M Mangena: 10th annual Memorial Lecture of Kgosi Edward Patrick Lebone
Molotlegi I

26 May 2007

Her Majesty the Queen Mother of the Royal Bafokeng, Mohumagadi Semane
Molotlegi His Majesty, Kgosi Leruo Molotlegi III
Members of the Bafokeng Royal family
Chairperson and members of the North West House of Traditional Leaders
Executive Mayor of Rustenburg, Wolmarans
Members of the business community
Representatives of organised labour and civil society
Distinguished guests

Bafokeng botlhe ke le dumedisa ka Pula! Bafokeng should consider themselves
an extremely fortunate people. Apart from coming from a history of a long line
of many visionary and wise dikgosi and leaders, the community also settled on
land endowed with rich agricultural and mineral resources. They have a rich and
proud heritage they have vowed to preserve and develop. And this 10th Memorial
Lecture in honour of Kgosi Molotlegi 1, attests to an indomitable will of
Bafokeng to preserve their legacy for posterity. The success of any nation
depends on the ability of its leadership to strike a careful balance between
the development of its material and human resources.

Kgosi Lebone Molotlegi 1 was a freedom fighter, a pioneer and a selfless
leader of his people. His visionary leadership has carved a path for the
Bafokeng to be what and where they are today. It fills us with a sense of pride
to realise that his successors are continuing to burn and grow the torch of
civilisation he created in his lifetime. Bafokeng are privileged to lord over
vast plains of platinum group mineral resources. The ability to sustain and
multiply this material wealth rests squarely on the shoulders of the young
members of this community. Therefore, the need to invest handsomely into the
future of the Bafokeng children can hardly be overemphasised.

It is very encouraging to learn that the Royal Bafokeng Kingdom has already
developed a very ambitious blueprint for the socio-economic development of
Phokeng and its environs. The 30 year physical infrastructure Royal Bafokeng
Nation (RBN) Master Plan unveiled last year and its incorporation into the
envisaged vision 2020 socio-economic development plan establishes a powerful
development platform for the Bafokeng people and contributes meaningfully to
the economies of South Africa and our neighbouring countries.

The quest for acquiring new knowledge and putting that knowledge to use in
developing new products and services has always been the most successful recipe
for sustainable development. In like vein for the Bafokeng to derive long
lasting benefits from the current platinum resources, they must also invest in
the strategic development of their youth. We all know that the current rich
platinum deposits will one day be depleted especially at the rate at which they
are currently being mined. Now this leads me to the next point of our
discussion today making wise investments by creating more value added products
through the development of our knowledge resources. At the moment most of the
Bafokeng employed by the mining houses operating in this area are ordinary mine
workers engaged in the digging and extraction of the platinum ore from the
rocks. This platinum is currently being sold at a very low price as raw
material.

However, if the same is beneficiated into new products and services it will
acquire value more that a thousand times. For example, one kilogram of steel is
90% material and 10% knowledge. But a copy of a Microsoft Windows Program is
95% knowledge and 5% material. It should thus be clear from this example that
platinum deposits can never be forever. We need to focus our investments more
into knowledge production so that we sustain the wealth of the whole nation.
"Knowledge," as a fine Cameroonian proverb aptly puts it "is better than
riches." The South Africa we inhabit today is defined by vast opportunities
never before seen.

Allow me to explore with you some of the opportunities offered by the world
of science, engineering, technology and innovation. The Ministry of Science and
Technology provides leadership and policy direction to a National System of
Innovation (NSI) that firmly believes that business, government and civil
society share a vision for a successful future and need to share all the
material and human resources that can turn that vision into reality. Thus, more
than ever before, we need to enhance the capacities of our youth to enable them
to fully exploit the knowledge produced by research and translate it into
products and services to improve the wealth of our country and the quality of
life of our people. In an endeavour to create an enabling environment for
innovative young minds to contribute to the global competitiveness of our
country, my department has put in place among other things the Innovation
Fund.

The Innovation Fund is managed by one of our science councils, the National
Research Foundation (NRF). The fund provides funding to near market and end
stage research which produces new intellectual property, commercial enterprises
and the expansion of existing industrial sectors. Our higher education students
particularly the first degree engineering students can take advantage of the
fund by developing as part of their final year work, projects resulting in the
creation of new intellectual property, establishment and/or expansion of
commercial enterprises. To this end my department has established the following
programmes which form the bulk of our onslaught on the scarcity of skills in
science and technology as well as the general challenge of unemployment on all
fronts; they include the internship programme run in partnership by my
department and the NRF manages a work experience programme for unemployed
graduates, thus providing Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) graduates
with practical and accelerated learning experience towards building workplace
competencies.

The Tshumisano Internship Programme, where we are working in partnership
with Tshumisano, places interns within various technology stations such as
Tshwane, Port Elizabeth, Vaal, Cape Peninsula, Mangosuthu and Free State
universities of technology. Among others the interns are exposed to practical
workplace experience in electronics, automotives, the manufacture of clothing,
chemicals and material composites, agri-food processing, metal casting and
metal value adding.

