Yesterday we took a large delegation of postgraduate science students to a cocktail party with members ofparliment from the science and technology committee. Their responsibility is to hold the Department of Science and Technology accountable and make recommendations directly to the national assembly.
We started off with a meeting in the Rhodes chambers. They all introduced themselves. They had a variety of interests:
- Upliftment of the poor
- HIV/AIDS
- Women in science
- Preventing the "brain drain" (qualified South Africans leaving the country due to lack of work)
- High school maths and science development
After this there was a question and answer session. I was very disappointed with this. The MP's were far too verbose (not all of them) and only managed to answer six questions. Of which two were the same question. The repeated question was about communication. We hear nothing from government here in the computer science department. When it comes to project selection industry exerts a massive influence but social upliftment research is usually done by students reacting to local needs. We were told there were funds for projects the government was interested in, but it seems 'the internet' is the place to look for it them.
In response to a question about after academia employment, a few of the MPs pointed out that many people (such as the CSIR) complain about a lack of qualified graduates. It was suggested that a database of graduates be constructed. I followed up on this point afterwards and it seemed like it would be something useful, although they only expressed half interest. I have mailed our Dean of Research (who arrived in the conversation at exactly the right time) to follow up on it.
I then had a very interesting chat with Farida Mahomed who also sits on the Trade & Industry, and, Foreign Affairs committees. I got talking to her about TuxLabs and Ubuntu Linux. She was very interested and I asked Hilton from TuxLabs/The Shuttleworth Foundation to contact her. Hopefully something good will come of that. She also had a lot to say about being humble and the arrogance of youth leauges.
Ingrid made some useful contacts for her work, but I will wait for her to tell us about it, here's her take.
I wasn't hugely impressed by the whole thing, but I think Rhodes made a good impression, particularly Rhodes Computer Science. I do hope they come again and we get to speak to them when they haven't been rushed around campus since 3am. John Richter has a more negative take on the experience.
The situation did provide for a nice photo for the Ubuntu Shirt Day photo.