Women honour Alex scholars with a cosmic experience to encourage STEM skills

During August, women are celebrated for their resilience and uniqueness through various commemorations, acknowledgements and pampering events throughout the world. As much as its important to celebrate women who build homes and organisation’s, its equally important to be mindful that a woman’s role to build through their resilient and unique leadership and thinking approach is a daily task that is ongoing.

Therefore, in honour of the prime and nurturing role that women carry from the beginning oftime, a group of professional women namely Galetlolwe Semenya, Chef Noni, Wendy Mbalo, Barbra Lawrence Strydom and Andile Nkosi Schmidt joined hands to create a life changing and memorable experience for the African child.

A full day unorthodox workshop was arranged with the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) astronomy scientists and engineers, in honour of Woman’s month in the heart and depth of Hartebeeshoek. This facility manages the biggest radio telescope in Africa which was built in 1961 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States of America. This magnificent massive steel structure was used for space journey tests which landed on the Moon and exploring the planets Venus and Mars and measuring the Sun’s winds.

The facility was deliberately chosen to host the high school children due to its heritage relevance in the South African knowledge in modern astronomy, which also has an undeniable connection to the ancient African cosmic indigenous knowledge. The facility also boasted with African females who hold PhD’s in astronomy and hold extensive experience in the field, which were accessible to the high school children to see themselves in them. The collective value of these phenomenal women who arranged this workshop with SARAO is based on their appreciation of African based indigenous knowledge systems within their fields of expertise ranging from ancient methods of engineering, chartered auditing, culinary, transformation meditation and strategic thinking techniques.

These women heeded the call jointly with SARAO astronomers towards the impostor syndrome symptoms that have created pervasive fear of mathematics and science in high schools, which inevitably form anxiety that impacts their academic performance, career choices, and future prospectus. This fear, sometimes referred to as "mathophobia" "science anxiety"; often stems from a lack of African- based mathematical and scientific literature, techniques and philosophies which subsequently results in avoidance behaviors because they don’t see their identity in the European based references currently used in maths and science classes.

In South Africa's National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations, the Bachelors pass mark for Maths and Physical Science is 30%. Whereas the university entry (Degree Pass) mark is 50% or 60%, Diploma Pass mark is 40% in Maths and for grades 7-9, the pass requirement for Maths is 40%.These pass mark boundaries for the National Senior Certificate sets a distorted foundation for our African children to succeed and become reasonably competitive with their counter peers across the world. Despite the fact that more matric pupils passed maths in 2024 than the previous year (69.1% as against 63.5% in 2023), there is still little reason to celebrate because our children still have a knowledge gap of knowing their ancestors contribution and application of maths and science in cosmology, infrastructure and agriculture amongst others.

The wisdom of African axioms states that "Knowledge is like a garden; if it is not cultivated, it cannot be harvested". This proverb highlights that knowledge requires reverence to the source in order to allow the seed to grow through continuous effort, observations, and hard work to be useful and yield results, similar to how a garden needs tending to produce crops.The women who facilitated the unconventional workshop in collaboration with the amazing SARAO employees created a new perception African based blueprint for the scholars of the Minerva High School towards their future careers in astronomy without the pervasive fear of maths and science. The IKS professional women provided their career skills and knowledge to unveil the truth about Indigenous knowledge systems that contributed to astronomy careers with the aim to encourage the scholars to read and discover how their Ancient forebearers of African Knowledge Systems used the cosmos as their genesis.

Galetlolwe Semenya is a Founder of the Matriarch Professional Association. She holds an MBA (Wits University), and other qualifications in Engineering and Business Science. She wrote this in her own personal capacity as a professional servant with 18 years of railway experience and knowledge in South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Zambia, France and UAE.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

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