Space - The Final Frontier

South Africa is at present a space faring nation, having joined this exclusive club with the launch of a small satellite built in Stellenbosch in the late 1990s. We could have been there earlier, was it not for the unfortunate impact of political change on our scientific capability. We were close to having our own launch capability as well, but today not much of that expertise remains in the country.

And now, through a weird coming-together of events, we might also forfeit our capability to develop and build our own satellites. The details are messy and shrouded in controversy. My concern is with the people that dedicated their lives to this dream, those that went without sleep, without salaries sometimes, to make the deep dreams of South Africans to also be counted a reality. That dream is slipping away from us, again. This past few weeks had been some of the worst days of my life, leaving my physically ill. Helpless in the face of bureaucratic process I had to listen to people saying that maybe we do not need this capability. The message is clear; we are not top class as a nation.

I do not and will not subscribe to such nonsense. It is irresponsible to have bureaucrats decide what we may dream as a nation. The audacity is too much to handle!

Regardless of the outcome of all the debate and counting of rands and cents, I will continue to strive for the stars. I know that there are more of us out there. We must not be quiet about this. We must insist on being seen, on being counted, on contributing to the knowledge and achievements of humanity. We must never resign to just making a living, to just worry about our immediate needs, soulless and aimlessly just crawling from womb to grave, always asking for hand-outs, hoping for something to come to us for free!

Let us take what will come to us over the next few weeks and turn the adversity into a competitive edge. If we scrape through, let us decide never to get this close to disaster again. If we take a knock, let’s gather the pieces together and try again, from stone to stars, via the staircase of smart work.