The Big Read: A giant inspired by Jupiter

Even after he blew up his mother's kitchen in Mthatha, the young Siyabulela Xuza remained undeterred in his search for a rocket that would take him to the planet Jupiter.

But this obsession started earlier, when he saw a small aeroplane for the first time as it dropped political pamphlets from the air in this Eastern Cape city. While other boys ran after the papers drifting earthwards, Xuza's eyes remained focused on this marvel of technology, a plane, and dreamt of travel to places beyond Earth's orbit.

Thus begins the most powerful graduation speech I've ever heard. He starts the speech to a few thousand people with a confidence that betrays the fact that he trained outside South Africa and holds a degree in engineering from Harvard University.

Smart, young, upright and clean-faced, he grips his audience with a simple quest from childhood - how do I get to the largest planet in the solar system? To get there, he needs a special kind of rocket fuel, and Xuza starts to experiment with basic tools to develop such a source of energy propulsion.

He wins local and international science competitions for his discoveries, including first prize at the world's largest youth innovation exhibition, the 2007 Intel Science and Engineering Fair. This gets him the attention of the Nobel Committee, which invites him to the 2006 Nobel Prize ceremonies in Sweden, and of the famed Massachusetts Institute of Technology, situated near his alma mater, Harvard.

Xuza is now, almost literally, on top of the world.

Then the ultimate prize that even the world's top scientists dream of. Xuza tells the audience, with a kind of mock sadness, that he never fulfilled his dream of going to Jupiter.

But the dream became real when scientists from MIT's Lincoln Laboratory named a minor planet (or giant asteroid) after him and, he informs the stunned audience, the planet named Siyaxuza is right next to Jupiter itself. So he got there, sort of, the boy from Mthatha who became the engineer from Harvard and now the science entrepreneur from planet Earth.

As I watched Xuza entrance his audience, the obvious question came to mind: in a country that regularly features last in the world in international rankings of science achievement in schools, how do we create tens of thousands more Xuzas from our mind-numbing school system?

What was clear from this speech is the power of imagination; that has to be the starting point. Not science facts delivered coldly or the senseless review of old exam papers to "pass" the next test. What schools need are teachers who enable young people to dream about what science (or history or drama or economics) can mean in their hands.

For this to happen, ambitious projects addressing real social problems are a winner every time.

Then comes opportunity. This requires teachers to connect the dreamers to real networks, opportunities and people who can make dreams come true. It used to be old-boy networks that put privileged young men ahead, but that greasiness is dated in this mobile, technology-networked society.

Now the science competition in Sasolburg, or school visit by a young software engineer, or sponsored visit abroad to an international science fair, begins to connect the dreamer to possibilities elsewhere. No genius gets anywhere by remaining stuck in their own back yard, or in mother's kitchen.

What strikes you about Xuza is his single-mindedness. He has a simple goal and everything he does is focused on achieving it.

That is the third requirement - the personal qualities of the future scientist, entrepreneur or innovator. People who blow up their mothers' kitchens, in other words. The roving eye of the teacher in school has to constantly seek out these special young people who, given half a chance, can turn that restlessness of the mind into powerful innovations.

Xuza is now in full stride as he takes the graduation audience to the climax of his message. In our minds, as the audience, there is now this heavenly body with a Xhosa-derived name sitting alongside the Jupiter asteroid belt.

"Now say after me," he coaxes the attentive audience with a line from a song by Paul Brandt: "Don't tell me" (we repeat dutifully) "the sky is the limit" (the audience drones) "when there are footprints on the moon."

At that moment we felt we could walk to Jupiter as the young man from Mthatha took his seat to thunderous applause.