Democratization of Science and Biotechnological Development: Public Debate on GM Maize in South Africa

Abstract

The Mandela 1 government that came into power in 1994 made the democratization of science and technology a priority in post-apartheid South Africa (Joubert, 2001, p. 316). Attendant ideas of Science Communication and Public Understanding of Biotechnology 2 have hitherto become currency in South Africa’s public sector drive towards the democratization of science. Democratization of science and technology implies that the people as non-experts are an integral part of all deliberations on policy, regulation and control of science and technology, for example, in debates or controversies on issues arising from biotechnology. Democratization of science and technology is about the sociopolitical control of science and technology by wider society. Science and technology must be controlled by wider society because evil-minded groups of people can ill-use it to inflict harm on other groups of people. Moreover, certain unscrupulous and corrupt business entities can collude with the state and/or powerful and influential sociopolitical figures in societies to exploit and abuse indigenous scientific resources as well as endogenous modes of specialized scientific knowledge. On the latter, for example, they can evoke intellectual property rights (IPR) to patent resources that are not theirs historically. Thus, the ideal-type of democracy makes it imperative for the people of South Africa and of other societies in Africa to understand and actively participate in developments in science and technology. 3 This need necessitates increasing scholarly attention to be given to questions of science communication and public understanding of science, arising at the intersection between science, society and politics in South and southern Africa. Some of the major drivers of the processes of the democratization of science are social movements, which are elements of civil society (Ballard, Habib and Valodia, 2006). Social movements do fill and are apt to fill an important gap in science communication and public understanding of biotechnology in South and southern Africa. Scientists are accused generally of being poor communicators of science and technology, preferring to work in isolation, behind closed doors, in laboratories (Latour, 1987). Science communities are notoriously insular (Weingart et al., 2000). News media practitioners are accused of misrepresenting-by distorting, oversimplifying, or sensationalizing-science in public domains and of passively resisting science communication (Joubert, 2001, pp. 324-5). Yet there is a lack of scholarly attention to the role of social movements in the democratization of science in Africa as a whole. Practically, the democratization of science is partial, ad hoc, and biased in South and southern Africa. 4 Therefore, overall, it is unclear what the nature and role of interventions of social movements are in the democratisation of science in Africa.