While the world is dominated by small-minded rulers, we must reclaim and nurture our democracy, confronting authoritarianism and championing freedom for all to heal societal wounds. Of The Empire We will be known as a culture that feared deathand adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurityfor the few and cared little for the penury of […]
Winnie Mandela’s life, as complex and divisive a figure as she was, reminds us that we can and must do better to improve the material conditions of those who are marginalised. Originally published in Daily Maverick on 24 May 2026 Ours is a country which satisfies no particular narrative. Many compete; the “rainbow nation”, as Desmond […]
The spate of military takeovers and attempted coups across Africa over the past two years has led to speculation in some quarters about a generalized “return to military rule” or “coup contagion” on the continent. In August 2020, a group of Malian officers led by Col. Assimi Goita overthrew the government of former President Ibrahim […]
With an illustrious political career spanning over three decades, Ambassador Doidge has held various portfolios at parliamentary, government and diplomatic levels. In his parliamentary roles Ambassador Doidge was an ANC Member of parliament in 1994 for 10 years through which he served in various roles including as Chairperson of the Committee of Chairpersons, Deputy Chief Whip of the ANC; Chairperson of the Task Team on developing the Oversight Model for Parliament; and ANC Legislatures and Governance Committee in Parliament. He also served on various Portfolio Committees including Finance, Public Accounts, Land Affairs and Public Enterprises. Ambassador Doidge was one of the Founding Members of the Global Centre on ICT in Parliament to build capacity in African Parliaments and develop IT based systems for the enhancement of the legislative process and court systems in African Parliaments and Courts. As a seasoned diplomat Ambassador Doidge has held diplomatic posts, notably in Thailand and Sri Lanka. In Thailand he was Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary from 2016-2020 and also accredited to Myanmar, Cambodia and Lao. He served as member of the LEK 5 Group with a focus to support transformation, constitutional reform, peace building, reconciliation, scenario planning and promote dialogue between the political, Tatmadaw and Ethnic Armed Groups in Myanmar – which led to the establishment of the Transformative Scenarios Process, modeled on South Africa’s, Mont Fleur Scenario Exercise. The latter has had a significant impact on the mindset and thinking of the Ethnic Armed Groups. Working together with donors and in collaboration with the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) Ambassador Doidge has initiated a political dialogue with the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) on transformation and constitutional reform. He was further posted to Sri Lanka as South Africa’s High Commissioner Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary also accredited to Bangladesh, Nepal and Maldives. Whilst in this post he initiated the South African Initiative in Sri Lanka –an initiative to share experiences of how South Africa transitioned to a negotiated settlement that led to a united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa. Ambassador Doidge has a passion to promote Transitional Justice, to redress massive human rights abuses, through truth-telling mechanisms, reparations, institutional reform, and recognition for the suffering of the victims, memorialization and reconciliation.
Junior has had a professional career spanning over 35 years. He joined Sanlam as CEO of the Sanlam Corporate cluster effective 1 st February 2016 which he set up from scratch, also becoming a member of the Sanlam Group Executive Committee. Effective from 1 st October 2016, he assumed the role of CEO of Sanlam Emerging Markets, with responsibility for the Rest of Africa, India and Malaysia. From 1 August 2019 Junior who is due to retire at the end of 2020, has been transitioning out of the CEO role, into SPA Vice-Chairman until his retirement. In his Vice Chair capacity, he supports SPA with business development and stakeholder management across Africa.
In his role as CEO for Sanlam Emerging Markets, he lead Sanlam’s successful acquisition of the Moroccan based Saham Finances group, which was already in 26 countries in Africa and the Middle East. This acquisition (US$1.00 billion for the final 53% stake Sanlam did not already own, placed Sanlam in 33 countries on the continent, making the largest non-banking financial services group in Africa.
Prior to that he spent 28 years with the Munich Reinsurance Company of Africa, the last 8 years as its CEO for Sub Saharan Africa. His long stint with Munich Reinsurance started with his role as Agricultural Insurance Specialist and thence he held various positions within the organisation including being a member of the Executive Team. He had a two year secondment to the Group Head Office in Munich, Germany where he headed up a global IT project until 2007 when he was appointed CEO for Sub-Saharan Africa. The Munich Reinsurance Group is one of the largest reinsurance groups in the world.
