A
unique feature of South African academic research is the evaluation process adopted and administered by the NRF, whereby academics at tertiary institutions are evaluated on the basis of the quality of their research outputs over long timeframes (see Chapter 1). A current disturbing aspect in respect of the proc- ess, and of concern to many, is the average age profile of the higher-rated researchers, with many having recently retired or being relatively close to retirement. This scenario applies to most scientific disciplines, with chemistry being no exception. The chal- lenge is to find ways of reversing the trend, and in particular to attract quality gradu- ates into academic chemistry once again.Sourcing research funding will be a further major challenge for researchers. With the world, including South Africa, experienc- ing a major recession, funding is likely to become constrained. Although the DST, through its various initiatives, has created new funding opportunities, these are most- ly in respect of targeted programmes. As a consequence, research proposals will have to be designed to meet the requirements of the sponsorship, rather than researchers independently designing programmes and subsequently seeking funding for them. For this and a variety of other reasons, much of chemistry research will take place as com-
ponents of multidisciplinary programmes interfacing with broad areas such as mate- rials, on the one hand, and biology and the health sciences, on the other.
Finally, chemistry will continue to make extensive and increasing use of very ex- pensive sophisticated equipment. Vari- ous programmes are in place to meet the equipment needs of departments/schools of chemistry at universities in the country, but in spite of this not all schools have the same access to some of the more expensive pieces of equipment. Schools of chemistry are very expensive to run; with a reduc-
tion in the global demand for chemists and increasing difficulties in recruiting quality staff, it is likely that the question will arise as to whether there should be a reduction in the number of university schools of chemis- try and/or whether all schools should offer PhD programmes.
Acknowledgements
The author expresses his gratitude to the heads of the schools of chemistry for the information provided and to various col- leagues for their comments.
S
southern Africa, by tectonic and evolution- ary accident, is one of the most biologically diverse places in the world; home not only to the famous Cape Floral Kingdom, but also several other less well-known centres of en- demism of plants and animals, on land, in freshwater and in the oceans. Second, the region has been inhabited since the very origins of Homo sapiens, and thus there is an accumulation of well-tested indigenous knowledge regarding plants and animals.The colonisation and exploration of south- ern Africa by Europeans, starting in the 18th century, coincided with a popular and sci- entific surge of interest in ‘natural history’.
The Cape was a rich source of material for the pioneers of modern biological science, including Linneus, Darwin and their dis- ciples. The early focus on description and classification was complemented, starting in the 20th century, by a growing curiosity regarding function, process and use, and as the depletion of the natural resource assets became apparent, by a concern for conser- vation and management.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the biological sciences in South Africa are both broadly-based (spanning the scale range from molecular biology, through genetics, evolution, physiology to ecosystem sci- ence) and, in several sub-disciplines, excep-
than any other South African disciplinary area (Jeena and Pouris, 2008). Bearing in mind that South Africa spends somewhat less than 1% of the global investment in sci- ence, and thus has a correspondingly small fraction of global researchers and published output, the contributions by South Africans in selected areas have been disproportion- ately large. Several of these areas are in the biological sciences (Lovegrove and John- son, 2008), where South Africa ranks 18th in the world in terms of published output, and several South African universities are in the top 1% of cited institutions, worldwide, in biological fields (Pouris, 2007).
This introduction sketches four themes in the development of biological sciences in South Africa, broadly labelled evolution, ecology, agriculture and medicine. It builds a platform for a series of more detailed dis- cussions of the contributions and current state of several key sub-disciplines. The fo- cus in the chapter as a whole is on the re- cent period since about 1990.
The early fascination with collecting and classifying exotic plants and animals led to several globally-significant biological speci- men repositories located in South Africa.
The national herbarium, headquartered at the South African National Biodiversity
Institute (SANBI) in Pretoria, but with hun- dreds of electronically-linked collaborating collections throughout South and southern Africa, has a million and a half accessions of its own, and direct access to a million more, making it the largest plant collec- tion in the southern hemisphere. South Africa has been a leader in the digitisation of voucher label information, providing an important global information resource.
The herbaria are associated with a system of nine national botanical gardens that are famous for their horticulture, but also un- dertake research and ex-situ conservation.