The National Information Society Learnership Programme which aims to
contribute towards building an information society and promote greater and
efficient use of Information Technology (IT). We will soon be launching the
Youth into Science Programme, whose primary objective is to contribute towards
the development of the priority skills base. Through this programme we will be
recruiting young people to pursue careers in areas of scarce skills. Our
targets include doubling science and technology literacy among the youth and
nurturing more than 5 000 young people with talent and potential in science,
engineering and technology by 2010.

I am convinced that if the youth of this platinum rich part of our country
embrace and take full advantage of these and other related programmes, we would
have seriously embarked on a path to renew and enrich our nation through SET.
The time is now for our people, young ones in particular, to participate in the
platinum industry not merely as miners but also as critical players in the
beneficiation processes of platinum. I challenge the Bafokeng to lead the
country in this process. We are encouraged to learn that the soon to be
released vision 2020 framework contains an ambitious education and human
development component which aims to develop strategies for supporting schools,
educators, learners and families with their educational goals from birth to
graduation.

This is indeed a visionary approach to community development and we pledge
our support in assisting the Bafokeng to realise its objectives. Let the
Bafokeng follow in the footsteps of our forefathers, the Africans of antiquity
who spearheaded civilisation as we know it. They were great empire builders.
They built strong economies and traded among themselves and with the continents
of Europe and Asia. The Ethiopian Empire which encompassed the present
Ethiopia, the Sudan, Egypt and possibly some parts of Uganda and Libya was by
far the most impressive and majestic of them all. While the rest of humanity,
including Europeans were still savages living in caves the Ethiopians practised
agriculture and advanced irrigation using water from the Nile River.

They invented the calendar which was already in use by at least 4236BC and
practised astronomy and astrology. They were the first people to write and
practise metallurgy, mathematics and advanced architecture which they employed
to build magnificent temples and the awe inspiring pyramids. People came from
many parts of the world to study at the academic centres of the Ethiopians. The
Greeks and Romans, in particular, used the knowledge they gained to develop
their own civilisations. Great scholars such as Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle,
Archimedes, Thales and many others were products of Ethiopian teaching and
scholarship.

So use your resources to build good schools, equip them with laboratories,
build science centres and other educational resource centres. Give bursaries to
your young to train as good teachers of languages, mathematics and science.
Then they will be able to prepare your children right from primary school for
the rigours of higher education. In that way you will be guaranteed a cadre of
knowledge workers among your youth. I wish to propose a few ways in which we
can partner with the Bafokeng to optimally exploit and revolutionise the vast
platinum resources by participating in the envisaged hydrogen economy boom. We
understand that hydrogen, as an energy carrier combined with fuel cell
technologies to produce electricity, is attracting considerable interest from
governments, international bodies and commercial companies worldwide.

This new energy paradigm is dependent primarily on the availability of the
platinum group metals as catalysts for producing electricity from hydrogen.
Many countries are relying on South Africa, as the main producer of these
platinum group metals, to ramp up its production to meet the steep demand that
will accompany the introduction of hydrogen as an energy carrier. My department
has developed a Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Research Development
Strategy. It is a strategy that boasts the full import of possible implications
for South Africa for positioning the country to benefit optimally from the
nascent global hydrogen industry. There is a strategic place for the Bafokeng
to participate in the implementation of such a strategy. At the risk of
belabouring the point, allow me to highlight the fact that hydrogen and fuel
cells are increasingly accepted as energy resources for the 21st century, which
promise to provide clean and efficient electrical power from a range of primary
energy sources.

The transition to hydrogen is expected to greatly reduce dependency on oil
and gas and reduce carbon dioxide emissions especially when used in efficient
fuel cells. Presently, South Africa's investment in hydrogen and fuel cell
research and development (R&D) is low by international standards. Our
strategy will therefore guide South Africa's investment in the Hydrogen and
Fuel Cell (H&FC) technologies to allow her to export fully developed, high
value platinum catalytic products to the global market as opposed to the raw
materials we are currently dealing with. This address would not be complete
without a few words about Kgosi Lebone Molotlegi 1, the founding father of the
modern day Bafokeng wealth and prosperity.

Not only did he wage a relentless struggle against the evils that the
apartheid regime visited against him and his people, but he also understood the
politics of power and economics. It is for that reason that he waged battles
against the incorporation of his people into the then Bophuthatswana and later
fought and won a protracted court case against the mining magnates, who finally
acceded to the partnership that is now benefiting the Bafokeng. Now given the
uniqueness of the Royal Bafokeng in our economic growth landscape and the
significant contribution of the platinum industry to our hydrogen economy, the
last word of this 10th annual Memorial Lecture of Kgosi Lebone Molotlegi
belongs to Robert Solow, "Over the long term, places with strong distinctive
identities are more likely to prosper than places without them. Every place
must identify its strongest most distinctive features and develop them or run
the risk of being all things to all persons and nothing special to any.
Liveability is not a middle class luxury, it is an economic imperative."

The Royal Bafokeng stand poised to develop their distinct platinum identity,
their history of resilience and the abundant youth vigour to lead the whole of
South Africa in the path of economic growth and prosperity. We must never
falter in this endeavour.

I thank you!

Issued by: Department of Science and Technology
26 May 2007
Source: Department of Science and Technology (http://www.dst.gov.za/)