By Prof Thokozani Majozi
The Academy of Science of South Africa has the mandate through the ASSAf Act (Act, No 67 of 2001) to “advise the Minister on matters concerning science”.
This is in line with its key objectives such as “to promote common ground in scientific thinking across all disciplines” and “to link South Africa with scientific communities locally, regionally and internationally.” We submit that those objectives are now under threat.
The science community in South Africa faces a moment of extreme crisis. This crisis is precipitated by the multiple actions engaged by the current administration in the United States of America (USA) with respect to science, scientists, and the scientific enterprise.
The most immediate impact of the administration’s barrage of policy initiatives and related actions is a severe reduction in (and even elimination of) funding, personnel and training affecting key institutions which support and enable scientific research, development and innovation in South Africa.
While the scale of the cuts in USA funding is more readily evident in the biomedical sciences, and in HIV/AIDS research and treatment studies, we hold that these financial cutbacks pose significant threats to the academy, with effects on all disciplines.
First, the reduction in funding across several domains of scientific activity undermines active and longstanding collaboration between South African and USA scientists working at the frontiers of science.
The inestimable value of such partnerships was made clear in the field of infectious diseases during the recent COVID pandemic; the discovery at the time of the omicron variant by African scientists in South Africa and Botswana, is a case in point.
Second, the research and development infrastructure that underpins and enables such productive partnerships in the sciences, and the trust among scientists, have been painstakingly built over decades and now threatens to unravel with the loss of funding that sustained mutually beneficial scientific activities.
Third, the regular exchange of scholars and scientists between South Africa and the USA has been crucial in joint research and development projects; such exchanges also benefitted postgraduate students from both sides of the Atlantic who were able to hone their skills and understandings in the top seminar rooms and laboratories of both countries.
Those fertile and frequent exchanges are now under threat because of funding cuts and tighter visa controls that have already affected international students studying in the USA as well as visiting professors.
Fourth, the threat to academic values cannot be overstated. In both countries, universities place a high premium on values such as academic freedom, equity, trust, integrity and the right to dissent. One of those key values that matter in the academic community in times like these is solidarity and it is our role as an Academy, and of our government, to take a public stand with colleagues in the USA.
Because of South Africa’s bitter experience of assaults on academic freedom and freedom of expression in the apartheid era and post-apartheid, the Constitution of South Africa promotes robust protection for each of these values, understanding them to be as central to the success of deliberative democracy as they are to scientific progress.
We call on the South African government to publicly affirm the defense of these constitutional values in the current moment of crisis as it affects science, scientists and the scientific enterprise in South Africa. In addition, the South African government must make available governmental funding, including by actively facilitating funding from other multi- and bi-lateral sources, in those critical areas where scientific research, development and exchange is being negatively affected by the actions of the US administration.
Last but not least, the government must engage the Academy and its Membership and other entities on ways in which a productive and sustained response to this crisis in our scientific community can be developed and sustained.
The writer is the President and Chair: Academy of Science of South Africa