts, but also perhaps physical disabilities,” he said in a statement on Monday.

Nasa, the US space agency, announced plans last year to send the first female astronaut to the moon by 2024 through its Artemis moon programme.

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In what may be a first of its kind ruling in South Africa, the Western Cape High Court this week found an Australian mining group’s defamation claims against six local lawyers and activists – who had publicly gone up against it – smacked of a hidden agenda to gag its detractors.

Deputy Judge President Patricia Goliath found the R14.5 million worth of claims Mineral Commodities Ltd (MRC), together with its local subsidiary, Mineral Sands Resources, had launched, looked in fact to be “not genuine and bona fide, but merely a pretext with the only purpose to silence its opponents and critics”.

“Corporations should not be allowed to weaponise our legal system against the ordinary citizen and activists in order to intimidate and silence them,” she said.

“Litigation that is not aimed at vindicating legitimate rights, but is part of a broad and purposeful strategy to intimidate, distract and silence public criticism, constitutes an improper use of the judicial process and is vexatious.”

Strategic litigation against public participation, or “Slapp,” is usually meritless and professors Penelope Canan and George W Pring – who coined the term – in their research say it “is intended to intimidate and silence” an organisation’s detractors by mulcting them in legal costs until they eventually abandon their cause.

It often takes the form of defamation claims but can also manifest as interdict applications, or delictual liability cases.

Goliath made a landmark ruling that the Slapp suit defence the lawyers and activists wanted to put up – thought to be the first of its kind in SA – was a valid one.

The cases against them centre on comments they’ve made about MCR’s involvement in the controversial Xolobeni mining project in the Eastern Cape and Mineral Sands Resources’ Tormin operation in the Western Cape.

They are, in fact, just a bullying tactic and without any merit, say the lawyers and activists.

Goliath said Slapp worked by “exploiting the inequality of finances and human resources available to large corporations compared to the targets”.

“These lawsuits are notoriously long, drawn out and extremely expensive legal battles, which consume vast amounts of time, energy, money and resources.”

In matters such as those at the heart of the current case, she said, it was critically important large corporations were open to public scrutiny “without the inhibiting risk of crippling liability for defamation”.

She described the amounts the mining group was claiming as “inexplicably exorbitant”.

“However, it appears the action is not aimed at obtaining monetary or financial damages, but rather vindicating a right.”