The national insect collections, for instance of termites and bees, curated by the Agri- culture Research Council (ARC), ants at the South African Museum, and Coleoptera by the Northern Flagship Institution are indis- pensible for the study of African species, as is the fish collection at the South African Institute of Aquatic Biodiversity in Gra- hams-town. There are renowned specialists in the taxonomy of several plant and animal groups, but the coverage is not compre- hensive, and apparent failure of this scarce human resource to regenerate itself is an oft-repeated concern. However, the broad- er field of systematics, embracing the evo- lutionary processes within populations and the relationships among groups of species, continues to be strong in South Africa, and has gained recent impetus from technical advances in molecular genetics. Thus South African scientists are actively engaged in genome studies and in such enterprises as the Barcode of Life. The field of evolutionary studies has been stimulated by the rich re- gional palaeontological record, particularly in the Karoo sediments, and by the ongoing regional palaeoanthropological discover-
ies. It has reached into other fields, such as work on the origin of the spectacular spe- cies richness in the various centres of en- demism and the evolution of diseases and their vectors.
A second flourishing branch of biological sciences in South Africa had its roots in economically important natural resources.
The early economy of South Africa was ab- solutely dependent on forests, grazing and wildlife, and when it became clear around the mid-1800s that they were rapidly be- coming depleted, a dual interest arose: in their ecology, on the one hand, and con- servation and management on the other.
Studies of the ecological effects of wildfire became a strength, breaking decisively from European and North American world- views that saw fire as always destructive and disturbing, and embracing an African perspective that fire is a key process in regional ecosystems. There is a strong tra- dition of population ecology, well repre- sented in fisheries biology, ornithology and botanical studies in the fynbos and Karoo.
There are two strong schools of systems ecology in the country; one in the north with a focus on savannas, and the other in the south focusing on the marine Benguela upwelling system. These ecosystem stud- ies, largely university-based and catalysed by the precursors to the current National Research Foundation (NRF), prepared sev- eral South African researchers to take lead- ing positions in the emerging field of global change, or earth systems science.
The other branch of this ‘natural resource’
focus grew into the contemporary South African strengths in conservation biology,
invasion biology and biodiversity manage- ment. The appointment of the ‘Cape Con- servator of Forests’, following the disastrous fires of the 1850s, placed conservation onto a scientific path. The game reserves proclaimed in Zululand in the 1880s, and the Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek in the 1890s are among the oldest in the world. A nota- ble feature of biodiversity conservation in South Africa is the unusually tight coupling between science and management, which has had the spinoff of making the protected areas of South Africa an important research facility for both local and international sci- entists. A recent feature has been the mas- sive expansion of privately-owned conser- vation lands, to the point where nearly a fifth of the landscape is under some form of biodiversity-based land use, of which only a third is in state-owned protected areas.
The demand for conservation planning and management services has stimulated lead- ing centres of expertise in the fields of wild- life veterinary science, community-based natural resource management, spatial con- servation planning, coastal resources man- agement, ecosystem service assessment and the adaptation of biodiversity to global change, among others. Several universi- ties, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the branch of Marine and Coastal Management (MCM) of the Depart- ment of Environment Affairs, the South African National Parks Board and several provincial parks agencies are the key insti- tutions in these fields.
A third branch of the biological sciences supports agriculture, forestry and related fields. While agriculture in the broad sense (including crops, horticulture, forestry, poul-
try, aquaculture and livestock) has shrunk to a minor part of the aggregate economy, it remains the main economic activity over most of the land mass, the largest water user and a vital source of rural employ- ment. Several universities have faculties of agriculture, the ARC has research facilities in all the major agroclimatic zones, and there is significant private sector research involvement. Classical breeding techniques led to strength in several areas of crop and livestock genetics, from subtropical fruit through traditional African cattle to ostrich- es. Recent biotechnological approaches have been responsibly embraced, with ar- eas of expertise particularly in hybrid euca- lypts and the genetic modification of grains to enhance their nutritional value. There is a particular strength in seed physiology, and another in insect physiology. A key ecophysiological issue has been water use, particularly by plantations of fast-growing trees. Many years of research, now located in the CSIR and funded by the Water Re- search Commission (WRC), overturned the prevailing global wisdom that forests in- creased the quality and quantity of stream flow, leading among other things to an in- novative set of water laws, and policies that target the elimination of invasive alien trees as a simultaneous water conservation and poverty-relief activity.
The final branch of biology we wish to highlight is intertwined with medical sci- ence. Their close association is perhaps not surprising, given that many prominent figures in South African biology originally trained as medical doctors, The steady support for biological research from the Medical Research Council (MRC) is another
factor, driven by the medical challenges provided by the African environment (most recently, for instance, by emergent diseases such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)). Parasitology and vector studies are areas of obvious overlap between zool- ogy and medicine, as is the convergence between oncology and cell biology. The health sciences, broadly speaking, share technologies with veterinary science and plant pathology, which are also relatively well-established in South Africa. There is a centuries-long tradition of ethno-pharma- cological studies in South Africa. In recent decades it has taken on a stronger element of intellectual property protection, benefit- sharing and bio-prospecting. Large frac- tions of the biota have been screened for potentially useful properties, and several have attracted in-depth studies.