Daily Maverick
Dailymaverick logo

Opinionistas

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed are not that of Daily Maverick.....

As Trump and Musk bin science and reason, we should poach top US talent

Michael Kahn
By Michael Kahn
3 Mar 2025
Facebook
0
Two communities of practice in the Trump-Musk crosshairs are state-funded scientific research and the science-based regulatory bodies that are being eviscerated and censored. Let’s offer positions to those scientists to boost our research and innovation system.

So we’ve heard President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address (Sona) and had a peek at the ctrl-delete Budget Vote that will be resuscitated on 12 March. This delay allows the commentariat to offer their well-intended advice. Me too, innovation analyst that I am, please.

Sona urged us to become “innovative” but contained no direct reference to innovation. It highlighted new modes for financing infrastructure projects and service provision, without explaining that these all entail innovation. These massive projects will be state-owned and state-driven.

Yet support for private sector innovation was deafening in its absence. A new Innovation Fund to commercialise ideas emanating from the universities was announced to happen some time, somewhere at the end of the rainbow.

Then a coyly smiling Ramaphosa declared we should take the lead “in the commercial production of hemp and cannabis”. That would take some innovation indeed. More on this below.

Remember President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania explaining that your budget is your plan? Sona wants us to be innovative, but the National Treasury Budget Estimate says “hokai”.

Further shrinkage


Worse still, the allocation for Vote 35 to the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation makes no mention of the new Innovation Fund. Instead it declares further shrinkage in the real allocation to the department.

Ouch. More pain.

But we should not worry too much as the finance minister wants to reward public servants with yet another above-inflation pay hike. Minister Enoch Godongwana will keep the incumbent and unionised teachers, doctors, nurses, cops, and researchers onside. That’s the easy way out. Not innovative at all.

Unfortunately, the most recent official survey of expenditure and staff engaged in research and development reports that the stock of researchers has remained static for two decades.

One knows that pay and current expenditure for these skilled people is the main cost driver of any research and innovation system. If one raises their pay, the size of the research and innovation system remains unchanged and its capacity to respond to new challenges will be constrained.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJdf67PwmS8

Trump 2.0 and Musk 1.0 are wreaking havoc as they cull the federal government of perceived bloat, inefficiencies and corruption. The magistrate leading the cull by the Department of Government Efficiency, acronym Doge, is billionaire Elon Musk, who derives his authority from the Oval Office.

The Doge acronym resonates with the title “Doge” of the renaissance Venetian State. The Doge was the elected head of that state and also represented the oligarchy. Among other roles like conquest and persecution, the Doge and Catholic Church indulged in censorship and book burning.

Francis Fukuyama’s essay of 1989 celebrating “the End of History” was just plain misjudged. History is repeating as tragedy and farce wrapped in X tweets and more. Musk as the new Doge?

Two communities of practice in the Trump-Musk crosshairs are state-funded scientific research and the science-based regulatory bodies that are being eviscerated and censored. A case in point is that the word “climate” is now proscribed, and this c-word may no longer appear in state-funded research documentation. Thousands of highly skilled staff are being fired and will become impoverished.

But hey, fortune favours the brave, and opportunity knocks. We are brave and smart enough to recognise the opportunity.

Migrate east


While some of our citizenry have ambitions to flee west across the Atlantic to seek asylum in the United States, the opportunity for us is to offer positions to those scientists fired by the Doge and to support them to migrate east across the Atlantic to us where they may settle in and boost the research and innovation system. This is now possible because we have an active policy to fill critical skills and the great innovation of the e-visa system.

So, Minister Godongwana, rise to the occasion and help us to invite those scientists and families who are being ejected to join us in building our Rainbow Nation that is a home to all, LGBTQI+ included. This means diverting funds to grow the research and innovation system rather than keeping it in the ICU. To paraphrase King Trump, “gain, baby, gain”.

And this is a positive repeat of history — after all, the abandoned Pebble Bed Modular Reactor project attracted scores of German staff who had worked on the earlier German version.

Which brings your analyst back to innovation around weed, dagga, ganja, cannabis sativa, cannabis indica, whatever. Despite generations of use in our country, its large-scale cultivation has lagged because of legal and regulatory inertia.

Yet here’s the thing, Lesotho entered commercial production of cannabis in about 2018 through the efforts of the Matekane Group. Matekane? You mean Premier Ntsokoane Samuel Matekane? Yes, one and the same, he who started out working on our mines, and is now the richest man in Lesotho.

We have a chance to learn from our African cousins in grimly impoverished Lesotho, a poverty for which we are co-responsible. Lesotho has a tiny research and innovation system, but it has visionary talent, and so do we. They have the know-how in the cannabis space. Remember Lesotho Gold?

Mr President, the premier will take your call. DM

If you wish to comment on this issue, please send an email to [email protected]

Categories:

Tags: