The Faculty of Law at the North-West University (NWU) will be hosting a webinar titled “The 2021 South African local government elections at a crossroad: synchronisation” on 20 May 2021 from 12:00 to 14:00.
The panel members for this webinar are Prof Jaap de Visser, Prof Mcebisi Ndletyana and Dr Legesse Mengie. For more information and to RSVP, please click here
According to Dr Kesolofetse Lefenya from the Faculty of Law, South Africa must have its local government elections later during the course of 2021. At the same time, the country is facing a serious challenge of the Covid-19 pandemic that continues to unravel the country and the world at large.
“There are various questions. Will we have a successful round of elections in 2021? Will these elections be free, fair and meaningful? Should South Africa not be thinking of synchronisation with the national elections anticipated in 2024? Is it not the time that we must synchronise all our elections, as other countries have done, for example, Zimbabwe?” she asks.
More about the panel members
Prof Jaap de Visser is a professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of the Western Cape. He has also been the director of the Dullah Omar Institute since 2013, and has been associated with the institute since 1998.
In 2015, he spearheaded the conversion and renaming of the Community Law Centre into the Dullah Omar Institute for Constitutional Law, Governance and Human Rights. He is the co-author of the publication Local Government Law of South Africa. His research, teaching and consulting focus on multilevel and local government, good governance and federalism in Africa, and he has published widely on these topics.
Prof Mcebisi Ndletyana is currently an associate professor at the University of Johannesburg. He holds a PhD in political studies from the University of Witwatersrand.
Prof Ndletyana is the author of numerous publications. His latest book is titled Anatomy of the ANC in Power: Insights from Port Elizabeth, 1990 - 2019 (HSRC Press, 2020). His next book, co-authored with Prof Luvuyo Wotshela and Dr Pamela Johnson, documents the 100-year history of Fort Hare University and will be released later this year.
Prof Ndletyana is also a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Public Administration, a board member of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution, and a fellow of the African Leadership Initiative. He is also a regular commentator in electronic and print media.
Dr Legesse Mengie is a researcher at the Faculty of Law at the University of Adelaide in Australia. His main responsibilities include teaching law courses and doing research on legal and socio-legal issues, including international public and economic law, human rights law, constitutional, land, business and electoral law, conflict management, governance, decentralisation of power and federalism issues.
