Chairperson, hon Minister, members, guests in the gallery, the building of the Square Kilometre Array telescope is a proud moment for South Africa. We should rightly be very proud to have won international support for the building of this unique telescope in our country. However, this remarkable achievement underscored the two realities of South Africa. On the one side, mathematics, high science and technology prevail. On the other side, they are almost completely lacking. Our maths education has for many years been ranked among the worst in the world.
If our country has any ambition of being a leader in the field of technology, it will certainly have to put the teaching of mathematics on a war footing. The two Departments of Education and the Department of Science and Technology should seek to do away with maths literacy immediately and put mathematics at the centre of the school. Our failure to remedy the deficit in mathematics and science education will prevent the transformation of our country and of our economy from being realised.
In the apartheid era, Verwoerd had decreed that maths and science should not be taught to black children in South Africa. One would therefore have expected the democratic government to have prioritised maths and science education above everything else. If the foundation is lacking, the superstructure that the department is seeking to build is unrealistic. We demand to know when the teaching of maths and science in our schools will be put on a war footing.
The second problem relates to embedding science and technology in the National Development Plan. However, the SA Communist Party and Cosatu are rejecting the only plan for the revival of the South African economy out of hand. On page 809 of the Estimates of National Expenditure, the department states:
In order to realise the potential of technology as an engine of growth, investment needs to be made in scientific and technological education and the population empowered, through access to knowledge and skills, to use technology efficiently.
Everywhere in the world technology is indeed being used to serve as an engine of growth. Yesterday, Samsung in South Korea announced the arrival of 5G mobile broadband, which would make the downloading of data one hundred times faster than 4G. If technology is going to be our engine of growth, why are we lagging behind in broadband development?
Our population has definitely not been empowered, through access to knowledge and skills, to use technology efficiently, as the projects mentioned in the Estimates of National Expenditure would have it. I will go so far as to say that our population is simply being left to provide its own support without any real intervention from government. The general population is being fed promises and nothing else.
I am stressing the point of small businesses because the department is claiming in the Estimates of National Expenditure to be contributing to employment creation and economic growth by providing technological assistance packages to small, medium and micro enterprises. We would like to know what constitutes these packages and how widely they are being rolled out.
At a time in our country when joblessness continues to escalate and desperation is intensifying, it is time to ask hard questions about how public money is being spent. By next year the present administration will have added a mind-blowing R1 trillion to the national debt. Considering how much is being spent by government and how much it is borrowing, we need to know which research undertaken by the department has already led to industrial opportunities in earth system sciences, advanced manufacturing, advanced metals and information communications technology. If indeed these industrial opportunities have been created, what investments were made in respect of research in our country and how many jobs were created?
The funding of marketable research has to be a priority of the department. We have already lost R15 billion or more on the Joule electric car and Pebble Bed Modular Reactor project. Is the ongoing marketable research guaranteed to produce income and jobs?
The time has come for each department to produce a rolling audit of expenditure and outcomes. The department must show the total number of projects or programmes from the past that have been abandoned and those it is still continuing with. Each year the Minister of Finance continues with the theme that we need more bang for our buck and therefore the question of an annual as well as a continuous value audit has become a vital necessity.
On page 813, the department explains that the increase in expenditure in 2009 to 2013 is attributed to "the expansion of executive support". What exactly does this mean and what value did South Africa obtain from that increased expenditure?
Leading on from that question, I need to ask the following: What Performance Information Management system did the department procure that was different from other departments, and what ministerial public participation programme did it undertake, as is required by government regulations?
This department must not only assert that its activities are central to knowledge growth, innovation and industrialisation but it must prove that on a year-to-year basis.
Cope will support the Budget Vote, but requests that the questions raised in this intervention be given full and satisfactory responses. [Applause.]