Ngubane says spending on research and development in the republic is
too low. He points out that while Taiwan spends 1.7 per cent of GDP on R&D,
South Korea 1.8 per cent, Australia 1.3 per cent and Canada 1.4 per cent,
South Africa spends just 1 per cent of GDP on R&D. He wants this figure
increased immediately to 1.5 per cent.

He stresses that South Africa’s spending on R&D is still massive
when compared to the rest of Africa. Ngubane hopes that this edge will create
a thriving export industry for medical and other technological goods. He
believes there are opportunities in making vaccines, and in areas such
as veterinary services and rabies prevention.

Science and technology will be crucial to realising the government’s
new Reconstruction and Development Programme, which aims to bring improved
health services, housing, communications and electricity to millions of
black people (see ‘Majority rule for science’, New ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´, 26 March).
‘Technological excellence is a vital ingredient for high economic growth,’
says Ngubane. ‘To thrive economically we need to become competitive. To
be competitive we need to develop an environment that is supportive of
¾±²Ô²Ô´Ç±¹²¹³Ù¾±´Ç²Ô.’

R&D funding will depend on the extent to which research contributes
to the economy and to improved living standards. Projects that will bring
practical benefits to large numbers of people include surveying work being
carried out to avoid siting new towns on unsafe ground (some squatter camps
have subsided into massive sink holes), and research into air pollution,
drinking water and sewage treatment.

Ngubane, who is a medical doctor and was health minister of the Zulu
‘homeland’ Kwazulu before taking up his new post in May, also holds strong
views on medicine. ‘We still have a lot of kids suffering from malaria,
which causes many problems in later life,’ he says. ‘Malaria is a scourge
and we should be able to eliminate it rather than allow drug resistant strains
to take hold.’

Many South African scientists fear that universities and other research
organisations which helped to sustain apartheid will be closed down after
the ANC takes power. But late last month, at the Institution of Mechanical
Engineers in Johannesburg, Mandela said: ‘We recognise the individuals in
these institutions constitute a wealth of techno-logy, knowledge and expertise.’
They must help to build and strengthen a democratic South Africa, he said.
‘To discard them would be to throw out the baby with the bathwater.’

Too much money had been spent on developing arms to preserve apartheid,
he said. In 1987-88, the Atomic Energy Corporation received 980 million
rand ( £187 million) from the government, much of which was spent
on developing nuclear weapons. Mandela reaffirmed the ANC’s promise to support
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the call made by the Organisation
of African Unity for Africa to be a nuclear weapon-free zone.

Mandela also condemned the education policies that had left South Africa
‘with a legacy of scientific illiteracy’. ‘Today some 96 per cent of all
engineers are white and 89 per cent of all scientists in South Africa are
white,’ he said. South Africa produces 35 engineers per one million people.