He has led many industry bodies in South Africa including President of the Insurance Institute of Gauteng, Chairman of the Insurance Industry Employers’ Association and President of the Insurance Institute of South Africa for two terms. He served on the EXCO of the African Insurance Organization (the continent-wide industry body) for three years.
He has a BSc Agric. (Hons.) from the University of Zimbabwe, MSc. Agric. from the Pennsylvania State University–USA, Risk Management from Munich Reinsurance-Georgia State University
program –USA, Insurance Executive Development Program at Wharton University of Pennsylvania USA, and the Executive Leadership Development Program at INSEAD–France.
He was named 1 of the world’s top 1 000 smartest CEOs in the world in Andrew Davidson’s 2010 book entitled 1000 CEOs – a top accolade in recognition of his success in running a culturally diverse and successful business in South Africa. He was awarded the Lifetime Achiever Award for service to the Insurance and Reinsurance Industry in South Africa. He is happily married with 3 children- a daughter, identical twin sons and a granddaughter.
Daniel has extensive background of over 25 years working in the public and the private sectors, managing diverse issues and leading teams across various sectors and geographies. He has built a record of achievement in the fields of payments technology, mining, public affairs and diplomacy. He was in the foreign service for 13 years, contributing to the advancement of bilateral economic and political relations between South Africa and the United States. Until 2020, Daniel led Visa’s relations with policy makers and Central Bank regulators in Sub-Saharan Africa for nearly a decade. Daniel supports various social causes and serves on the boards of several organisations. He serves as Senior Adviser for the PPGI, supporting an economic development partnership with Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator with the Public Private Growth Initiative. He is a graduate of the University of the North, the Gordon Institute of Business Science and has a Masters degree from Wits University.
Mohammed is a former Member of Parliament, qualified attorney, and experienced negotiator. He was part of the African National Congress (ANC) team at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA), and later as part of the agreements on the final South African Constitution.
In 1994, he was appointed as a Senator in the first democratic parliament, and chaired the Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs. In 2001, he was appointed as a Provincial Minister of Local Government (MEC) in Mpumalanga.
He has acted in an advisory capacity to several ministries since he left public office in 2004, and is presently an advisor to the Minister of Cooperative Government and Traditional Affairs.
Mohammed has worked on transitional and constitutional support projects in Kenya, South Sudan, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Palestine, Bahrain, and Zimbabwe.
With more than 30 years of experience in civil society, conflict resolution, political transition, and organisational development, Ivor is well known as a leader in the fields of peacebuilding and democratisation.
Ivor has played an active role in South African and African politics, using his political facilitation skills to assist in the transformation of a myriad of sectors. He is recognised as a pragmatic problem solver with a high commitment to participative decision-making, but at the same time with a decisive edge to his actions. His expertise includes political leadership, intergroup relations, conflict management, governance systems transformation, NGO capacity building, project management, and fundraising.
Ivor’s extensive international experience includes consultations across the African continent, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. He continues to play a critical role in guiding transitional societies – such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Bolivia, Northern Ireland, Nigeria, the Basque country, and Zimbabwe – towards peace.
Furthermore, he has long been committed to the development of young political leadership, and is able to leverage political transitional moments to harness the energy and skills of young people in societies undergoing transition.
Over many years, he has hosted international delegations interested in understanding the South African transition. Government leaders, officials, and students from countries as diverse as Bolivia, Nepal, Colombia, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bahrain, and Kenya have toured South Africa with Ivor.
Ivor joined Idasa (The Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa) in 1990, and served as managing director of Idasa’s national office from 1996-2013. Ivor spearheaded Idasa’s expansion into more than 35 countries on the African continent, promoting democratic values as well as good governance practices.
In 2013, Ivor joined Roelf Meyer and Mohammed Bhabha to establish the In Transformation Initiative with the purpose of promoting the South African peacemaking process in countries of transition and conflict.
Ivor received an honorary doctorate degree from North Park University (Chicago, USA) for his service to the liberation process of South Africa and its people. He lives in Pretoria with his wife, Karin. They have two children, Jana and Jason.
