Science and innovation form the foundation on which a country's economy and even its social reality are built. Poor countries are not those countries that do not have resources, but rather those countries that have no regard for science and where there is no innovation.
In South Africa, science and innovation are primarily driven by universities and the entities of the relevant Department. They are the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), the National Research Foundation (NRF) and the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA).
Neglecting these entities does not result in a crisis immediately, but once a country has fallen behind, it is almost impossible to catch up again.
Expertise and skills in this field become scarce and expensive. A developmental state, as the one established by the government of South Africa, is usually willing to make funds available to import, so to speak, the necessary knowledge and skills from abroad.
In contrast, the South African government implements quotas and racial targets that create an artificial scarcity in addition to the inherent scarcity. The FF Plus finds this approach incomprehensible. Moreover, it is short-sighted to cut this Department's budget, as is currently the case.
The Department's entities are being managed fairly well, although there are some rough spots.
Two deserve to be mentioned briefly:
At the TIA there are serious management problems, which are fortunately being addressed. And then the social impact study for the SKA project was conducted by the CSIR, while it clearly falls in the scope of the HSRC.
The FF Plus can, therefore, not support this Department's budget report, particularly due to its destructive policy and racial quotas.
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