South Africa’s elections on 29 May are widely anticipated to be the country’s most significant since its first democratic elections in 1994.

The African National Congress has formed the government ever since then, but it is now facing electoral challenges by political parties new and old, just as the still-young democracy is challenged by persistent inequality, failing infrastructure, notorious corruption, and more, leading to calls from at least one new party to repeal South Africa’s landmark 1996 Constitution.

Join Sherylle Dass, Regional Director at the Legal Resources Centre, Lindiwe Mazibuko, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Futurelect, and Jonny Steinberg, author of Winnie and Nelson, in a panel discussion moderated by Professor Christopher Stone exploring the significance and likely impact of South Africa’s election.

Speaker biographies

Lindiwe Mazibuko is a South African public leader, writer, and academic fellow. She was the first black woman in South African history to be elected Leader of the Opposition in Parliament. Lindiwe is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Futurelect, a non-partisan organisation supporting a new generation of political and public sector leaders in Africa.

Sherylle Dass is a practising Legal Practitioner admitted in the High Court of South Africa. She has been practising law for the past 24 years and has been a refugee law practitioner and public interest litigator for the last 18 years in the public interest NGO sector. She is currently the Regional Director of the Legal Resource Centre (LRC) based in Cape Town.

Jonny Steinberg is the author of several books about life during and after apartheid, the latest a dual biography of the Mandelas, Winnie & Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage. His books have won the Sunday Times Nonfiction Prize, South Africa's premier literary award, the Windham-Campbell Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Jonny Steinberg teaches at Yale.

Christopher Stone is Professor of Practice of Public Integrity. Chris has blended theory and practice throughout a career dedicated to justice sector reform, good governance and innovation in the public interest, working with governments and civil society organisations in dozens of countries worldwide. He has served as president of the Open Society Foundations (2012–2017), as Guggenheim Professor of the Practice of Criminal Justice at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (2004–2012), as faculty director of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organisations at Harvard University (2007–2012), and as president and director of the Vera Institute of Justice (1994–2004). He is a graduate of Harvard College, the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge, and the Yale Law School.