Lead, South Africa

All is not lost,  South Africa. 

The U.S.,Mexico, Kenya and other countries have been working on what they call a STEM ecosystem. They are trying to ensure that young people have  the science, math, technology and engineering skills that the future will demand. More accurately, that the present demands.

What is so great about that? We have had a comprehensive looting ecosystem running brilliantly efficiently for many years.

These countries talk of collaborating and consulting with all stakeholders. Nothing new to us. Our steakholders consult extensively,  holding their steaks and chops around braais, often sponsored by eager taxpayers. I am sure that discussion around new projects, pipelines and sharing of loo...., pardon, responsibilities, is comprehensive and detailed. Our math skills come to the fore.  'The square of the hype around a project is equal to the sum of the squares of the waiting looters' greed and spin'. Take that, Pythagoras!

They talk of collaborating with business, philanthropists, educators and government. We have been doing that for years. How else could we have gutted just about every SOE? How else could we have so effectively stuffed up municipalities, farms, construction projects and everything stuffable? Not possible without seamless collaboration.

Of course the priorities of these capitalist warmongers are somewhat confused. It seems to be about the young, about people, about the country and perhaps even mankind (personkind?).  Learn from our African wisdom, guys:

Party before people. 

Party before country.

After all one of our philosopher-

 statesmen once asked:

 

"Which came first democracy or the ANC?" 

A chicken  - egg like riddle that would have stumped Plato and Aristotle and even troubled our own ace philosopher, Dr Ace Magashule.  A friend said that we might also ask which came first, EFF or VBS. I warned him not to poke the fierce, red bear,

I suppose that these countries took seriously the notion that the  

security of a country is threatened when people are poorly educated. 

Well, here we are are way ahead of the curve again.  No dumbing down of the country here, with our challenging 30% pass requirement.  Let's remember that the 80/20 principle states that 80% of the results come from 20% of the activities. We surpass that with 10% to spare.  We could comfortably go for a  20% pass requirement, but hey, we're about striving for excellence, pushing that brown envelope, reaching for....something.

It seems that philanthropists also play a role in the STEM ecosystems. Thank goodness that we have the Zuma Foundation and others. So we are uniquely poised to ride the great wave of progress and technology. This is probably why we are a leading producer of intermittent electricity. Interestingly,  some of these initiatives include training young hackers for productive work. Again, we lead the pack. I'm not sure about hacking, but we seem to be able to infiltrate and penetrate anything available for infiltration and penetration.

One's heart almost overflows with the pride of being South African.

So US, Mexico, Kenya and others: who needs your STEM ecosystems?

If we were a boastful lot, we  could say: Ecosystems R Us

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723