[Satellite News 02-16-10] The South African government has purchased a majority share in SunSpace, a private, domestic spin-off satellite development research company, in an effort to boost the country’s space program, state cabinet officials confirmed Feb. 16.
    The South African Cabinet approved the deal to buy 55 percent to 60 percent of the company through a vote held Feb. 11, and the transaction must clear reviews from South Africa’s ministries of finance, trade and industry, and science and technology. According to a Feb. 12 statement from South African government officials the departments are set to approve the purchase.
    SunSpace, the manufacturer of South Africa’s 81-kilogram Earth observation microsatellite, Sumbandila, already was an integral part of South Africa’s space industry. The company developed by the government, to provide South Africa with space technology and data services.
   The government purchase was forecasted by a statement released by South African Department of Trade Chief Nomfuneko Majaja in July, who told the country’s parliament that he hoped that “South Africa would be in a position to be a launching state in five-to-10 years time.”
   In July, the South African National Empowerment Fund (NEF) invested $6.4 million in SunSpace to improve its competitiveness in the aerospace market, according to a statement released by NEF, which called the move “one of a series of recent investments aimed at rapidly increasing black participation in strategic industries and enterprises.”
SunSpace CEO Bart Cilliers said his company has been negotiating the deal with the South African government for the past two years. “We did so because the satellite business is geopolitically sensitive,” Cilliers said in a statement. “Most clients are governments, and they want to know that the manufacturer has the support of its home government. This deal shows solid government support and assures the stability and longevity of the company.”
    South Africa also may be using the deal to establish an independent military satellite communications program, which was described by Brig. Gen. Ian Fordred of South African National Defence Force (SANDF) as the country’s major space challenge. “In the early 1990s, we decided to go down the C-band route to support our military operations in Africa, specifically, our peacekeeping missions in the DRC, Burundi and Sudan because the C-Band gave us the biggest footprint over Africa,” Fordred said in an interview with Satellite News. “… The biggest challenge was not having access to military satellites, but utilizing commercial capacity. We were forced to look at commercial satellites.”
    Fordred also said that many of South Africa’s frustrated military satellite personnel, “left the National Defence Force to pursue careers in the commercial environment, so we are quite heavily reliant on our civilian contractors to assist in the maintenance of our satellite systems.”