Evidence alone is not enough: Prof. Adam Habib on the role of the HSRC in social sciences research

Abstract

In the mid-eighties, the HSRC released a report, which concluded that the apartheid model for intergroup relations had reached an impasse. The findings caused a stir in the National Party government, yet the HSRC pushed forward in its effort to distribute it. Was the HSRC freeing itself from its role as an apparatus of the apartheid state? And how should a research organisation negotiate its relationship with the state? Gor a research institution like the HSRC in the mid-1980s to believe that apartheid was a possibility, and that segregation was a moral right, is problematic, says Habib. He believes the organisation only began to shift during the period of transformation in the 1990s, when a new generation of researchers built it into an institution that was more progressive and supportive of a democratic era.