Alternative profile: the Social Research Foundation

This article is the first of what will likely be a long series of ‘alternative profiles’ mostly focusing on individuals and organisations in South Africa, but extending also to individuals and organisations internationally where the disjuncture between their manufactured public image and facts seems important.

Why does the Social Research Foundation matter?

All of the alternative profiles that will be published here will be concerned with individuals or organisations who have some kind of important role in society - these profiles are not driven by mere curiousity, but by a concern with the public interest and the fact that the impression given to the public is inaccurate or misleading in crucial ways.

The ‘Social Research Foundation’ has been the source for many media reports - often frontpage headlines - about political issues in South Africa, before and after the recent 2024 election. As an organisation, therefore, it has a demonstrably large effect on public discourse on key political issues.

A few weeks ago, the SRF was the basis for a deluge of media reports about the governing coalition (misleading referred to as a 'government of national unity').

Previously, I noted that a collection of former apartheid functionaries were collaborating to produce pro-GNU propaganda:

In that article I briefly discussed the histories of the three organisations involved.

Shortly after that article, there was a new deluge of pro-GNU propaganda but this time from a wider range of media groups and with a different origin: the Social Research Foundation. These media reports present the SRF as some kind of independent, objective, credible source of social science research. In fact, it has none of those characteristics.

Examining the SRF’s credibility

First, consider the issue of credibility of social science research in a narrow technical sense. The SRF’s claims are based on polling, though in this case - as in many previous ones - they sent out the press release before publishing even the polling report. The methodological approach of the SRF polling has never been adequately explained and is not provided on its website or in its reports. It never publishes its raw data. The identities of those actually conducting the research are not declared - so expertise cannot be established. (It often says the research is ‘commissioned’ but does not say from whom). None of its work has ever been independently peer reviewed.

In the realm of social science research this means that the SRF does not get past the start line of credibility.¹ This excerpt from a letter by an actual expert in survey statistics and data analysis captures the core conclusion:

Unfortunately, many editors clearly do not respect real, non-partisan expertise and so this suggestion was ignored.

Second, consider the issues of independence and objectivity. The SRF’s funders are undeclared so independence cannot be assessed, but that is as good as saying that it is not independent until proven otherwise.

There is enough information available, however, to assess its objectivity because the founder of the SRF is known: a man by the name of Frans Cronje. So let us look at Cronje’s background…

Who is Frans Cronje?

Frans Cronje’s previous job before heading the SRF was as CEO of what is now called the Institute for Race Relations. It used to be called the ‘South African Institute for Race Relations’ (SAIRR). I came to know of the SAIRR in the early 2000s as a mild, centrist/progressive liberal thinktank which had collected useful social science data - especially during the apartheid era.

In recent years I have come across pieces of information from the apartheid era that have made me question how progressive it really was. Putting that aside, when Cronje took over it still made a serious pretense of being progressively liberal. Under his tenure, and that of its president - Jonathan Jansen² - it took one sharp turn to the political right, after apparently already having taken such a turn in the late 1980s and 1990s. Consider the following lengthy excerpt from an article written by former members of the SAIRR:

We do not dispute the right of individuals to promote their own political and economic beliefs,  but note that the IRR fosters a ‘free-market, small state’ agenda while representing itself as a human rights research organization devoted to impartial fact-based analysis. This testifies to its open association with northern libertarian groups such as the Atlas Network and the Heritage Foundation, the latter supporting Trump’s presidential campaigns. Furthermore, although the IRR’s founding constitution “explicitly excluded the Institute from identifying or associating itself with any organised political party” (Hellmann: 4), the IRR has increasingly identified itself with the Democratic Alliance.

