Science and technology minister Derek Hanekom says his ministry has signed an agreement to fund Scifest Africa for the next three years.
Science and technology minister Derek Hanekom says his ministry has signed an agreement to fund Scifest Africa for the next three years.
In an exclusive interview with Grocott’s Mail, Hanekom said he has been “a bit disappointed” with the corporate world because of their reluctance to sponsor science centres and science festivals.
He acknowledged that times are tough and that corporations receive good media exposure at high profile sporting events, but said that if the private sector wants to invest in the future of this country, they should invest in events such as Scifest.
Hanekom said his ministry has been working with the Grahamstown Foundation for the past 10 years and is happy to continue to do so in the future, but he felt that “the burden can’t fall purely and squarely on the shoulders of the Department of Science and Technology”.
Scifest has been struggling with funding in recent years since the withdrawal of Sasol – one of the main funders in the early years.
Now with three years’ funding assured, the management of the country’s premier science festival can focus on its core business.
Hanekom stressed the importance of using Scifest as a communication vehicle and an outreach exercise aimed at including young people who would not normally have access to science laboratories.
It is important, he said, that people should understand that careers in science are important and open to all South Africans.
Hanekom said Scifest should communicate the “values and the potentials of science”. He sttressed the importance of science in the development of our society, through addressing real everyday problems.
The science minister pointed out that in order to improve communications with the general public, scientists themselves need to become more skilled at articulating what they do.
Often they do not contextualise their work properly and sometimes appear to be unsure of the value of what they are doing.
He said that this country has a few very good science communicators – some have a broad general understanding of the sciences, while others tend to focus on specialised fields such as climate change, medical science and astronomy.
He feels, however, that we need more science journalists and that editors need to allocate more space to science articles in newspapers and more airtime on radio and television.
Hanekom said he would definitely support journalism schools offering specialised courses in science journalism because there are already sports journalists, medical journalists and “you have political journalists in abundance”- but there are far too few science journalists.
