Dr Lindiwe Msengane-Ndlela, Mayor of the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality,
Ms Phila Xuza, Chief Executive Officer of UDDI,
Ms Robyn Rutters, acting Director of the Science Centre,
Mr David Powels, Managing Director, Volkswagen South Africa,
Ladies and gentlemen.
A very good morning to you all.
I am both honoured and excited to be able to share this special moment with you: the official opening of the Nelson Mandela Bay Science and Technology Centre here in Uitenhage.
Uitenhage is of course well known for its Volkswagen factory, which is the biggest car factory on the African continent. And since a lot of science and technology goes into making cars, I think it’s very appropriate that this town now has its very own Science Centre.
Volkswagen SA has also provided substantial funding to this Centre, and I would at this point like to extend my heartfelt thanks to them and to all the other contributors from the corporate sector, in particular ABSA and BASF.
Your partnership with Government in helping to fund this Centre is a good example of how Government and business can work together in helping to ensure that future economic prosperity is obtainable.
My thanks also go to the Uitenhage Despatch Development Initiative for the leading role it has played in the creation of this Centre. We need to be pro-active about ways in which Government, NGOs and business can contribute towards the role of science, technology and innovation in growing and sustaining our economy and in helping us move from a resource-based economy to a knowledge-based one. The opening of this science centre here this morning is a very positive step in the right direction.
Yesterday, our young democracy celebrated Human Rights Day. These rights are enshrined in our Constitution, and one of the most fundamental is the right to a basic education. So it is fitting that we celebrate an educational milestone here this morning – a milestone that will help many of our citizens achieve the right to a basic education.
Allow me, at the outset, to also thank all the organisers who have worked so tirelessly to make this day a reality. Phila Xuza from the Uitenhage Despatch Development Forum, andRobyn Rutters and her team here at the Centre have done a splendid job.
It’s clear that a great deal of planning and effort have gone into every exhibit, every demonstration, and every tiny bit of organisation required to reach the point we are at this morning, and I extend my sincere gratitude to all concerned. Your labours have resulted in a lasting legacy for the people of Uitenhage and surrounding areas.
Ladies and gentlemen, this Centre will provide a venue for South Africans, particularly our younger citizens, to learn about science and technology by experiencing it first-hand. By visiting the centre and interacting with its staff, learners and students will acquire tools to help them study Maths and Science – tools that will aid them not just in the completion of their school and tertiary studies, but throughout their lives.
Research has shown that informal learning environments such as science centres and museums play a vital role in attracting young people to science learning. Our country needs more school learners to follow the Maths and Physical Science subject streams because we need more engineers, scientists, researchers and technologists as we strive to cement our place on the world stage. More needs to be done to attract greater numbers of learners to Maths and Physical Science when they enter Grade 10, as current trends are a serious cause for concern.
This centre will also provide edutainment value by offering an experience that will command the attention and interest of young people whilst teaching them something at the same time. As many teachers will know, this is not always possible to achieve in the conventional school classroom.
Teachers will also know that they need all the additional help they can get, as Maths and Science marks at matric level continue to be a major cause for concern. Although the Maths and Physical Science candidates achieved disappointing results, the average mark for Physical Science was marginally better last year than in 2011. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless. Centres such as this will no doubt help to keep these averages on an upward curve.
Another objective for this Centre would be to build capacity for the teaching of science, mathematics, technology and related subjects in the Eastern Cape area. Although education is not the Department of Science and Technology’s primary responsibility, we do partner with the Department of Basic Education in that we use available technology to support education.
To give you just one example, we launched a rural pilot project last year in the Cofimvaba district, also in this province. It is the first project of its kind in a rural area, and involves the introduction of electronic tablets to facilitate the process of downloading learner material. This is an example of being innovative and thinking ahead, because if this project is successful, there should be no need for school text-books a few years from now.
The DST also partners with the Education Department in helping schools by introducing them to forms of technology that will, for example, improve sanitation, help to provide and to save water, and save electricity by looking at alternative forms of energy. These things all happen on a pilot basis so that we can learn what works and what doesn’t.
In 2011, our country proudly hosted a successful 6th Science Centre World Congress in Cape Town. Delegates were unanimous that science centres are an indispensable educational tool, offering useful teaching aids such as hands-on exhibits and posters.
