Hon Chairperson, hon Minister and hon colleagues, as the IFP we are very pleased to be able to stand here today to support the Budget Vote of this department. We are pleased because it is our view that this department is one of the few in government that does a decent job. [Applause.] There are plenty that we could severely criticise while standing here but this outfit is pretty good. So, I shall give credit where credit is due.
Listening to the Minister, one very quickly realises that the department has a huge ambit of projects and its remit is very large. I don't have time to speak to all things, so I would like to refer to just three items, which are areas of slight concern, bearing in mind that, overall, the department is doing a pretty good job.
The first of these concerns is the popularisation of science, engineering and technology among young people, who will, in due course, populate this pipeline that we need. The Minister pointed to our young colleagues up in the gallery and said that they may well be the Einsteins of the future. Well, let's hope that is the case, but let me also say to them that it will only be the case if they study mathematics and science at school. The future of this country lies in science, engineering and technology. That is the future of South Africa. It is your future as well, but go and study maths and science, take it at university and then you are on wavelength to a good future. So, go for that.
Having said that, it is good that the department puts fairly substantial resources and effort into popularising science, and outreach programmes through science centres, science weeks, etc, are an important aspect of this. However, I do think that this should not constitute a core competence of this department. In my humble opinion, we need a national programme, a massive roll-out, undertaken by Basic Education - not by the Department of Science and Technology - to deal with science, education and technology, SET, outreach, career guidance and all the pedagogic challenges we face in improving our outcomes. This will then free the department to concentrate on its core mandate, which really is the implementation of its five strategic medium-term goals, one of which is human capacity development. However, I think that here we are really speaking about tertiary-level graduate and postgraduate issues, rather than schools.
My second concern, also on the theme of human capacity development, is the extent to which the department can better contribute to tackling capacity constraints, which in turn constrain knowledge production and, of course, innovation. If you consider the SET pipeline in our school system, there is really nothing much to write home about, and my colleague in the DA was quite right to point to the very serious crisis that we have in education, in particular at maths and science level.
The results of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, TIMSS, are very depressing. The take-up of maths in schools instead of math literacy, which is real nonsense, is depressing. It is not good for the future of science education in the country. Given that, one might well conclude that the human capacity development programmes of this department and its partner institutions, such as the National Research Foundation, are adequate, given the circumstances and material that they have to deal with. But I don't think that is actually correct. Our human capacity development targets need to be raised.
When one listens to institutions like the NRF - and they were with us - they talk about increases in outcomes of 3% to 4% per annum. That may be acceptable, but I don't think it is, because we need to aim high. We need to deliver higher than that. Anything that can increase those outcomes is to be welcomed. An additional amount of R500 million has been given for the outer limit of the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework to be spent on human capacity development. It is a great thing but we really need to raise our targets in this area.
I also want to talk about something that the Minister didn't really deal with this time but which we have gone through before. It relates to the level of expenditure on research and development. We have had this modest target of 1% of gross domestic product for research and development for many years, and we have never managed to reach it. We go creakingly low to 0,96% and 0,94%, but we never crack the 1%. This is very depressing because if one looks at the raw data, the actual expenditure on research and development has increased from approximately R5 billion to R21 billion over the decade ... [Inaudible.] ... before last year. That doesn't sound bad but the problem is that its quite modest when compared to our competitors out there in the global economy. If you have problems on the research and development side, then you are probably going to have problems on the innovation and commercialisation sides, and everything else as well.
We really need to step this up because we are not unlocking our economic potential sufficiently when our research and development is stuck below 1%.
I am very pleased that the Minister made reference to the outcome from the Ministerial Review Committee when he mentioned the R500 million grant being given over three years to strengthen research and development within industry. That is wonderful. He also spoke about a joint summit happening in July. These are very important and good initiatives. However, anything that we can do to unlock this 1% barrier and get beyond it is to be welcomed. A couple of years ago, the previous Minister spoke about a target of 1,5% that we should be heading to, and she was right. Let's get over this 1% barrier and set ourselves a new challenge of 1,5%. Then we will be making progress.
I'm running out of time so let me quickly say something that may not be very appropriate, given that there is an election around the corner. I don't want to say that the department is perfect, but I do think that we have a very good team here, with good projects and good partners. It's a very exciting bunch of people to work with and from an oversight perspective it is a privilege to work with all the people involved. I won't say that of all the departments, mind you, but certainly of this one. [Applause.]