As Chief Negotiator for the National Party Government, Roelf was intimately involved in the settlement of the South African conflict. Together with his counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa, Chief Negotiator for the African National Congress (ANC), Roelf negotiated the end of apartheid and helped pave the way to the first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994. After the elections, Meyer continued in his post of Minister of Constitutional Affairs in the Cabinet of President Nelson Mandela.
Roelf was chair of the South African Defence Review Committee (2011 to 2014), and currently serves on the boards of various companies. He is an active consultant on peace processes, and has advised parties in Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, Rwanda, Burundi, Iraq, Kosovo, the Basque Region, Guyana, Bolivia, Kenya, Madagascar, and South Sudan.
He practiced as a lawyer in Pretoria and Johannesburg before entering politics as Member of Parliament in 1979. He resigned from active politics after 21 years at the end of January 2000. During this period he served as Deputy Minister of Law and Order, Deputy Minister of Constitutional Development, Cabinet Minister of Defence, and Cabinet Minister of Constitutional Affairs.
On 27 March 2009, President Kgalema Motlanthe awarded Roelf the Order of the Baobab in Silver for “his immense contribution in providing special support in the birth of the new democratic South Africa through negotiations and ensuring that South Africa has a Constitution that protects all its citizens”.
Roelf held the Tip O’Neill Chair in Peace Studies at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland from 2000-2001, and is currently an honorary professor at the Gordon Institute of Business Science at the University of Pretoria.
A development management and democratic governance practitioner, Patience has a background in the social sciences and development management. She has over ten years of extensive experience working in the civil society and governance space. With expertise in facilitation, evaluation, leadership development and capacity building, Patience has been engaged in supporting and facilitating various processes towards democracy strengthening on the African continent and in particular capacity building of civil society and political parties around electoral processes and also supporting political party strengthening.
Patience has thus played an active role in the capacity development of political parties in Lesotho, Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia on various issues including good governance, party functioning, coalition management, and interparty dialogue. She also has experience working in peace building particularly in strengthening the capacity of local communities in the southern parts of Zimbabwe and in Lesotho, towards strengthening a culture of peace and fostering social cohesion through dialogue.
Judith February is a lawyer, governance specialist and columnist. She is based at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) as a Senior Research Associate and is a Visiting Fellow at the WITS School of Governance. Prior to that she was executive director of the HSRC’s Democracy and Governance unit and also head of the Idasa’s South African Governance programme for 9 years.
She studied at the University of Cape Town where she obtained her BA degree (majoring in Law and Latin) and her LLB degree in 1991 and 1993 respectively. She was then admitted as an attorney in 1996 and practised law in Cape Town until 2000. In 2000 she obtained her LLM in Commercial Law also from the University of Cape Town.
Judith has worked extensively on issues of good governance, transparency and accountability within the South African context.
Her areas of focus include corruption and its impact on governance, Parliamentary oversight and institutional design.
Judith is also a regular commentator in the media on politics in SA and served on an ad hoc panel to evaluate the effectiveness of South Africa’s Parliament, chaired by Pregs Govender in 2009. In 2009 she was awarded a summer fellowship at the Freeman Spogli Institute for Democracy Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, California.
Her column, ‘Between the Lines’ appeared in the Cape Times newspaper fortnightly until 2014. Judith is a regular columnist for the Daily Maverick and other publications. She is the co-editor with Neeta Misra-Dexter of ‘Testing democracy: which way is South Africa going?’, March 2010, Idasa.
She has taught a course on Contemporary South African politics within the Politics Department at the University of Cape Town and is an independent, non-executive director of Coronation Fund Managers. In 2012, she was awarded a Spring Reagan-Fascell Fellowship at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington DC where she was based until August 2012.
Judith is also the Chair of the Springfield Convent School Board of Governors, where she matriculated and a CONFLICT DYNAMICS accredited commercial mediator.
She was recently appointed as a Trustee of the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Her new book is ‘Turning and turning: exploring the complexities of South Africa’s democracy’ published by Pan MacMillan
Shireen is a leading author and strategic thinker in leadership with specific focus on Gender Studies / Women in Leadership, Building Inclusive Work Cultures and Management and Leadership (shifts) practices and capabilities for complex times.
Qualifications
Board experience
Business and Academic Accolades
Corporate clients
Lecturing (face to face and online), consulting, longitudinal research and impact studies, creating audit tools to track and conduct M&E, advisory and/or keynote speaker, facilitator, coaching and mentoring, holistic wellness workshops, design processes for leading corporates and academic institutions In South Africa, eSwatini, Mauritius, London, Dubai and Asia.
