WATCH: WSG Post Election Conference

Consolidating South Africa’s Democratic Governance: The WSG Post Election Conference took place from 26 until 28 March 2025 at The Catalyst Hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg. Over 40 scholars and practitioners offered an array of views on subjects related to democracy, the government of national unity in South Africa and the 2024 national elections.

Background:

By Professor Adebayo Olukoshi, Project Coordinator 

In the lead up to the elections, the Wits School of Governance (WSG) organised a unique pre-election series that involved weekly conversations at the Parktown Campus of the University of the Witwatersrand with key actors in the electoral process comprising an admixture of elected officials, election managers, party representatives, civil society actors, academics, students, and the media. The series was held over a period of six weeks in the form of moderated conversations before an invited physical and online audience. 

The purpose of the series was to afford the University community and the wider public an opportunity to hear directly from and engage with some of the key actors in the electoral process. It was also designed to highlight a number of thematic issues relevant to and arising from the electoral process, among them the gender question, youth participation, and geopolitics. 

By every account, the pre-election series was a resounding success as much for the quality participation it attracted, including several key players in the politico-electoral process, and the range of issues covered in depth as for the diverse audiences that were reached in person and online and precedence in a structured engagement between the academy and political society that was set. As a natural follow-up to the series, the School is convening a post-election conference designed to take stock of the overall outcome of the vote in terms of what they portend for the future of South Africa’s democracy. The importance of this question is underscored by the fact that the election produced results that not only made coalition politics an imperative but also pointed to possible major realignments in the political system that could carry long-term implications for the country. 

In the period immediately following the elections, a spate of convenings took place at which participants were invited to undertake rapid assessments of the results. As expected, most of the meetings were focused on the emergence of the GNU and its implications for the workability of the national governance process. A review of the proceedings of the meetings shows a general focus on the making of the GNU, who was in, who was out and why, and the prospects of the power-sharing arrangement among the collaborating parties delivering policy coherence, governmental stability, and quality public services. However, important as these matters are, a deeper, much more extensive, and nuanced analysis of the results that the elections delivered is necessary in order for us to be positioned to better assess their import for the democratic journey of the country. It is this gap which the WSG Post Election Conference seeks to fill, doing so with the benefit of a closer interrogation of the patterns displayed by the distribution of the votes, the key messages that the results are conveying about the future of party politics, the inclusion and representation of women, the role of the youth, the place of resurgent identity politics, and the overall culture of politics in an era of fragmentation.