A new interdisciplinary approach to scientific research and education will play an important role in the development of democracy in South Africa, Khotso Mokhele, president of the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa, told a Cornell audience in 122 Rockefeller Hall, Feb. 20.
Mokhele was presenting the 2001-02 Nordlander Lecture in Science and Public Policy on "Science, Democracy and Development."
The post-apartheid government of South Africa, said Mokhele, is seeking the insight and expertise of the scientific community in forging a new multiracial democracy, fighting some of the worst public health problems in the world and finding an economic niche in an age of increasing globalization. Although Mokhele painted a picture of a scientific community, and a society, still in the throes of transition to democracy, he voiced optimism about his country's future. "We are moving from the past, and we are moving into a future that we will be the architects of," he said.
Mokhele was appointed the NRF's first president when the agency was founded in 1999 as a single-funding organization for the natural and social sciences in South Africa. He has represented South Africa on the executive board of UNESCO and was the founder and first president of the Academy of Science of South Africa. He holds a Ph.D from the University of California-Davis in microbiology.
In response to the formidable challenges that South Africa faces, he said, the NRF has organized its research support around nine interdisciplinary "focus areas" of particular national concern, including topics such as "sustainable livelihoods" and "ecosystems and biodiversity."
Under the new system, launched in the summer of 2001, South African scientists do not apply for research grants in their respective fields, but instead under one of the focus areas. Once a year, all of the grantholders in a particular focus area convene, across disciplines, to discuss their research and exchange ideas.
"Instead of physics and chemistry and anthropology and psychology and sociology, we say, 'Let all the disciplines come together and respond to the issues of sustainable livelihoods, because this is what the science is done for,'" Mokhele said.
However, he emphasized, basic research will continue to have a place in South African science. "We are not trying to argue that everybody must do applied research," he said. "We fund fundamental research and applied research in all sorts of combinations, but philosophically, the orientation is that we do it to respond to these enormous challenges that the country has to respond to."
One of the NRF's largest current projects, in the focus area of "distinct South African research opportunities," is the construction of an 11-meter telescope near the village of Sutherland, north-east of Cape Town, with German, Polish, American, New Zealand and British partners. When it is completed in 2004, the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) will be the largest telescope in the Southern Hemisphere. Although they do not "put bread on anybody's table," said Mokhele, projects like SALT will provide educational opportunities for South Africans while making unique contributions to international scholarship.
South Africa's scientific community, he noted, is still struggling with the racist legacy of the apartheid government that was dismantled after the free elections of 1994. The nation's science system originally was designed to serve the white population of South Africa -- at most, between 5 and 8 million people, said Mokhele. "We now have to mobilize the same infrastructure to begin to serve the interests and the needs of 44 million people."
The Nordlander Lecture Series was established in memory of J. Eric Nordlander (Cornell A.B. 1956), a distinguished scientist and educator who died in 1986. The series is sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology Studies and the vice provost for research.
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