Learners who visit science centres will have the chance to familiarise themselves with concepts they have perhaps had some difficulty in grasping in the classroom at school. This is why it is so pleasing that the design of this science centre incorporates a science laboratory.
The facility will offer teachers refresher courses and will assist with equipping them with the basic skills required to conduct curriculum-based experiments at their respective schools. Those schools in the vicinity of the science centre that do not have laboratory facilities, will be able to make use of the laboratory at this centre.
Another objective of this science centre, ladies and gentlemen, will be to help prepare young people to deal with the frenetic pace at which advances and breakthroughs are being achieved in science and technology.
I believe, for example, that retina scrolling technology could in the foreseeable future replace the touch-screen device – a technology to which most of us have seemingly only just become accustomed. Also, space tourism, now a fairly familiar concept, would have been unthinkable a year or two ago.
Ladies and gentlemen, these science centres will be where young people will learn about South African inventions, which have made our country such a force to be reckoned with. An example is the JS-1 Revelation sailplane, designed by chief design engineer Attie Jonker and his team at the School for Mechanical and Material Engineering of North West University in Potchefstroom.
This science centre, along with 29 others situated all around our country, will teach South Africans about the Square Kilometre Array, the world’s biggest radio telescope and one of the biggest scientific projects in the world. Scheduled for completion in about 2024, the SKA will comprise thousands of antennas, working as one colossal, virtual instrument, creating a radio telescope at least 50 times more powerful, and 10 000 times faster, than any other radio telescope in the world. This is our flagship project in our space sciences programme and will be the largest science-based, capital injection into the African economy by far.
The SKA project office has already established an outreach programme to benefit learners. I urge you to collaborate with them in order to access the promotional materials that are available and to learn more about bursaries and scholarship programmes for those intending to pursue careers in astronomy and related careers.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Nelson Mandela Bay Science Centre will undoubtedly help to stimulate a passion for science – among young people and adults alike. Last month, I was fortunate enough to attend the official opening of the Cape Town Science Centre in Observatory in the Western Cape.
I was told by the staff there that since the centre had resumed its operations at the new premises, just over 60% of visitors were adults. This goes to show that it’s never too late to learn about science and technology. Given the way the world around us is changing every day, all of us, both young and old, need to keep up with developments.
My department is committed to creating an enabling environment to allow science centres to define their objectives and to respond to them. This is why we provide science centres with a package of support, which includes capacity building, operational support through deployment of science graduates to assist in science communication, and annual grant funding.
Today, our country is host to 30 science centres, all at different stages of development. The DST’s funding support for science centres has been rising over the past ten years. Currently, we spend more than R20 million per annum on science centres, and we plan to increase that amount in years to come.
The Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan has also done a sterling job by providing the building that is now this new science centre. I congratulate them for that and urge other local government structures across the country to take a leaf out of this book.
Ladies and gentlemen, may I leave you with some thoughts to ponder as you stroll around this Centre and marvel at all the wondrous exhibits.
Our planet is, to say the very least, in a precarious state. Many scientists are now of the opinion, for example, that humans’ resistance to antibiotics should be ranked alongside issues such as climate change and armed conflict. Diseases and viruses appear to be evolving faster than the drugs we have to treat them, leaving us with a ticking time-bomb.
Also, the 15-metre meteor that recently crashed into Russia reminded us of the so-called Fifth Extinction, which decimated the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Palaeontologists characterise mass extinctions as times when the Earth loses more than three-quarters of its species in a geologically short interval, as has happened only five times in the past 540 million years or so.
It is a very sobering thought that today, given the known species losses over the past few centuries and millennia, many biologists and palaeontologists are of the opinion that the Sixth Extinction is already upon us, with humankind’s destructive ability seemingly hell-bent on hastening this process.
This may all sound very depressing, but it’s very real, and we simply have to turn the tide. We can do so by harnessing the power of knowledge, the spirit of innovation and the boundless wonders of science. Science can, and must, be the catalyst for change.
In conclusion, may I say that I have every confidence that this science centre will soon establish itself as the leading science and technology educational centre in the Eastern Cape. I now have great pleasure in declaring the Nelson Mandela Bay Science and Technology Centre officially open.
Thank you!