Through its news website, the Daily Friend, and their @Liberty policy bulletins, the IRR has obfuscated or denied the role of humans in causing climate change, attacked South African medical scientists, offered unscientific advice about COVID-19 vaccines and other mitigation measures, and attacked analyses of the societal production of racism and racial inequality as inherently ‘race essentialist.’ Furthermore, in a society where some 30 people were shot in recent civilian conflicts in Durban, it has objected to proposed government legislation tightening access to fire-arms. Instead, it equates ‘gun rights’ with self-defence and personal property rights, despite the Constitutional Court (along with a majority of other countries) having ruled that gun-ownership is a privilege and not a right.

These issues reflect the concerns of the board of an institute which, nearly three decades after the end of apartheid, remains engaged primarily with the interests of an overwhelmingly white, elite, and ‘big business’ constituency. The Institute prioritises its own ideological predilections rather than devoting itself to the betterment of race relations. Despite this, the IRR claims to be representing the concerns of all South Africans and that its policies and campaigns continue its human rights legacy. Any ideas that do not serve the interests of unfettered free market economics are framed as an assault on individual freedoms, human rights and inequality. Through the Daily Friend’s opinion columns, and in their campaigns and reports, the IRR uses misinformation and hyperbole to foster fear, confusion and conflict rather than logical and constructive public dialogue based in solid empirical research. The Daily Friend is not a member of the Press Council of South Africa, and hence not subject to its jurisdiction nor the media code of ethics. 

The organisation that this excerpt describes is one that was very much the creation of Frans Cronje. [The role of Jonathan Jansen has been downplayed for dubious reasons: they even waited for Jansen to resign from IRR before they published criticism of it. But I will write about Jansen separately.] Some of the signatories are genuinely, consistently progressive individuals while others - like Mavuso Msimang and Hugh Corder - are more questionable. That only adds to the point: since even questionable progressives found the new IRR so repugnantly biased, ideological and right-wing. That is Frans Cronje’s legacy.

What are his qualifications? It is hard to find an actual curriculum vitae but there is some information available online. He has a doctorate in scenario planning, which in my view is not dissimilar to having a doctorate in political astrology using spreadsheets. Aside from that it is not clear that he has any other post-school qualifications. He certainly does not have any technical expertise in polling, survey design, statistical or econometric analysis, or any related skills that would position him to be a technically reliable source of quantitative social science research.

Cronje’s clear rightwing political leanings and lobbying continue through his board membership of organisations like ‘African Liberty’ founded by the Cato Institute and now reportedly run by the Atlas Network: both right-wing organisations based in the United States. In previous writing he has made clear his specific political biases, as recently as 2021 advocating for the ‘pack’ of opposition parties to ‘kill the ANC buffalo’ while the opportunity existed.

Conclusion

The Social Research Foundation is an organisation that seeks to influence public discourse to serve the political agendas and biases of its founders - probably on behalf of its undeclared funders. It cannot be considered objective or non-partisan in any way. Furthermore, its actual research fails to meet any of the basic criteria for credible social science research.

The regurgitation and promotion of the SRF’s findings by South African media outlets therefore either reflects gross incompetence, a shared political agenda, or both.

The consequence amounts to propaganda, since it sells biased and possibly manipulated analysis to the public as factual and objective. And that is obviously bad for genuine democracy.

1. A recent article by Imraan Buccus which discusses a supposed schism in what he calls ‘liberal’ thinktanks confuses many of the issues I have discussed here and in pre-election articles on polling. First, he uses ‘liberal’ uncritically to refer to organisations that have verged on what is more commonly referred to as ‘alt-right’ (i.e. extreme right-wing). Second, he confuses a correct prediction with credibility - an elementary error. If one takes that logic seriously, then Gayton McKenzie was the best pollster of all for miraculously predicting almost the exact ANC election result more than two years in advance. I have, instead, suggested this is just a 15th reason to think the election results may have bene manipulated. Third, he applies an outdated binary framework to recent utterances by Frans Cronje about trade relations with China and therefore mistakenly draws the conclusion of a schism between SRF and Brenthurst.

2. Jonathan Jansen is another worthwhile candidate for an ‘alternative profile’.