It is a remarkable honour to have been able to lead SPII for a full decade now. 2016 is the year of our tenth anniversary, and it is an achievement we celebrate with pride. It is also a moment that gives us the chance to reflect on our victories and our challenges alike, internally and in the external environment. In addition to growing older in 2016, our practice also deepened in terms of understanding better the challenges relating to effecting the change that our Mission and Vision speak to.

2014 was an important year in many respects. It heralded in a new administration under the auspices of the Africa National Congress, the ruling part that has rules since democracy in 1994.

2014 also however saw unprecedented rise in activity in Parliament with opposition and minority parties using the chambers of parliament to raise questions and objections in a manner that caused some political analyst concern regarding the robustness of the Houses and the ability to incumbent parliamentary office bearers to provide necessary levels of impartial and effective leadership to guide the coming years of parliamentary work and debate.

The past year has proved to be a very significant one and history will no doubt favour us with an ability to gauge the watershed nature of 2013 in the coming years. However, even with the distance of a few months, there are many interesting markers.

On the one hand we saw the registration of new political parties in a country which is increasingly being described as a single party state, in effect, rather than formally. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), under the leadership of Julius Malema as Commander-in–Chief, is mobilising their red beret wearing members under a popular, if not somewhat populist, declaration of war against the capitalist enemy. Theirs might indeed prove to be a more successful “war on poverty” than the plan launched by the ruling African National Congress, which lacked either aes.

Part of the historic rationale for the establishment of SPII in 2006 was the desire to contribute knowledge and research around poverty and inequality for the civil society sector in South Africa
and the sub-region. Having come from civil society and the trade union sector, the founding trustees were concerned about the apparent absence of new data and knowledge that was being generated for use by campaigns and submissions that were being generated by the sector.

The theory of change, as it is increasingly referred to, that drove the view of the founding trustees was that through undertaking a combination of primary qualitative research and secondary policy analysis, we could assist in driving
forward anti-poverty policies that were appropriate in their design, their objectives and their scale.

2010 has been a very interesting year in many ways for South Africa. Of course, the headlines were dominated by the FIFA World Cup, and this saw millions of South Africans (and of course, people from all over the world), jostled together in often freezing Fan Parks, united in a passion that appeared to mediate some of the growing divides that resonate in our country.

These are divides that haunt us from Apartheid days, as well as new ones that reflect the harsh inequalities which continue to reproduce the racial, spatial and gendered divisions of the past.

As we reflect upon 2009 in this report, it appears that the South African landscape continues to be one characterised by a state of flux in respect of social, economic and political contestations. Yesterday’s certainties can be quickly forgotten as new relations or centres of interest are forged and new priorities emerge.

What is however certain, are the challenges that exist for the country to build the foundational values required to complete the transformation of liberation.

2008 has been a very full year, and one of remarkable consolidation for SPII.

Growing up rapidly from infancy, SPII is increasingly being acknowledged across the board for being an institute that provides good and sound research and analysis without compromising its commitment to working towards ending poverty and the alleviation of its effects in the short term

For SPII, 2007 was a year of great achievements and many firsts. It has been a great privilege being the Director of this young organisation for this period. As an institute we have built many partnerships with people and organisations nationally, regionally and internationally. We have been able to produce out first four publications which we trust have assisted others in their work, and we have brought together exciting people to tease out solutions to issues that we have struggled to resolve ourselves.