Cape Town, 14 January 1999
Ladies and gentlemen,
In 1969, when Neil Armstrong and his crew made history by being the first men to land on the moon, I was young boy of 14, living in KwaZulu Natal, and I remember being enthralled by the radio programme that carried the voices of the astronauts right into our living room. Of course we didn't have television in South Africa at the time, so we had to rely on radio and newspapers to tell us the story of the Apollo mission.
Neil Armstrong's first words when he walked on the moon are etched forever in our minds: This is a small step for man, but a giant leap for mankind. Well today, I want to say that the launch of the SUNSAT micro-satellite is a small step into the satellite world, but a gigantic leap for South Africa.
We are determined to build a modern communications infrastructure that will harness the different technologies of fixed line, cellular, submarine cable and satellite. We are convinced that we can use these leapfrogging technologies - especially satellite - to catapult our country into the 21st Century.
We are experiencing a worldwide revolution in information technology. We are on the verge of an unprecedented growth in the use of satellites and space-related activities for peaceful purposes. The value of the new world economy is in the creation of information, in how we package it into services and how we distribute these services.
Satellite is rapidly becoming one of the most important distribution channels for information. In fact, it is estimated that In fact, it is estimated that there will be more satellites launched in the next 10 years than in the total launched to-date since the first Sputnik was launched in the late 1950s. And the majority of these will be information communication satellites used for commercial purposes. Over the next six years, more than US $50 billion will be pumped into creating a communications network in the sky.
Since Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong's first foray into the sky 30 years ago, we have made great strides in using space technology.
I have just returned from a visit to India, where I was able to visit the Space Research Institute, and I learned that India uses its space programme technology for the development of national infrastructure. It helps in the management of its scarce water resources, it helps to determine where their underground water resources are and to do weather and environment observation to facilitate land planning. It allows them to provide access to their almost one billion people to have access to television, and to support its burgeoning telecommunications industry.
Already, satellites are taking a leading role in developing communications infrastructure in Africa and in South Africa. I am currently the chairperson of the Regional African Satellite Communications Organisation (RASCOM) Assembly of Parties, and we are discussing plans for launching two dedicated satellites for Africa. I also chair a committee of African ministers of communication which is driving a programme to accelerate the development of telecommunications infrastructure in Africa, a continent of 700 million people but only 14 million telephone lines. We see satellite as one of the quickest ways in which we can achieve our goal of rapid roll-out of telecommunication services to the most remote and rural parts of our continent.
In December last year, South Africa became one of the first countries to publish a policy directive on Global Mobil Personal Communication Satellites (GMPCS) that will used to license operators such as Iridium, ICO, Teledesic and so on.
South Africa also has a growing demand for satellite services, for telecommunications, for broadcasting, weather prediction, agricultural information, pollution monitoring and so on. Through the various uses of satellite facilities such as Telkom, Sentech, Transtel, Orbicom and others, South Africa presently spends between R450 million and R550 million annually on leasing transponder capacity from international satellite operators.
South Africa already has a large involvement in space affairs dating back to the early 1960s with the establishment of tracking and telemetry ground stations at Hartebeeshoek to support the growing US and European space programmes. In 1991, the University of Stellenbosch embarked on the development of a micro-satellite as a training project and today we are here to celebrate the launch of SUNSAT, the first satellite to be built and launched by South Africa. It will provide high quality satellite images of South Africa and that information will be used mainly for weather prediction, data communications and data storage for ham radio.
One of the most crucial elements of building the information society or the knowledge economy in South Africa is the development of people with the technical skills necessary to support the aligned industries. India, for example, graduates around 170 000 engineers a year to support its information communication technology industries. In South Africa, we are woefully short of that, but we have set in place many initiatives and programmes to address the shortage of these types of skills. What is most important about this launch is not the SUNSAT satellite that we will shortly witness being launched on a NASA rocket, but the way in which the satellite was built.
At Stellenbosch University, more than 70 students - 37 of whom were graduate engineers - worked on SUNSAT, and its outreach programme SUNSTEP reaches 14 000 students, mainly from disadvantaged areas, some of whom are with in the studio here in Cape Town today.
What this satellite launch - and indeed the comprehensive local radio, television and print coverage - is aimed at attracting the youth of our country, to make them aware that the simple math and science classes they are taking in high school are the foundation on which careers in space, information communications, telecommunications and technology are based.
At the dawn of the new Millennium, we are in the throes of a digital revolution that our young people must become a part of if they are to enjoy the benefits of value-added jobs and the economic opportunities that the information economy will afford. I recently spoke to young people from all over South Africa who were members of the South African Amateur Ham Radio Association. These initiatives are all part of raising technical awareness and making South Africa a hub of information techology and multimedia for the 21st Century.
The legacy of apartheid is that the majority of our disadvantaged youth have not had access to the learning required to develop skills in the broad sciences, but the opportunity is at hand to level the playing field, and for the young people of today to take advantage of the opportunities in learning and training in technology, telecommunications and information communications so that one day they will not only be watching the launch of a satellite built by South Africans, but be part of the mission control team hat launches it as well.
In closing, I want to say that we see this SUNSAT progrmame as a small step towards achieving our goals in technology development and we are engaged in discussions with all stakeholders in mapping a way forward for South Africa's space programme.
I want to congratulate everyone involved in this magnificent effort that has made South Africa a member of a very elite club in the world of countries that have the capability to build satellites.
I thank you.
FOOTNOTE:
The launch of Sunsat on January 14 was scrubbed due to bad weather and the launch was resecheduled for January 19, 1999.