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SA: Naledi Pandor: Address by Minister of Science and Technology, Dr Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri memorial lecture, UNISA Muckleneuk Campus (21/03/2015)

Naledi Pandor
Photo by Duane Daws
Naledi Pandor

23rd March 2015

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Dr Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri was Minister of Communications from 1999 until 2009. She was the second of our ministers to pass away in office, the first being Stella Sigcau.

I always admired Ivy and was happy to call her my friend.

Born in the Free State in 1937, educated in KwaZulu Natal and at Fort Hare university, she completed her education in the US, taking a doctorate in sociology from Rutgers University. She spent a long time in exile, a committed ANC cadre, before she came home in 1990. She was an obvious choice to be the first woman premier of the Free State in 1996. She became a minister in 1999 without having served as a backbencher in Parliament. She was elected to the ANC NEC at the Mafeking conference.

Dr Matsepe-Casaburri was the first woman to be appointed to the board of the CSIR, the first African and woman to become chairperson of Sentech, and the first African and woman to be chairperson of the board of the SABC from 1993 to 1997.

She served her country with distinction and made an incisivecontribution to the development of policy in various fields, but specifically in information and communication technology.

Broadband

Dr Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri was committed to making fast broadband for all a reality. She more than anyone would have been relieved to know that the first phase of ourbroadband strategy will get under way on 1 April. It's one of our nine economic priorities. Telkom is already well under with connecting the country through fibre-optic cable. Telkom has about 147 000 km of land-based fibre across South Africa and more than 16 000 fibre distribution points, enabling more than 100 000 services. It has a half our population within reach; 2 428 base stations on air; around 1 300 long-term evolution sites and over 3 700 Wi-Fi access points.

Wi-Fi is the technology that covers the last mile and free Wi-Fi is the key to transforming Africa. You can see its impact in Kenya. You can see its impact in Rwanda. You can see it in Nigeria. But we are way ahead with the provision of free Wi-Fi. We have more than 2,000 spots in 60 cities.

At the DST's recent Innovation-Bridge event, a platform for matching new technologies with investors, I listened to Alan Knott-Craig Jr, who runs Project Isizwe, a non-profit organisation that now has Wi-Fi deployments in three South African municipalities, serving 20,000 people in Robertson, 20,000 in Atlantis, and 1.15 million in the City of Tshwane.

I heard him argue that access to the Internet is as important as access to electricity. “Smartphone penetration has passed the 50 per cent household mark, fibre networks are now nationwide, and Wi-Fi equipment prices have dropped dramatically,” Knott-Craig said. “The result is that government funded Wi-Fi is economically feasible – no need to fund devices, lower bandwidth prices, low capex costs.”

Interestingly enough Dr Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri did not anticipate the impact radio astronomy would have on her specialist field of telecommunications.

It is not well known that Wi-Fi was developed for radio astronomy in Australia in the 1990s. In fact, a US patent for the technology, created by CSIRO scientists (the equivalent of our CSIR), expires next year. It is estimated that consumers worldwide will have bought more than five billion products incorporating Wi-Fi - from smartphones to laptop computers, games consoles, digital cameras and printers.

WiFi - the Fast Fourier Transformations technology at the core of most WiFi-equipped devices - whether computers, tablets, mobile phones or others - was based on technology developed by Australian astronomers to study radiation from black holes.

Radio astronomy is a powerful driver for innovation in domains such as information and communication technologies, including high-speed networks and super-computing, advanced materials and manufacturing and renewable energy.

It is imperative for Africa’s scientists to work in Africa if they are to support development on the continent, if they are to play a role in smooth technology transfer and if they are to drive innovation. A global project such as the SKA is giving effect to all these objectives.

This astronomy infrastructure presents a massive leap forward in terms of IT infrastructure, bringing enhanced high speed connectivity and computing capability to Africa.

Gender

Dr Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri was committed to gender equality.

She was proud of the gender equality South Africa has achieved - in no small measure shaped by our constitution.

Our cabinet and legislatures are among the top ten most representative in the world. Four in ten cabinet ministers are women and four in ten national MPs are women. In school girls have equal access to education and are performing at improved levels in many subjects.In higher education women number more than half of the student body. Women make up almost four in ten of the Senior Management Service in the public service and overall women comprise more than half of employees in the Public Service.

Yet the evidence of continuing gender discrimination in some of our key institutions of governance clearly indicates that a great deal more has to be done in South Africa to ensure that women practically feel safe and respected as equal citizens of our country.

