In this episode, Ms Heather Thuynsma joins to discuss South Africa's 28 year democratic journey.

Heather Thuynsma holds a BA and a BA Honours from the University of the

Witwatersrand, received her MA in applied politics from the University of Akron

(Ohio, USA), and attended the Women’s Campaign School at the Yale Law School to

complete her specialisation in fundraising and political campaign strategy. She has

spent 30 years working in the South African and US non-profit sectors managing

fundraising, policy analysis and media relations. She worked as a specialist election

monitor during South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, has coordinated and

fundraised for political campaigns at various levels of government in the State of

Ohio, and has taught political behaviour, campaign management, fundraising

strategy, and civic and human rights education in both the US and South Africa.

Ms Thuynsma has published articles on human rights education for the United

Nations and on South Africa’s political campaigns and electoral strategy for the

Electoral Institute of South Africa. She is currently the Communications Manager for

the Faculty of Humanities but also supervises postgraduate students and co-teaches

the Honours-level course on Comparative Politics, that incorporates The Global

Classroom, in the Department of Political Sciences. This postgraduate course won

the Vice-Chancellor (2019) and the Faculty of Humanities’ (2018) Teaching and

Learning awards.

Ms Thuynsma has been a contributing editor of three book-length publications: Brittle

Democracies: Comparing Politics in Anglophone Africa; Political Parties in South

Africa: Do they Undermine or Underpin Democracy?, and, Public Opinion and

Interest Group Politics: South Africa’s Missing Links? And with Prof Vasu Reddy

(Dean: Faculty of Humanities) has co-edited the monograph The Undiscovered

Country: Essays in Honour of Maxi Schoeman.

Ms Thuynsma has presented papers at several international conferences and,

before joining the Faculty as its Communications Manager, advised political parties

and advocacy groups in Angola, Cote D’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo,

Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Senegal, South

Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, the US, Zambia, Zimbabwe.