Speech Delivered by Jay Naidoo, Minister for Posts, Telecommunications and Broadcasting at the Launch of the Centre of Excellence in Rural Communications
ML Sultan University, Durban – Friday, November 13, 1998
Honoured guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
There is a small village called Nqutu, nestling in the rolling hills of the northern part of this beautiful province. The people of this village had to walk many kilometres in the past to phone the hospital to send an ambulance to fetch a sick child. Many people had never used a telephone before. Yet this is a convenience that so many of us in this audience take for granted.
Telkom recently installed the first automated exchange in the area.
The impact on this village has been significant. Research has shown that having access to telephones has had a major economic impact in the area.
Simply what has been happening is that the families of migratory labour have now been phoning their fathers and brothers and husbands to tell them what to bring home with them, and so the local shops were losing out on business. So now the local shops are stocking things which they didn't have before!
Osizweni, a township on the outskirts of Newcastle, has been badly neglected in terms of telecommunications in the past. Recently Telkom completed 350 installations of the 780 that have been identified.
In fact, in KwaZulu Natal, more than 1 700 rural customers have been "switched on". Future plans include the provision of 41 DECT systems with the capability an additional 50 000 lines.
Telkom has identified some 530 priority customers in Kwa Zulu – such as clinics, police stations, community centres, schools, and so on. It has also identified some 137 villages to receive telephones, and 75 have already been connected.
So, you may ask why this is important? It is important because we are at the brink of the 21st Century that will be driven by the information society, and driving the new revolution is telecommunication in all its spheres, be it the Internet, telephones, computers or satellites.
Technological advance should benefit the most marginalised and vulnerable people of our world. If we want to see our people have jobs, we have to prepare them for the future.
And the future is telecommunications. Their future is no longer working on the mines, or in the kitchens of our homes. I want to see our children have a better life, to have skills that enable them to earn better wages.
The economic survival of the country is heavily dependent on our ability to become part of the information society. Sophisticated telecommunication services are a pre-requisite for growth, foreign investment and international competitiveness.
Recently, I learned that a software company from India was thinking about locating a factory in South Africa that would employ 1 500 people, and at better than average salaries. The problem was that in order to set up the factory, this company would have had to relocate some 1 300 programmers from India because our country simply doesn't have enough people skilled in this area to meet the demand.
That is why Centres of Excellence – like this one we are opening today at the ML Sultan Technikon – have been set up.
The intent is, in part, to strive for excellence in a focused telecommunications technology area, to enhance expertise and research capacity in the field of information and communications technology and to strive to meet the increasing demand for engineers and IT experts in our country.
I am confident that the Centers of Excellence programme will unlock a flood of latent talent and creativity in communities whose opportunities to show their mettle had been so severely limited in the past.
These Centers will contribute towards helping the young people of today become productive citizens of a future South Africa, made prosperous by the innovative ideas and familiarity with technology of its young entrepreneurs. This training will also constitute a massive transfer of technological skills and knowledge where they can be most fruitfully and effectively used for the future benefit of the country.
To achieve all this, a partnership is required. A partnership between government, labour, the private sector and civil society, to harness technology in order to catapult South Africa into the information revolution of the 21st century.
Education is the most powerful weapon in the hands of our people. Our country`s success and global competitiveness relies mainly on the development of our human potential. We need to close the widening development and inequality gap between black and white, rich and poor, urban and rural, women and men, and North and South.
Technology is a potent equalising and transformative force in bridging the legacy of apartheid. But it requires a deep commitment from the intellectual capacity of our students and academic. Our Deputy President Thabo Mbeki made a passionate call for an African Renaissance. He said " The call for Africa`s renewal, for an African Renaissance is a call to rebellion. We must rebel against the tyrants and dictators, those who seek to corrupt our societies and steal the wealth that belongs to our people."
Surely there must be politicians and business people, youth and women activists, trade unionists, religious leaders, artists and intellectuals from Cape to Cairo, from Madagascar to Cape Verde, who are sufficiently enraged by Africa`s condition in the world to want to join this crusade for Africa`s renewal."
I schooled in the early seventies in Sastri College next door. We were inspired by a mission to dislodge the illegitimate apartheid regime. We fought for the right to our human dignity, our human rights and for a constitutional democracy that guarantees these rights. We have won that leg of our struggle.
Now we fight a more difficult struggle for our economic enfranchisement. You as the rebels with that cause. You must answer the clarion call at the dawn of the next one thousand years. You must do that with conviction and the steely determination of a generation that will say – NEVER AGAIN – NEVER AGAIN will we allow ourselves to be humiliated, downtrodden and oppressed.
That requires discipline. We have rights now. But we also have responsibilities. The doors of learning are been opened. We have won this freedom through decades of bitter struggles in which many patriots paid the ultimate price. That freedom must be nurtured, defended, advanced but never abused
I hope that the students here share this vision and do their part of making this vision a reality by working hard to learn these new technologies and use them to improve their lives.
Thank you