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The Democratic Alliance (DA) fully supports the Minister of Science and Technology Mrs Naledi Pandor's appointment of a ministerial committee to be led by WITS University's Loyiso Nongxa to review the science, technology and innovation landscape and to assess how well it can support development.

A review is long overdue. I have consistently put it to President Zuma in Parliament that our challenge is to position South Africa as a knowledge-based economy with the assurance that ordinary South Africans will benefit from the pay-off.

The fly in the ointment is Higher Education & Training Minister Dr Blade Nzimande. At the heart of the knowledge economy are our universities. New ideas come largely from there, or so they should. However, the only knowledge Nzimande ever talks about is the worn-out notion of the developmental state.

New knowledge is about advancing intellectual quality at our universities, a subject Nzimande studiously avoids. Instead of thinking about how to create opportunities for young people in the knowledge economy, he thinks about how to use our problems to foster revolution. He is more interested in formenting class warfare and promoting a racial nationalism when it comes to student and staff appointments.

We have the leading Science, Technology and Innovation system in Africa. We are making progress in moving our target of spending 1,5 percent of Gross Domestic Product on research and development (GDP) by 2014. Minister Pandor's committee is a rational and visionary effort to help move us into the future. The question is whether she will be able to drag Minister Nzimande into the 21st century. Unfortunately, we fear that he may be just vain enough to imagine himself as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin still stuck in 1917 Tsarist Russia.