M Mangena: NRF President Awards Ceremony

2 June 2006

Deputy Minister of Science and Technology, Honourable Derek Hanekom
Chancellors and Vice Chancellors,
Members of the NRF Board,
President of the NRF, Dr Khotso Mokhele,
Representatives of Science Councils,
Members of the academic community
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,

In 1903, Albert Michelson, the famous scientist and winner of the 1907 Nobel
Prize, said, “The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science
have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the
possibility of their ever being supplemented in consequence of new discoveries
is exceedingly remote.”

It is just as well he was wrong. Indeed his own careful and elegant
experiments on light, and the determination of its constant velocity
underpinned the great leap that Einstein was to make two years later.

I wanted to emphasise this because the winners of the NRF President’s Awards
literally demonstrate science in action. By taking action and committing
substantial resources to scientific and technological development, the effect
on our human resources is already evident. Our winners are champions in their
fields, ranging from the natural sciences to social sciences.

A special note of congratulations to our Lifetime Achiever Dr Bob Brain,
whom we wish every success in his pursuit of excellence. To all the winners we
say “You epitomise the reality that science, technology and innovation are as
rewarding to individuals as they do to the nations that have heavily invested
in them. We truly appreciate and applaud your contributions to the National
System of Innovation.”

The Deputy President recently described the shortage of skills, notably
professional skills in engineering and science, as “the single greatest
impediment” to both public infrastructure and the private investment
programmes. The Northern Cape has selected the Square-Kilometre Array (SKA) bid
and the construction of the Karoo Array Telescope (KAT) as one of its
development priorities. City-bound academics may find this strange. Earlier
this week, as part of our programme of engagement with our partners, I visited
the planned site of the KAT near Canarvon. Standing outside in the cold Karoo
air, I imagined the four thousand 15 m high-precision dishes that would be
built in South Africa and placed in the Northern Cape if we win this global
competition.

I thought how this might change the future of our largest but least
populated province. I thought about a 20-year programme to develop world-class
astronomers, physicists, software engineers, and the associated jobs in high
value academic tourism, and hundreds of conferences and symposia. I saw the
opportunity for patents, partnerships between academia and industry, the
establishment of new industry platforms and the associated economic benefits
for our country.

This is not an idle dream; the European Nuclear Research Centre (CERN) has
forever changed a corner of France and Switzerland where it is located. It also
gave us the World Wide Web. In general, we tend to underestimate investments
made in talented people and the positive effect of technological missions that
are visionary, challenging and linked to our unique setting.

The NRF is a key institution in our national focus on science and
technology. Its role in the short, medium and long term is of particular
significance. Science and technology are critical tools in our attempts to
address our socio-economic challenges and position our country to meet the
development demands of the modern economy.

This is especially important if we want to address the socio-economic
inequalities faced by those living in underdeveloped areas. We cannot expect
adequate and sustainable provision of water, sanitation, quality housing and
transport if regional and local councils have no engineering and technical
capacity to make this possible. Similarly, if our schools do not have
sufficiently qualified maths and science teachers to assist learners to prepare
for their Senior Certificate examinations, many of our young people will not
qualify for the opportunities to study natural sciences and engineering.

Given the rate at which countries across the world are deriving benefits
from the global knowledge economy, we must pay particular attention to
developing a powerful scientific and technological sector whose foundation is
our human resources. We need a cadre of high quality, creative, and productive
scientists and innovators who can keep abreast of scientific and technological
changes, set the pace in certain instances, and compete favourably on the world
stage.

Unfortunately, South Africa is plagued by an endemic shortage of skills in
the science, engineering and technology sector. It is common knowledge that
although Africans comprise nearly 80% of our population, they comprise only 2%
of our A-rated scientists and 5% of the registered engineers, technologists and
technicians. And the rate at which young people are entering the science sector
still falls far short of meeting our development targets.

From 1992 to 2001 the percentage of African graduates in the natural
sciences improved from about 23 to 54, and in the health sciences, from 38 to
57. However, in the critical areas of post graduate studies, the percentage of
African graduates in Masters and Doctoral Degrees is still far below 50%.

Therefore, the mandate of the NRF, which is to develop this important cadre
of our human resources can never, be sufficiently underlined. This anomaly does
not only compromise the rate at which we can change the face of research in the
country; it also impacts negatively on our ability to meet our minimum
developmental targets. PhDs, for their own sake, are of little value. We need
to find better mechanisms to link PhD production to the economic and social
challenges we face. Traditional universities have not been very good at this,
and nationally, we still do not have a consensus on how relevance and
excellence articulate and forge a new and sustainable approach to our human
resource challenges.

