First published in the Daily Maverick on 4 Nov 2025
by Prof Tinyiko Maluleke
According to scholars Sven Grimm et al, ‘science and policymaking should be an excellent match’. But in real-life situations, the relationship is uneasy. Were the relationship between Science and Policy not so important to our nation, we might have been tempted to abandon the search for a more conducive interface between the two.
A surge of positivity pumped through my veins and arteries as I sat in the august company of scholars, young and older, on the occasion of the inauguration of new members of the Academy of Science of South Africa and the South African Young Academy of Science (Sayas), on 30 October 2025.
It warmed my heart to note that amid the many challenges we face, our country is relentlessly and steadily nurturing a generation of knowledge creators, innovators, critical thinkers and trainers of the next generation of scientists in various fields.
To begin her acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, Toni Morrison invoked what she called “the first sentence of our childhood that we all remember, namely the phrase ‘once upon a time’”. Morisson went on to weave her entire acceptance speech around the ancient story of a wise and blind old woman, who was once visited by a bunch of arrogant youngsters, eager to demonstrate that the woman was not as wise as she was thought to be.
Here is my imperfect and inadequate attempt to emulate the great Toni Morrison, with my own once-upon-a-time story.
Once upon a time
Once upon a time, there was Science and there was Policy. Each was securely installed and nicely ensconced upon one of two neighbouring hills, separated by a deep and a dark chasm. In those days, Policy was Policy and Science was Science.
One day, Policy became very upset with Science — a culmination of many years of mutual loathing and reciprocal detestation. From that day, the shrill and discordant voices of science and policy would reverberate across vales and gorges, day and night, as they clashed and disagreed out in the open. Often, Policy would wander out loud if, in light of all the urgent services needing to be delivered, any more time should be wasted trying to factor in Science and research in plans and strategies.
Prof Tinyiko Maluleke
But Science would put it to Policy that without evidence-based research, without statistical data, and without adhering to the basic tenets of the scientific method, Policy ran the risk of becoming a joke, a brute or, worse still, a blundering bull in a china shop.
But Policy shot back saying: “Oh glorified Science, please can you do better than brag about how clever and knowledgeable you are? Has your knowledge done anything for the ignorant, the poor, the hungry, the thirsty and the violated lately? Remember, while you are out having fun and games in laboratories, libraries and research fields, someone has to get the real work done. Someone has to hold up the sky. And who is that? None other than me, myself and I — Policy.”
Then one day things came to a head, as they were bound to sooner or later. On that day, Policy and Science climbed down their lofty hills, dressed to kill and ready to kill. Down in the valley between, they met face to face upon a large uneven boulder. There, Science and Policy circled one another and sized each other up. Policy displayed its muscular body, while Science used exaggerated hand gestures to point out its magnificent brains and its abundant knowledge. Policy lunged forward and Science pounced. Like Muhammad Ali and George Foreman’s “Rumble in the Jungle” in Kinshasa, Policy and Science began their mortal combat.
And the saga continues today.
Research as guarantor and validator of policy
According to scholars Sven Grimm et al, “science and policymaking should be an excellent match”. But in real life situations, the relationship is uneasy. Were the relationship between Science and Policy not so important for our nation, especially for a developing country as ambitious as our own, we might have been tempted to abandon the search for a more conducive interface and relationship between the two.
In our own country, the relationship between science and policy has been rather fraught. The entire apartheid system, its white supremacist ideology, its racial classification system, its migratory labour and bantustan policies were all based on a toxic cocktail of fear, violence and pseudoscience. For much longer than just the past 31 years of democracy, the science-policy interface has been the arena where both the great potential and the cruel tragedy of South Africa has been playing out.
There is therefore a sense in which the Struggle against apartheid was also a struggle against policies based on ignorance, fear, pseudoscience and non-science. I am afraid that over time, we have oversimplified and reduced the scope and aim of the struggle to politics only. And this in the most ephemeral sense of the word.
There is no doubt that evidence-based policymaking is much more effective and certainly more cost-effective than thumb-sucked policy. Therefore, there can be no substitute for research-based evidence as a guarantor and validator of policy. There are dozens of examples in our country where researchers have collaborated with policymakers to create efficient policies in various areas.
This is borne out by the dozen or so advisories that the National Planning Commission has provided to political and administrative heads of government. Over the past 15 months, the commission has provided guidance and advisories on such critical areas of policy development as the national financing of development, service delivery, the implementation of the Agriculture and Agro-processing Master Plan, red tape reduction, water infrastructure investment, migration, governance, climate change legislation, water security investment and the implementation of the Integrated Crime and Violence Prevention Strategy, among many others.
Other exemplary models of collaboration between Science and Policy can be found in the work of the Presidential Climate Commission, the Presidential Economic Advisory Commission and the erstwhile 4IR Commission. And yet the challenges remain. Some of the advisories and recommendations often get lost in translation. Some dissolve in the sea of suspicions that persists between practitioners of Science and makers of Policy.
Prof Tinyiko Maluleke, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the Tshwane University of Technology, delivering the keynote address at the Academy of Science of South Africa inauguration of its newest members.
Complex problems require complex policies
But such is the intersectionality, scope and the complexity of the problems that we address in policies that research and science findings must necessarily be factored in. The impact of climate change on flora, on fauna, water systems and humans may neither be understood nor addressed from the point of view of a single discipline, or a single country, for that matter. Nor should research results be used selectively or subjectively merely to bolster or confirm a particular ideology or orientation.
To this end, researchers and scientists must continue to allow policy issues with which their countries and the world are grappling to permeate their labs and their research fieldwork. Similarly, policymakers must continue to nurture and cultivate a hunger for research and science that will inform their policy work.
The most important national and global plans are the outcome of concerted and structured conversations between researchers and policymakers — the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the AU Agenda 2063 and the National Development Plan of South Africa 2030 being some of the prime examples.
We can safely predict that the most impactful research in the 21st century will come out of the space where policy interfaces with science, where policymaking interfaces with research rigor.
To conclude, let me walk you back to the “Rumble in the Jungle” where we left Science and Policy locked in mortal combat. This time, we approach the valley with caution. And when we arrive there, we find a big surprise. We find that Science and Policy have found the complementarity that has eluded them for too long. What! Science and Policy are locked in a loving embrace. And then they start to dance together.
Then we realise anew that, until Policy and Science embrace and dance together, it’s not yet Uhuru. Not for the world of science and research, and not for the world of policy making, either.
May Science and Policy dance happily ever after.
This is an abridged version of the keynote address Maluleke delivered on the occasion of the Academy of Science of South Africa inauguration of its newest members, on 30 October 2025.