Many schoolchildren in South Africa’s deep rural areas have Einsteinian ideals of making a world of difference, writes Muziwakhe Singwane
Youthful ingenuity can turn township rubble into floor polishers, electric curtain openers and even 200km/hour car engines, but poverty dashes the hopes of studying further and being taken seriously as innovators for many rural school children.
The government admits it gives these children little or no support and instead targets its science programmes mainly at urban centres, and then mostly at tertiary scientific institutions.
“We help innovators, but deal mainly with companies and not individuals,” according to Reika Geevuan, assistant director of industrialist establishment in the Department of Trade and Industry.
National education spokesman Molatwane Lekete says: “In rural areas where guidance teachers are rare, it is the responsibility of the teacher to assist the children.”
But South Africa also has a shortage of maths and science teachers, and those in rural schools often seek better job prospects.
In Nelspruit, the Manganese Metal Company (MMC) funds school science expos that are organised through the outreach programme of an independent school, Penryn College. Last year, five pupils from Hlanganani High School in Dwaleni, a rural village 30km north-east of Nelspruit, raked in the top three awards for their practical science projects at an MMC school science expo.
They won a gold medal for designing a remote-controlled board duster, a bronze medal for an automatic floor polisher and a silver medal for an automatic curtain opener. The board duster and curtain opener were designed for disabled people, while the floor polisher allows wax to be fed directly to the floor through a tube.
Cardboard and tin were used to fashion the devices, which were battery operated for the demonstration, but would work off electricity if the pupils’ ideas were ever accepted by industry.
This year, they plan to build an aircraft and enter it in the same expo. Abednigo Zwane (21) explains that they dreamed of flying the plane overseas.
Sadly, this is unlikely. The five innovators, who have come so far without a guidance teacher, are keen to study design technology at university, but are too poor and can only hope to be awarded bursaries.
“We desperately need funds, as our families are poor,” says the brains behind the automatic curtain opener, Melvin Nkosi (20). Both his parents died in the past two years, and he lives with an aunt who is a domestic worker and is struggling to support 11 children.
If he and his friends don’t get funding to study further, they are likely to end up like Victor Nhlazane (37) of Tekwane South in Nelspruit, who was too poor to study mechanical engineering. He and his wife run a spaza shop to support their six children, but he still tinkers with machines and has built a small car powered by a lawnmower engine. Its body is made out of sheets of corrugated iron, while the steering wheel is made of wire, wrapped in plastic packets. The wheels are salvaged from bicycles.
He wants to display his car at the Lowveld Show in August and hopes to get sponsors to establish a workshop to teach township youths welding and other skills.
“I want them to know that they can follow their dreams, no matter how poor they are,” he explains.
He also hopes that his talent will be recognised at the show.
“Maybe someone from an engineering company will see how talented I am and hire me.”
Pride Thabane (53) also hopes that his talent will be spotted. He built a car powered by a BMW engine that can reach speeds of 200km/h. He’d especially like President Thabo Mbeki to see his work.
“He must see that we can do it. I also hope that the BMW company sees my car and will help me with money. Maybe I will get lucky and get a job with them. I have demonstrated that I can build a luxury car without being formally trained at a university.”
Thabane, who lives in Acornhoek, Northern Province, is a self-employed mechanic who built the car with a 2,8-litre, six-cylinder BMW 528i engine.
He plans to build an eight-seater car, a double-cab bakkie, a sports car and another four-seater car.
Three boys in KaNyamazane – a township that boasts the highest crime rate in Mpumalanga and the 14th highest in the country – designed a garage that not only saves space in crowded townships, but also wards off car thieves because it sinks underground.
The boys, who are in grade 11 at Thembeka High School, call it the “Space Saver”, and the model of painted cardboard and wire, which operates with a battery, won silver medals at a science expo in Nelspruit and at an exhibition in Lydenburg last year.
Armstrong Malope (30) has also targeted crime in the township and invented an alarm that rings your cellphone within 60 seconds of your property being burgled. “It is ideal in rural areas because there is lack of law enforcement,” he explains.
His dream was to be a qualified electrical engineer, but he had to drop out of school in grade 11 after his mother died, and he now raises two brothers and a sister.
Johan Neethling, chief techno-economist in the national Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, admits that the department has not focused on encouraging rural innovators. It advertises for projects through a network of non-governmental organisations called the South African NGO Network (SangoNet) and through university councils. “We also advertise in newspapers, and at the moment it is difficult for rural people to get the message,” Neethling says.
He says his division only considers projects that introduce new technology into the world and boost the economy. In addition, it only considers projects which are formally submitted with proposals describing the nature of the project and its target market, the amount of funding needed, and the amount of money the product could generate if it was released into the market.
Since 1997, the department has spent about R130-million on 57 projects, none of which were submitted by rural innovators. Most were submitted by existing institutions like the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and higher education institutions.
– African Eye News Service
Learners in Mpumalanga interested in having their innovations recognised can contact: Rita van der Walt at the Manganese Metal Company Tel : (013) 759 4600, Heather Stevens or Bailey Nkuna at Penryn College (013) 758-1189
— The Teacher/M&G Media, Johannesburg, July 2001.