Stop the Xenophobia: South African researchers sound alarm on eve of election, writes Physicist Azwinndini Muronga

I think we are doing well compared to other international researchers where the GDP is lower, says Soodyall.

“In some fields, such as health sciences, astronomy and high-energy physics, foreign collaboration now typically comprises more than 90% [of papers],” according to the 2023 South African Science, Technology & Innovation Indicators Report by the National Advisory Council on Innovation. The country is also a partner with the European Particle-physics laboratory.

“We are increasingly relying on international collaborations,” says physicist Azwinndini Muronga, dean of science at Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha, South Africa. We probably would be in a very dire situation if it were to be cut.

Vukosi Marivate, a computer scientist at the University, said that some academics from other African countries do not feel welcome when there are flare-ups of xenophobic rhetoric. He says, “As soon as you leave the academic bubble, you get affected by it.”

Source: ‘Stop the xenophobia’ — South African researchers sound alarm on eve of election

MeerKAT, the Unified Voice of Science, Technology and Politics: How South Africa has failed to educate its young people in the last decade

The universe has been captured in unprecedented detail by the 64-dish MeerKAT radio telescope. The country is one of the hosts of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope. The heart of the SKA will eventually be comprised of MeerKAT.

Keeping young people in the education system888-607-3166 is difficult. A survey by Statistics South Africa, the national statistics agency, found that, in 2021, nearly 10% of 17-year-olds had dropped out of school. According to some estimates, between 50% and 60% of students drop out of university after the end of the first year of an undergraduate course.

Four out of five ten-year-olds in South African schools are unable to understand what they read, according to the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study.

Several people whom Nature spoke to also lamented academia’s ‘leaky pipeline’ as universities are struggling to attract and retain talent. The problem, they say, starts with basic education.

Spending on R&D by the government and private sector has been declining since the beginning of the year with the most recent period for which data is available. That accounts for 0.61% of GDP, below 0.76% in 2017–18 and less than halfway to the government’s target of 1.5% by 2030.

The ANC had a strong science system with strengths in geological, astronomy, geology, clinical medicine, mining and nuclear technology. Military research and development was a strength.

Most of the black population were excluded from the scientific community prior to the party taking power. That has since changed.

Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch cautioned political parties to avoid using xenophobic rhetoric, which could stoke further violence. The ASSAF round table last year heard about confrontations between Black African university staff and students who are not from South Africa.

Science is the last thing people talk about in politics in South Africa. We will be discussing what people need who are desperately poor.

Over the past decade, the country’s economy has been faltering, with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita falling from US$8,737 in 2011 to $6,766.50 in 2023. According to World Bank data, more than 60 percent of the people in the world were living in poverty last year. One in three adults are out of work. Frequent power cuts are needed because of a 17-year-long energy crisis.

Source: ‘Stop the xenophobia’ — South African researchers sound alarm on eve of election

Changemakers: Changing the world from Mandela’s perspective to the change of the world. A memoir of a mathematician, a philosopher and a pioneer

Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first democratically elected president when the ANC took power in 1994.

This week sees the launch of a new — and new kind of — series of articles. ‘Changemakers’ will appear in Nature’s Careers section, periodically featuring researchers who have championed and led initiatives aimed at dismantling systemic racism, gender bias and other forms of discrimination in science. In an edited format, researchers will describe their experiences in their own words.

The author thinks the culture of science should be more inclusive because scholars who have worked day and night, often overcoming great adversity and at great personal cost, have made that happen. The articles have to be about positive change. These articles are different because of this.

The spirit of the series was exemplified in the first Changemaker, according to the series description. The former president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County is a mathematician. UMBC has an important place in the history of US higher education. The first public university in Maryland to include people of all races when it opened was founded in 1966.

The Meyerhoff Scholars Program was a project led by Hrabowski. It was established in 1988 with a US$500,000 grant from philanthropists Robert and Jane Meyerhoff to help prepare African American students for scientific research careers. The scheme has boosted the numbers of black science students. Some 500 people have gone on to pursue PhDs, after graduating from it. Its success has been replicated at other universities across the country.

Hrabowski has had a hard time with his own path. He recalls, during his childhood in Alabama, sitting in the audience at a church and hearing Martin Luther King Jr ask the congregation: “What will it take to open the eyes and hearts of people to allow our children to go to better schools?” In 1963, aged just 12, Hrabowski was jailed for a week for marching with other children in an anti-segregation protest. During his years as a PhD student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the early 1970s, Hrabowski recalls in the Nature podcast: “I was the only Black kid in the classes, there was never a faculty member of colour and only one woman. I wanted other people to see that people of all levels could excel, and that was what I wanted to change.

The accounts of facing injustice and constantly fighting for it will be featured in the series a lot. They can be very uncomfortable to read. But these experiences are still too common, and need to be highlighted when they become history.

Alongside the Changemakers series, this journal’s commitment to reporting on these issues will continue. We hope that the series will inspire other researchers, and also the leaders of their research teams, departments and institutions, to make their workplaces kinder and more inclusive.

Nature holds the Changemakers and their work in the highest regard. They should not be seen as extracurricular outreach or diversity work, but rather as an indispensable part of what makes scientific inquiry successful. When doors are open to more creative minds, science will benefit as a whole.