The HSRC and the Parliamentary Grant

The HSRC receives a Parliamentary grant to undertake, stimulate, and promote policy-relevant, applied social science research that contributes to the development of South Africa and the region, and particularly to the advancement of its inhabitants who are poor, vulnerable, or marginalised.

More than R70 million of the Parliamentary grant of R77.7 million was directly allocated to research activities. Of this amount, R45 million was spent on research projects, while R25 million was applied to research capacity building and infrastructure support within the Research Programmes. The remaining portion is utilised for institutional costs that are specific to the HSRC’s responsibilities as a public entity. More information is available in sections 4.7 and 10 of the Council’s Report (see pages 122 and 130).

Here are some examples of how individual Research Programmes applied their portion of the Parliamentary grant during the 2004/05 financial year. The projects are more fully described in the sections devoted to each Research Programme.

Assessment Technology and Education Evaluation (ATEE)
Projects supported partially or fully by the Parliamentary grant are listed to give an indication of their scope:

• additional analyses using the data gathered for the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS 2003);
• trend analysis of the matriculation Mathematics performance data;
• the Matric Colloquium (and the resulting publication);
• factors promoting or inhibiting multi-lingual education in post-apartheid South Africa;
• psychological test development needs survey;
• the use of Assessment Resource Banks (ARBs) in schools; and
• a Grade 9 systemic evaluation study, which forms part of the Learner Achievement Monitoring Programme (LAMP).

Child, Youth and Family Development (CYFD)
The Parliamentary grant allocation is used to support the focal areas of the programme, specifically to:

• build collaboration with the wider research community in South Africa, on the continent, and internationally;
• network with users of our research findings;
• leverage additional external funding in CYFD’s focal areas; and
• support value-adding activities, such as getting research into policy and programmes (GRIPP) and the publication and dissemination of research findings.

Specific projects associated with Parliamentary grant-funded research include support for the Family Policy, the gendered nature of school textbooks, an overview of the state of rural education, and the development of structures and processes to improve access by disabled people to social security.

Democracy and Governance (D&G)
All of D&G’s anchor projects are funded with between 20% and 30% of its Parliamentary grant. D&G has taken a proactive stance to do research in partnership with public and statutory institutions. This has resulted in research projects with:

• the Presidency;
• Foreign Affairs;
• National Intelligence;
• Department of Provincial and Local Government;
• Centre for Public Service Innovation;
• Department of Public Service and Administration; and
• Free State, North West, and Mpumalanga provincial governments.

The grant was also used to fund public engagements, including lectureship programmes jointly hosted with national departments such as the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Employment and Economic Policy Research (EEPR)
EEPR used its Parliamentary grant primarily to “seed” new areas, including:

• the promotion of trade in services;
• case studies on early child development; and
• initiating work on South Africa’s role in Africa and employment scenarios.

All of EEPR’s work on services has been presented to the Directors-General’s Economic, Investment and Employment Cluster and Social Cluster, with some findings already being investigated for implementation.

The grant was also used to investigate the impact of HIV/AIDS on small firms, and how they manage it in the workplace, and to support EEPR’s international round-table on school-to-work transitions, which was seen as a timely and strategic event.

Human Resources Development (HRD)
Parliamentary grant funding was used to fund new projects that meet one of the following two criteria:

• as “seed money” to start work in a new area of critical importance to the national development agenda, and which had not as yet harnessed the necessary research funding support; for example, pathway studies of learners from schooling into further or higher education or into the world
  of work; or
• new work that complemented contract-based research, allowing the results of contract and grant-funded research to make a larger synergistic contribution through journal and book productions; for example, two special editions of international journals on the results of the National Survey of Skills.

Integrated Rural and Regional Development (IRRD)
The greater part of the Parliamentary grant funding has been used to seed projects that have then been able to attract substantial levels of external support. Notable examples include:

• a pilot study of the impact of land reform on rural livelihoods in the Elliot district, Eastern Cape;
• the most extensive study of homelessness mounted in South Africa, with Parliamentary grant funding of R1.6 million, which has now been matched by funding from the national and Gauteng provincial Department of Social Development and by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation; and
• studies of migration for all three tiers of government.

Knowledge Management (KM)
The present work of KM is mainly concentrated on delivering on the Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (CeSTII) mandate. Accordingly, the Parliamentary grant is deployed in direct support of the work of CeSTII. This extends beyond conducting various surveys for the Department of Science and Technology to our advocacy role in relation to Science, Technology and innovation policy, and education policy.

Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS and Health (SAHA)
The Parliamentary grant was used for research projects addressing South African public health priorities, including:

• the prevention of HIV transmission from mother to child;
• voluntary counselling and testing services;
• the role of traditional healers in HIV prevention;
• aspects of the relationship between poverty, social capital, home lessness, and health;
• interventions addressing the responsible serving of alcohol; and
• gender violence.

The grant also supported the establishment of the International Gender Institute and the hosting, for the first time in Africa, of the 7th AIDS Impact Conference. These two initiatives helped to display some of the excellent research work done by the HSRC and to identify new research partners.

Surveys, Analyses, Modelling and Mapping (SAMM)
Examples of where SAMM used its portion of the Parliamentary grant:

• the South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS), which has yielded, over the past two years, longitudinal data on a range of public opinion issues that have enabled comparative, time-series analysis, with policy intervention in mind;
• two R&D projects in the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Unit, namely the spatial modelling project and the geo-information capacity project;
• a book, The state of urban policy in South Africa: Ten years on, sponsored by the Development Bank of Southern Africa, which chronicles the formulation of South Africa’s post-apartheid urban policies; and
• a longitudinal study on the urban development implications of the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa.

Social Cohesion and Identity (SCI)
SCI leveraged its Parliamentary grant to engage in critical areas of research cutting to the very core of what it means to be part of the new, democratic South Africa, including:

• investigations into questions of identity, diversity and heritage, leadership, empowerment, and social capital; and
• collaborations with foundations such as the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, tertiary institutions, distinguished intellectuals, statutory organisations, and corporates that have resulted in quality research exploring the very essence of national identity and character.