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Save the Date conference reflects back 20 years of democracy

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2014 marks twenty years since South Africa made a transition from apartheid to democracy. To celebrate these two decades of democracy, the Mapungubwe Institute and the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute at the University of South Africa (UNISA) are hosting the Save the Date conference.

Much has been achieved to transform and develop the country informed by the injunctions of the 1996 Constitution, which seeks to foster a shared common interest and formally guarantees equal opportunities without regard to race, gender and other social fault-lines.

The decades since 1994 have seen a remarkable improvement in people’s quality of life and tentative steps towards national unity and social cohesion
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Yet, much work lies ahead in realising the aspirations of many South Africans who still experience the effects of poverty and inequality. Much has to be done to build a capable state and active citizenry able to manifest in practical terms the narrative of an ‘Africa Rising.’

20 Years of South African Democracy: So Where to Now? will provide an opportunity for projective reflections into the next two decades of democracy, informed firstly, by historical moments that led to democracy in South Africa, and secondly, by the experiences of the last twenty years.

The Conference aims to deal with the historical moments in the build-up to the democratic transition in South Africa, theoretical perspectives explaining the state of South Africa in two decades of democracy, and most importantly prospects of contemporary South Africa going forward.

The conference is also aimed at providing an opportunity to interrogate current developments regarding economic growth in Africa and how this can translate into economic development measured in terms of improvement in the living conditions of the people on the continent, especially in the context of the recent Global Economic Recession.

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