The equity targets for the NRF Postdoctoral Fellowships are 80% South African citizens and permanent residents; and 20% citizens from other countries including the Southern African Development Community.

Listen to this article 6 min Listen to this article 6 min It is generally accepted that context matters a great deal to text and all forms of communication, so much so that American painter Kenneth Noland is famed for proclaiming that "context is the key - from that comes the understanding of everything".

The Daily Maverick opinion article by Dr Mariette van der Walt titled "New postdoc study funding rules threaten the very foundation of scientific progress" is perturbing to the National Research Foundation (NRF) for its failure to reflect on the context underpinning the Postdoctoral Fellowships Framework Document published in February. This is a transformational framework document reviewed every academic year.

In 2013, the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) issued the NRF with the "Ministerial Guidelines on Improving Equity in the Distribution of Bursaries and Fellowships Made Through the National Research Foundation and Funded by the Department of Science and Technology".

These guidelines were meant to assist the NRF to ensure that the bursaries and fellowships become an effective instrument for change, ie improve representativity and the absorption of the skills produced by the South African science system.

The guidelines assisted the department to...