Will the black government go green?
SOUTH Africa's president-elect Nelson Mandela shocked environmentalists in the West when he told a Time correspondent: "My health is good ... One of these days I am going to take a gun and go and shoot, but don't tell the environmentalists!"
The remark by the leader of the African National Congress caused the alarm bells all over the world to ring much louder because of a strong rumour last year that the ANC would hand over parts of the country's biggest game reserve, the Kruger National Park, to landless blacks for cattle farming. Sceptics all The party took pains to deny the report but doubts about its stand on environmental issues are yet to be dispelled. The environmentalists are convinced that the new government will have no qualms about turning South Africa's picturesque game reserves into grazing pastures for cows, unless the reserves were to continue to make profits.
This is compounded by the ANC's optimism about exploiting the country's magnificent, "politically correct" tourist attractions to finance programmes in the social sector.
This concern and uncertainty about the future is also felt in other sectors. One of the areas being watched with considerable interest by the media is science and technology. No other African country south of the Sahara can boast of as large resources in this field as South Africa. But the official science and technology policy has till now been shortsighted and biased in favour of the white minority government. The government recruited the private sector to help it in its costly nuclear programme and to match Soviet military hardware for the wars in Angola and Mozambique. Besides, research with a racial bias aimed at underpinning segregationist policy had limited success.
However, with the ANC gaining political strength and becoming a force to reckon with, new trends emerged. In a bid to put its act together, the government set up the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), with the aim of restructuring the nation's science and technology policy and making a post-sanctions South Africa internationally competitive in this field. The organisation has a lot on its hands. It will have to devote more of its resources to providing technology to the small-scale business and community development sectors, which were previously neglected.
Given the enormity of the task, CSIR has not fared badly. Before it came to power, the ANC and its political allies had commissioned the Canada-based International Development and Research Centre to evaluate the work being done by the group. The report paid fulsome tribute to CSIR, declaring that it "has conducted what has probably been the most thorough re-evaluation undertaken by any governmentally created research organisation in the country".
Things are also looking up for the smallscale sector. Contracts with the emerging black small-business sector account for nearly 20 per cent of CSIR's sales and is the fastest growing part of the group's work. With the progressive ANC at the helm of affairs, South Africa is poised to take a quantum leap in the field of science.
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