Gender equality begins at home and is reinforced at school. South Africa’s education policies affirm the educational rights of girls. Yet overwhelming challenges remain.

The first is the challenge of gender integration.

Over the last decade more girls than boys have enrolled in South Africa’s educational institutions. It may be true that girls repeat classes more often than boys and drop out less frequently in the 16 to 18 age group. Historically, this pattern is related to opportunities for men in the unskilled and semi-skilled labour market, with fewer employment opportunities for women.

Gender differences in matriculation are even more marked. Not only do more young women complete their secondary education and gain symbols that allow them access to higher education institutions, but also the proportion of young women who earn merit passes and distinctions exceeds that of young men. The overall pattern of female success is consistent in all but one of the nine provinces.

Then there is the challenge of racial integration.

What do we mean by racial integration? We have not imposed one model of racial integration on schools. Some schools have encouraged cultural difference, while others have encouraged racial assimilation. There have been overlaps between the different approaches, and different approaches coexisted in the same school. Our policy has been to promote ‘non-racialism’ but that has not meant ‘colour-blindness’ in practice. We have insisted on ‘equal treatment’, tolerance, and respect for fellow pupils and teachers. But too often the acknowledgment of difference has been seen as an undesirable racial practice.

We do not seek assimilation into an old order; we must create and sustain a new institutional ethos and culture – informed by our African-ness.

Changing the racial composition of an institution does not equate to real transformation. We are a long way from succeeding in our transformation project; African students on being admitted to a formerly white school or university find themselves in an alien culture, faced with hostility from other students and lecturers, taught in a language that is not their home language, and therefore often unable to succeed.

One of the guiding principles we seek to promote in education is the recognition that our racial and linguistic diversity is a national asset, and not a burden. I am a supporter of multi-lingualism at school and at universities. I know that our policies have not been put into practice as vigorously as they should or could be. English and Afrikaans are still the languages of learning and teaching at universities – despite the fact that these are not the mother tongues of the majority of students.

While being a part of Africa, we truly celebrate the fact that we have a wonderful mix of people from Europe and the East. We are proud to have 11 official languages, and are committed to promoting the development of all of these. We have adherents of almost every known world religion, as well as others, like the Zion Christian Church, a wonderful mix of traditional and indigenous beliefs, with over two million members.

We are today better off than our mothers or grandmothers were in the prime of their lives. We have rights. We are respected. The constitution protects us. Our democracy has achieved world wide praise for our notable advances. We are all potential beneficiaries and guardians of the Bill of Rights in our constitution. One of our more difficult tasks in this regard is to ensure that all women, whatever their status and location, enjoy full access to those rights.

This task makes our priority of rural development immensely important for women. Millions of women in rural communities bear the brunt of poverty and oppression that is rooted in a partriarchal culture and tradition.

We need to uphold the right to culture, while firmly indicating that the right to culture and other traditional norms and practices have a companion called equality that must be respected.

The evidence of continuing gender inequality in the public and private sectors, in the domestic spaces we occupy, and in some of our key institutions of governance clearly indicates that a great deal more has to be done in South Africa to ensure that women practically feel safe and respected as equal citizens of our country.

Our Parliament, legislatures, municipalities, our courts must protect and empower women. Much more needs to be done to ensure that the socialization of boys and girls inculcates respect for the human dignity of all. Violence against women, rape, murder and other physical and verbal and psychological evils that women experience daily, mean that we should strive to ensure that a safer caring society includes a concerted focus on women’s safety and protection.

We have done a great deal in South Africa, but the pain of disappearing children, sexual abuse of babies, and the limited protection our courts afford against domestic violence (protection orders) all point to the need to devote much more attention to women’s safety.

Whether direct or indirect, discrimination against women is one of the most destructive forces in the world. We know that it is one of the major causes of poverty and suffering experienced by women all over the world.

For us to be able to deliver a fatal blow to domestic violence, we need to destroy the foundations of domestic violence.And the best way to do that is to consolidate solidarity among women. We read each day about women who are killed by their spouses and partners. It is a sign of societal decay, which is why it is a human rights issue.

The record of the past 20 years suggests that with focus and effective strategizing we can build on the advances we have made. These advances have enabled women to make better lives for themselves through grasping new opportunities.

The struggle for gender equality in a new, post-apartheid South Africa continues.

It's a struggle that Dr Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri worked hard for and did so much to shape.

Thank you.

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