Science under threat says ASSAf

ASSAf president and chair Professor Thokozani Majozi says the science community in South Africa is facing an extreme crisis.  This crisis is precipitated by the multiple actions engaged by the current administration in the United States of America (USA) concerning science, scientists, and the scientific enterprise. 

He explains that the Academy of Science of South Africa has the ASSAf Act (Act 67 of 2001) mandate to “advise the Minister on matters concerning science”.

This aligns 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 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 US scientists working at the frontiers of science. The inestimable value of such partnerships was made clear in infectious diseases during the recent COVID pandemic; the discovery 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 has 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 benefited postgraduate students from both sides of the Atlantic, who were able to hone their skills and understanding 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 and 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:

1. Publicly affirm the defence of these constitutional values in the current crisis as it affects science, scientists and the scientific enterprise in South Africa.

2. 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 are being negatively affected by the actions of the US administration.

3. Engage the Academy and its Membership and other entities on ways to develop and sustain a productive and sustained response to this crisis in our scientific community.