Chairperson, hon Ministers and Deputy Ministers present, unfortunately the managing Whip is saying that I must summarise, which means that the 10 minutes I had has to be changed. I don't know what to change so I will have to speak off the top of my head rather than from the speech notes. I will just give a bit of background to what this is all about.
The Square Kilometre Array, SKA, is a radio telescope, and we are short- listed, together with Australia, in the bid to host it in the southern hemisphere. We've got two main big telescopes in the southern hemisphere, and one of them is the South African Large Telescope, Salt, in Sutherland. Recently, on 29 and 30 March, the committee visited these two facilities in order to familiarise ourselves with the progress that has been made so far, more so because the result - who has won between us and Australia - will be made known early next year. Initially, six countries had entered for the bid to host the SKA telescope.
The Square Kilometre Array telescope actually signifies an array of dishes - anticipated to be about 3 000 in total when it is finished. These will lie in a very wide area right up to Ghana. The core area is going to be in the Northern Cape province. That is the area on which the Department of Science and Technology, together with the ANC-led government, has decided, since this is a very good site for receiving radio signals. It is sparsely populated and also sunny. Therefore it is able to do good work.
The Astronomy Geographic Advantage Act was passed, in terms of which the Minister of Science and Technology has the sole right to check what activity can be allowed in that important area. Because we are competing with Australia, we have to beat Australia in many aspects, and this Act is one of the instruments by which we entice the international community to make us their first choice.
When the delegation went to the Northern Cape, it was accompanied by the Department of Science and Technology, the National Research Foundation, NRF, which is actually the host of the astronomy facilities in the country, and the South African Astronomical Observatory, SAAO, which is situated here in Cape Town and is actually the driver of all the astronomy research in South Africa. The lead host, as I said, the NRF, is presided over by the chief executive officer, Dr Albert van Jaarsveld, and the SAAO is led by Prof Phil Charles, an astronomy expert who is about to go back to England, where he is originally from.
One of the important things that I also want to mention about the Square Kilometre Array is the radio telescope. At the moment, we are familiar with only about one quarter of the birth of the universe. We can calculate as far back as 300 000 years but the Big Bang happened 4 billion years ago, so we know very little about what happened earlier. There are many theories about the Big Bang and that the universe is still expanding and so forth. In fact, there is now a new theory that life comes from the stars, from the black holes, and the SKA is going to tell us whether we are a product of the stars. We have found out here in Maropeng, at Sterkfontein, that we are the product of the dinosaurs. Now, by having the SKA, we are going to show that we are actually the product of the stars, not the dinosaurs.
With reference to the visit to the SKA, we have just launched a precursor telescope to the SKA. It was checked out last week and fortunately it was successfully verified by the international community. It has seven dishes, therefore it is called Kat-7. Kat-7 is a precursor to MeerKAT. MeerKAT will have 64 dishes to collect radio waves, but in the end, when we really develop the SKA, we will have 3 000 dishes.
Some countries in Southern Africa are our partners but we have gone beyond that, because the wider the area, the more signals we get and the more we know about what is happening at the end of the universe. We also have Ghana, which has agreed to host us, and we will see over time which other countries in Africa we can negotiate with in order to get as much information and as many signals as possible to understand the origins of our universe.
Once we know about the origins of our universe, one of the advantages is that we will be able to tackle even the problems of climate change, an issue that is at the centre of the modern world. We are theorising about 50 years to come and that we want to lower the carbon or gas emissions by 80% to below 1990 levels, but we do not know how to do that. With the SKA, we will probably be able to do that research within one year, so it is very important to do this.
The SKA office is already established in Klerefontein, about 80 km from the site of the dishes. We also visited that.
In 2000 South Africa and its international partners joined forces to build the largest single optical telescope, Salt, in the southern hemisphere. We also visited Salt. The difference between the SKA and Salt is that Salt is an optical telescope. Optical telescopes have certain shortcomings when it comes to receiving waves. For example, if the weather is not good, you cannot see the signal, whereas with a radio telescope, waves can pass through even in bad weather. Also, the SKA - and this is why they say it is very significant - will be able to show us what is happening in what we call "magnetic regions" at the end of the universe. Salt will tell us a little, but if you watch the DVD that shows images from both Salt and the SKA, you can see that the images from the SKA are much clearer than those from Salt, which is the optical telescope. This, therefore, is the advantage of the SKA and its large-scale research involving many countries as our partners, such as the United Kingdom, United States of America, Poland, South Korea, India, Germany, Russia and France. All these countries are in the consortium developing the SKA.
In terms of community benefits, we visited the school hostel there. Since Sutherland High School is the only one in the district offering science as a subject, learners interested in taking science as a subject often have to travel long distances to attend school. The hostel offers accommodation to those learners, mainly children of farmworkers who study science at school. The poor conditions at the hostel made it difficult to attract learners to the school, and a refurbishment was necessary. The upgrades have now been made through the efforts and funding of the NRF.
So, one of the important outcomes for the Northern Cape community is that the NRF and this project have brought benefits to the community and its children. A community centre has also been constructed in Sutherland, through funding from the Department of Science and Technology. The town has many social challenges and a high rate of unemployment, with school-leavers having very little opportunity to find employment. So, the purpose of the centre is ... In conclusion, the Department of Science and Technology must keep the committee updated, but we appeal to this House to adopt the report for the future success of the SKA. [Time expired.] [Applause.]
Chairperso, I move:
That the report be adopted.
Agreed to.
Report accordingly adopted.