Liesl Louw-Vaudran is a research consultant focusing on African issues. She was the Africa editor for Media24 newspapers in South Africa before moving on to work at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria in 2008. She is currently the editor of the ISS’ monthly publication on the African Union Peace and Security Council, the PSC Report and project leader for Southern Africa. She is also a non-executive board member of In Transformation Initiative.
Liesl has travelled and worked in many countries in Africa over the past 25 years. These include Ethiopia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Senegal, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Morocco and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
She is a regular commentator on African issues in local and international media and a regular contributor to newspapers such as the Mail&Guardian in Johannesburg. Her latest research includes: ‘Power and influence: identifying champions of change in SADC’ (ISS Policy Brief, 19 April 2019), ‘The meaning of Morocco’s return to the AU’ (ISS North Africa Report, January 2018) and ‘Can South Africa regain its gravitas in Africa?’ (Security Institute for Governance and Leadership in Africa – University of Stellenbosch, Policy Paper December 2017). Her book on South African foreign policy, South Africa in Africa: Superpower or Neocolonialist? was published by Tafelberg in 2016.
Liesl has lectured in journalism at the University of Stellenbosch and is a member of the judging panel of the Sikuvile Standard Bank media awards. She is also a former chairperson of the board of the Alliance Française in Johannesburg and was awarded the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite by French president Emmanuel Macron in 2019.
Liesl has lived in France, Senegal and South Africa. She has a Masters Degree in Political Science from the University of Pretoria and an honours degree in Philosophy from the University of Stellenbosch.
Professor Nick Binedell is a professor in the area of strategy and leadership at the Gordon Institute of Business Science of the University of Pretoria.
He was the founding Dean of GIBS (2000-2015).
After a career in business, including a period as a general manager, he began an academic path. He completed his PhD at the University of Washington in Seattle.
He was invited to establish a new business school for the University of Pretoria to be based in Johannesburg, South Africa. His mandate was to establish a world class business school that would meet the needs of the 21st century for South African business and business leaders.
Professor Binedell’s key area of interest is in the area of strategic leadership with particular focus on strategy in complex environments. He is a frequent public speaker in South Africa and abroad, is a visiting lecturer at the Rotterdam School of Management (for the past 18 years) and has been a consultant to companies in South Africa and internationally. He was recently a visiting Professor at London Business School.
In June 2015 the Academy of International Business elected him as global Business Educator of the year.
Njeri brings a wealth of international experience and she is also an International Award winner. She is the immediate past Executive Director of Greenpeace Africa. Prior to this Njeri worked as the Executive Director at the Centre for Multi-Party Democracy (CMD-Kenya) and for 7.5 years she worked for Amnesty International as the Development Coordinator East & Southern Africa. Ms Kabeberi has solid governance training and experience and serves on several international boards among them; the Board of Advisors of International IDEA (Stockholm), the Board of In-Transformation-Initiative (Pretoria), the Board of Democracy Works (Pretoria) the Board of Democracy Fund Trust (Nairobi) and she chairs the International Centre for Policy and Conflict. She was also on the founding board of the Kenya Human Rights Commission (Nairobi) for 12 years.
Njeri is an African woman who takes her work and commitments seriously which has earned her International Awards and Accolades; The inaugural ‘Humanity Award’ by the Chamber of Lawyers, Frankfurt am Main for ‘Commitment to Law and Justice’ on the 29th of October, 2009; The ‘Democracy Ribbon’ by the City of The Hague on the 3rd November 2009 for ‘Commitment to Peace and Democracy’; The ‘ILO Wedge Award 2010’ in recognition of her work to Increase Women Rights in Kenya. In January 2018, Njeri was awarded the “Lifetime Achievement Human Rights Defenders Award – 2017″ in Kenya for her lifetime commitment towards the protection of human rights. She is a student, practitioner and an adherent of Good Governance (a member of the Institute of Directors, South Africa (IoDSA) and the Institute of Corporate Governance (Kenya).
Ms Kabeberi has vast experience in development of Institutions, development of training materials and she is a Mentor on Personal Development and Leadership.
