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Nelson Mandela, president of the African National Congress, has called
on South Africa’s research organisations to channel their resources into
building a new democracy. He also quashed fears that the country’s scientific
institutions would be closed ‘because of their shameful history’.

Many South African scientists fear that universities and other research
organisations which helped to sustain apartheid will be closed down after
the ANC takes power. But late last month, at the Institution of Mechanical
Engineers in Johannesburg, Mandela said: ‘We recognise the individuals in
these institutions constitute a wealth of techno-logy, knowledge and expertise.’
They must help to build and strengthen a democratic South Africa, he said.
‘To discard them would be to throw out the baby with the bathwater.’

Too much money had been spent on developing arms to preserve apartheid,
he said. In 1987-88, the Atomic Energy Corporation received 980 million
rand ( £187 million) from the government, much of which was spent
on developing nuclear weapons. Mandela reaffirmed the ANC’s promise to support
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the call made by the Organisation
of African Unity for Africa to be a nuclear weapon-free zone.

Mandela also condemned the education policies that had left South Africa
‘with a legacy of scientific illiteracy’. ‘Today some 96 per cent of all
engineers are white and 89 per cent of all scientists in South Africa are
white,’ he said. South Africa produces 35 engineers per one million people.