The Wits School of Governance (WSG) is a postgraduate institution that works towards transforming the public, private and non-governmental sectors through education and building an Africa we all want to live in.

We do this by teaching our students skills that help them navigate their challenges with confidence and purpose. We believe in making education relevant to all people by hosting regular public dialogues, debates and talks. We form partnerships with different organisations, including those outside the higher education sector, to ensure that education translates into action.

We attract the best academics to teach our students and also have experienced practioners contributing to the classroom and debates.

WSG believes firmly that evolution and innovation is critical to our success as the nature of the world changes. We provide an environment which allows students to extend their knowledge of theory and practice in areas that complement their work challenges. It is important to us that our programmes have content that is aligned to global and local challenges. We educate over 1000 students and executive courses participants annually.

The School is located in Parktown, Johannesburg, one of Africa’s biggest cities and South Africa’s economic powerhouse. The School falls under the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Read a Message from the Dean of the CLM Faculty, Professor Jason Cohen.

What we do

We work closely with government and community-based organisations in South Africa and across the African continent to:

• Support national and local public policy development, governance frameworks and institutional arrangements
• Enhance management systems, mechanisms and modalities
• Strengthen service-delivery, strategic planning, programme development and monitoring and evaluation
• Develop public finance capacity in almost all sectors of government
• Prepare our students to be global citizens while responding to local challenges
• Host several talks and debates on topics that directly affect us such as race relations, corruption, security and policy-related issues

Our goals

Teach: To provide academic programmes and short courses to address development, policy and economic challenges with expert tuition and supervision.

Research: We strive to create a culture of innovative research and support students and academics to co-create knowledge, with thought leaders across the continent who support our research agenda as fellows and visiting scholars.

Community engagement: We provide people with a platform to contribute to debates and dialogues about current issues that affect them.

Networks: We want to expand our networks so our students can benefit from our partnerships.

Media engagement: Our public intellectuals offer their expertise to a number of international and national media.

People

Academics

Our academic staff offers a broad diversity of experience and sectoral focus. Several are sought-after for interviews and contribute to media reports by providing their expert analysis on various subjects.

Our academics’ expertise include: 

• Health, social security, humanitarian assistance, higher education, governance
• Socio-economic and development research
• Anti-poverty, civic education and good governance programmes
• Monitoring systems and programme evaluation
• Unemployment, vulnerability, economic empowerment and the green economy
• Public policy, African security, International Relations, foreign and security policy

Support staff 

Both our Academic Delivery and Executive Education Units have helpful and committed team members to assisting you throughout your journey at the School. The WSG's work is supported by the Communications, Marketing and Events, Operation and Finance teams. 

Students

Our students are mainly public servants as well as politicians and parliamentarians. Given that they have years of work experience, they are engaging and active in our classrooms. Our students are committed to seeing positive changes in the world and are courageous about contributing to those changes. We also attract international students. We also have students from the private and non-governmental sectors in our classrooms, who also offer varying and enriching perspectives.

Our students are trained to be unapologetic in thinking critically about challenges in Africa and the global South. We empower out students with critical thinking skills to enable them to understand complexity and chaos and design appropriate governance responses.

Hear from our students.

History

WSG was known as the Wits Graduate School of Public and Development Management (P&DM) and established in the early 1990s with the primary purpose of helping to build a post-apartheid public service.

P&DM has contributed to public service capacity development over the past 20 years, and has played a pioneering role in using the independent and neutral space of the University to facilitate interaction between civil society, the academy and practitioners.

By continuously developing new knowledge regarding the complex interface between government, society, and development, P&DM has contributed to the creation of more professional and reflective practices around governance in the country and across the continent.

In 2013, the School was involved in an extensive process to re-evaluate and reposition itself in the current South African and African context. One of the outcomes of this process was a decision to change its name to the Wits School of Governance.

The name change allows the School to reflect current thinking while retaining its commitment to building capable, developmental public administrations by providing a space to explore how the world works, analyse regional and global trends, and review practice as a basis for innovation and enabling social change.