As mentioned earlier, acquiring permission to conduct research in a case study site is a different task from seeking and obtaining an appropriate schedule of interviews with respondents and actually gaining access to them. The question of access can be discussed at two levels. First, it is imperative in case study research to seek permission from the broader actors, whether it is an organization or individuals, before actually arriving for data collection. Due to the flexible nature of research methods that are modifiable as research unfolds, it becomes impracti- cal to schedule each and every interview before arriving at the study site. There- fore the second process involves using information received from the first key informants to redesign the data collection procedure and to further streamline the identification of more respondents.
Drawing from experiences in this research, the said process required reliance on people who were familiar with the areas of operation and who had knowledge of the type of respondents the researcher sought to interview. Inasmuch as using a research guide is often necessary, the strategy inherently transfers certain decisions from the researcher to the guide. Due to lack of knowledge of the area and the people, the researcher often had to rely on the choices of the guide for interviews. It also followed that, because of the spontaneity of certain interviews, the data collection strategy also had to be as flexible.
Access to information
The interviewing process itself posed other unique challenges. Although only one government department had requested the interview schedule upfront, which I
explained would clash with my own methods of using guiding questions rather than a strict questionnaire during interviewing, and that relied on further probing based on answers obtained, respondents from the company SFP seemed to have a sense of the questions I had posed in the preceding interviews. Hence there was a lot of pre-empting in at least three of the interviews I conducted at SFP. The impact of this tendency was far-reaching, given that even within one company, I exercised a lot of flexibility in the types of questions I asked, based on the nature of work my respondent undertook. For instance, when talking with the manager in charge of community engagement, the bulk of my questions tended to do with understanding the relationship unravelling between local communities and the private company. On the other hand, when interviewing a forester, I would ask questions pertaining to access to the resource, their management systems and issues of compliance to environmental standards. An interviewee, assuming that he or she knew upfront what I would be asking, complicated and prolonged the process as in some instances, I was interrupted and not allowed to finish a question, and hence got answers for questions I was presumed to be asking, but which I did not actually ask.
The experience above could generally be explained by the corporate culture that seeks to speak to ‘outsiders’ with caution and a united voice to avoid contra- dictions from within the rank and file. Secondly, when the historical and political context of South Africa is taken into account, the fact is that it is still difficult to bring down the invisible walls that divide black and white South Africa. As a black researcher in a predominantly white company, I was considered, by virtue of being black, to be pro-government: but this was a contradiction of sorts, given that one government department was also reluctant to grant me an interview, and asked directly to see the questions upfront. Hence, in the early period of my research, especially with the private companies, I was given responses that were sugarcoated and not necessarily reflective of the reality of the issues that I was researching. Later on, as the research matured and I got to interview other local actors, it was easy to understand the political dynamics of the various categories of actors and reasons that explained their inclination towards certain viewpoints.
The private sector is under pressure to realign with new government policies, especially those to do with transformation in the new South Africa, hence the level of suspicion when one is doing research tends to be high. The misconcep- tion is that one could easily be checking on areas where the companies are underperforming, and that may contravene government policy. Since 1994, new policies, such as those dealing with labour issues, occupational health and safety, and employment equity have been instituted. One respondent later admitted that they were practicing extra caution as there had been instances where other people
had approached their companies posing as students, but later turned out to have been investigative journalists.
Relevant government departments on the other hand, were struggling to implement the many policies in the face of numerous challenges. At DWAF, there was sensitivity around the process of privatization, since parts of it had been marred by irregularities in the procedure and allegations of corruption that saw the cancellation of the sale of the largest of the forest assets (Komatiland forests). A second time around, the sale process was cancelled due to projected uncompetitive behaviour that would arise from the sale of the whole asset to a single entity. They also had their share of journalists especially interested in the forest privatization exercise that had been marred by alleged corruption and court battles during the exercise.
The problems above were partly overcome by continuously explaining the purpose of the research as purely academic and promising feedback sessions where I would share the contents of the draft report. I also asked for follow-up interviews in cases where I thought I could still get more information. The repeat interviews were much more fruitful and by this time, I had made more progress in winning more confidence of respondents.
The question of language, the use of translation and tape recording
The researcher’s inability to understand and converse in Xhosa and Zulu, the two languages mostly used in research areas affected the research process to a certain degree. The nature of the research questions enabled discussions and follow-up questioning that would have been much more effective if done solely by the researcher instead of receiving this through a translator. The use of a translator in in-depth discussions is susceptible to omissions of certain information or phrases that could be significant to a researcher during analysis. Often, the line between translation and interpretation becomes thin, as the interview progresses and the translator gets too familiar with the research. There emerges a tendency to summarize to the researcher or to give an interpretation instead of a direct trans- lation.
In order to minimize the limitations posed by the language barrier, the discus- sion processes were recorded for a complete transcription to be made later. It also made it possible to isolate direct quotations that are relevant for analysis and write-up.
Analysis of research material
The guiding questions for interviews were categorized according to their rele- vance to the three issues that are the pillars of this study, management, empower- ment and implementation. In analyses, the responses were similarly labelled and coded along the three main issues. Direct empirical quotes are often cited in this
text as evidence to support the findings. The empirical chapter 5 on implementa- tion for instance, relies more on historical and documentary evidence since most of it is an account of the restructuring process. In comparison, chapter 6 and 7, on management and empowerment both rely mostly on respondents’ accounts, opi- nions and perspectives. Since there are two case studies, a comparative analysis has been done where necessary.