/ 3 September 1999

Studying in a spy centre

Barry Streek reports how a top-secret satellite and missile development centre has been turned into a specialist training unit for students

The apartheid government’s top-secret satellite and missile development centre, worth billions of rands, has been transformed into a specialist training unit for physics graduates to study and research satellite communications.

Last year, 36 students from 10 historically disadvantaged universities and technikons studied on the state-of-the-art computers and equipment at the defence force’s former Houwteq research station at a remote site in the mountains near Grabouw in the Western Cape.

This year, a further 74 students from the same institutions, all BSc graduates, are studying at the campus, which is now known as the Institute of Satellite Applications and the Institute of Software Applications and Knowledge (ISAK).

With an estimated annual shortage of 1 800 qualified information communication technology engineers – according to a Human Sciences Research Council study, this will lead to an estimated shortage of 9 000 suitably qualified engineers in five years – the Department of Communications, which now administers the government-owned research station, believes ISAK has a crucial role to play.

Indeed, the ISAK students, if they cannot be lured by the department with grants to do masters and doctorates in computer technology, are being snapped up by industry.

Shortly before the old South African Defence Force was forced to close down its satellite project in 1992, South Africa was on the verge of launching a spy satellite – a LEO observation satellite (Greensat) – to monitor its neighbours from the sky.

Today, models of the old spy satellites can be seen at the Houwteq site, as can new models for communications satellites, being built by ISAK students in cooperation with the University of Stellenbosch, which last year launched a micro-satellite from the Vandenbergh air force base in the United States.

There is also a huge electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) laboratory, an anechoic chamber which can test interference from electrical devices up to 18 gigahertz, a high unit of frequency. It is the only EMC of this size in Africa and South America. The EMCs of the South African Bureau of Standards and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) only measure up to one gigahertz. In addition, Houwteq has a thermal vacuum chamber (140C to 170C and one-billionth atmosphere) and an acoustic environment test chamber.

This high-tech facility was erected, clearly with few budgetary restraints, out of secret defence funds as the beleagured PW Botha government desperately prepared for war with the “communists” in the early 1980s. It is thought the initial construction costs were then R300-million. The missiles, built at Houwteq, were tested at Arniston near De Hoop on the Cape south coast, but South Africa’s first satellite, a spy satellite, was never launched. It was to have been sent into orbit with a South African-built rocket from Arniston.

Quite what it all cost will probably never be known, but the Director General of Communications, Andile Ngcaba, said this week the value of the site today was “over R1-billion”. Others have put the value of the facilities at closer to R5-billion.

For five years after the secret satellite programme was closed in 1992, little took place at Houwteq, but two years ago it was allocated to the Department of Communications, which is studying the feasibility of South Africa launching its own communications satellite. Ngcaba told the parliamentary committee on communications that his department’s vision was to make South Africa a knowledge-based society and to help create an information- based economy.

“We are moving from an industrial-based economy to an information-based economy. This has led to the transformation of certain types of jobs over the last 20 years,” he said. “The structure of the industrial economy is changing. The notion of globalisation is based on information.”

His department hopes to make South Africa a networked community, and its goal is to enable ordinary people to have access to traditional media as well as the convenience of information technology. The role of telecommunications should be enhanced in education, training and human resources. This includes broadcasting projects, such as the School of Broadcasting and the extension of the education channel on television. It also includes the establishment of Web-Internet Laboratories, called Doc-Wils, to create infrastructure, computer Internet laboratories and facilities to enable students to understand, learn and utilise the Internet and related technologies at historically disadvantaged educational institutions.

The Doc-Wils include 23 or 27 multimedia workstations, a file server, a router, software and facilities for satellite tele- education. In the first phase, Doc-Wils were established at five universities (University of the North Pietersburg, University of the North QwaQwa, Western Cape, Fort Hare and Zululand) and five technikons (North West, Border, Mangosuthu, Eastern Cape and Thutho Matlate). The next phase was the provision of Doc-Wils at high schools.

At ISAK, students study network engineering, satellites and satellite engineering, and software engineering. Also included are compulsory courses on total quality management, project management, business process re-engineering, enterprise resource management and a Web-master course. There is a website museum and a library of computer viruses at the campus. Ngcaba said a feasibility study into the economic viability of a communication satellite, owned and operated by South Africa, is being conducted by the CSIR.

Although he emphasised that no decisions have been taken, it is estimated that it would cost $250-million (R1 500-million) to build the satellite, put it on to a rocket, put it into space, have a spare satellite and insure the programme. It will take three to four years to build.

At present, South Africa, including the private sector, is spending $85-million (R510-million) a year on transponder rental and this is bound to increase because of exchange rate fluctuations, increased demand and increasing profits by operators.

The final report on the feasibility study will be submitted in February next year.

“It is not going to be the government financing this. You will get a consortium of local shareholders, as long as there is a commitment to use the satellite. It is going to be business imperatives, nothing else. The satellite will serve our domestic requirements,” Ngcaba said.