The number of young men and women who are actually choosing to study and
work in long term scientific research careers has not improved much. The
demographics for senior academics and established researchers have remained
almost unchanged since 1994. In order to ensure that our scientific and
technological innovations aggressively address the development challenges of
the poor, we need to build a critical mass of relevant scientists and
researchers within our research councils and academic institutions.

The cornerstone of our human resource development plans must therefore be
the youth. Our young men and women are the custodians of our future economic
and social well-being, and must be given the appropriate knowledge and skills
to confidently respond to the challenges facing our communities, our country,
our continent and the world. And for these reasons my department is investing a
lot of resources to ensure that South Africa’s youth are at the core of all our
plans to transform our science sector.

Together with our partners in the public and private sector, we are striving
to create an enabling environment for effective teaching and learning in maths,
science and technology inside and outside of the classroom. The National Plan
for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Olympiads, Competitions
and Camps, and the National Plan for Educator Support have recently been
finalised. And the involvement of the South African Agency for Science and
Technology Advancement (SAASTA) has been of critical importance in this
regard.

Government acting alone cannot bring about significant change. The
involvement of all role players is critical in ensuring that we build and
maintain a confident, competent and sustainable scientific human capital. To
galvanise our people around science and technology, we need new missions of
national significance. And to inspire a new generation of researchers, we need
new frontier programmes and strong institutional capacities to ensure careful
and effective use of resources.

Through the Research Chairs, the Centres of Excellence, and the Prestigious
Post-Doctoral Fellowship Programmes, the NRF is playing a seminal role. These
programmes are strategic investments intended to strengthen and intensify our
response to national imperatives. They complement the current granting
programme with modern and responsive instruments that have proven their worth
in innovation systems similar to ours.

Through its national facilities and specialised partnerships, the NRF is
involved in developing a 10-year plan for astronomy, the operations of the
Innovation Fund and the Technology and Human Resources for Industry Programme
(thrip) programme of the Department of Trade and Industry. It developed the
strategy for our Antarctic research programme and was pivotal in the
development of the National Research and Technology Infrastructure
Strategy.

The NRF will continue to play a key role in the development of research
infrastructure. As I indicated in the budget speech recently, our ageing
national equipment infrastructure is rapidly becoming obsolete, and our ability
to timorously and routinely replace out-of-date equipment has been a cause for
considerable concern.

We cannot hope to work at the cutting edge without constantly sharpening our
tools. Our attempts to obtain a more substantial budget for replacing the
ageing equipment infrastructure have generated a commitment of R211 million for
higher education institutions and science councils over the Medium Term
Expenditure Framework. This should be invested strategically, paying particular
attention to relevance, excellence and partnership.

Albert Michelson may have been wrong about science and its future
development. But he was not just an experimentalist in a laboratory; he
invented the echelon spectroscope, developed a rangefinder for the US Navy, and
made the first accurate measurement of the dimensions of a star. Interestingly,
he never did a PhD. This was not a requirement for a science career in his
rather different age. His accomplishments ultimately came from his obsessions
and his passion for his work. And this is true for all the awardees we are
celebrating tonight.

We heartily congratulate the winners of these awards. May each of you be
spurred on to higher levels of innovation and excellence. We celebrate your
achievements and the inspiration you provide to us all.

May I, in closing, take this opportunity to bid farewell to the outgoing
President and Chief Executive Officer of the NRF, the exceptionally capable Dr
Khotso Mokhele. With him at the helm, the NRF has grown from strength to
strength as a trusted partner in the development of the national system of
Innovation.

As a result of his contribution at the NRF, this Fulbright Scholar has
received numerous prestigious awards locally and internationally, including
five honorary doctoral degrees in science and business management from higher
education institutions in South Africa and abroad.

Khotso has a comprehensive understanding of the international science and
technology arena. This has seen him serve on a number of committees, including
the South African Steering Committee for the proposed Square Kilometre Array
(SKA) radio telescope, an international project worth about $1 billion. As
champion and later as a board member of the Southern African Large Telescope
(SALT), Mokhele led the campaign to obtain international funding for this
project.

He is passionate about the development of people, uncompromising in his high
standards, a visionary with his feet on the ground. We are indeed privileged to
have worked with a person of Khotso’s calibre. We wish him all the best in his
future endeavours.

I thank you.

Issued by: Department of Science and Technology
2 June 2006