Richard J. T. Calland [1] (born 10 July, 1964) is a British-South African writer and political analyst. Until 2023 Calland was Associate Professor of Public Law at the University of Cape Town. He subsequently was appointed Adjunct Associate Professor at the Wits School of Government and a Fellow of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. [2] [3] He is a co-director of Sustainability Education [4] and has been a columnist for the Mail & Guardian since 2001. [3]
Calland read Law at Durham University ( Hatfield College ) and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1987. [3] . Whilst at Durham, Calland wrote for the student newspaper criticising the policing of the 1984 Miners' Strike and Thatcherism more widely, calling for it to be replaced with "a fresh radical consensus". [5] Apart from his undergraduate degree he holds an LLM from the University of Cape Town and a postgraduate diploma in World Politics from the London School of Economics. [3]
Calland practiced as a barrister in London until 1994, when he moved to South Africa to work as an advisor to the ANC in the Western Cape before the upcoming election. [3]
From 1995 to 2011 he headed the Political Monitoring & Information Service at IDASA. [3] In 2005 he was a visiting scholar at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at Cambridge University. [3] Other than democratic governance, his academic interests include sustainable development and climate finance. [2] He is the author of several books on the Politics of South Africa, among them, The Zuma Years: South Africa's Changing Face of Power, published in 2013. [6]
Along with Lawson Naidoo and Ian Farmer, Calland is co-founder of the Paternoster Group, a political consulting company. [7] Calland also co-founded the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (CASAC) with Naidoo.
In 2017 Calland was embroiled in a controversy in which activists raised concerns about "the foreign corporations that The Paternoster Group works with, about the use by Naidoo and Calland of their position in civil society to promote their business venture, about their sources of income, and about the link to Marikana". [8] The activists criticised the association between Paternoster and Ian Farmer who was CEO of Lonmin at the time of the Marikana Massacre. Paternoster had produced a report on the Marikana massacre which the activists claimed "seems to engage in special pleading on behalf of Lonmin". [8] In the resulting fallout the SaveSA campaign cut ties with CASAC. [8]
Commenting to the Chicago Tribune in 1999, he compared the charisma and charm of Nelson Mandela to Ronald Reagan. [9] He has been critical of the proposal made by Thuli Madonsela that public servants implicated in corruption should be given the chance to apply for amnesty. [10]
Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa is a South African businessman and politician serving as the fifth and current president of South Africa since 2018. A former anti-apartheid activist, trade union leader, and businessman, Ramaphosa is also the president (leader) of the African National Congress (ANC).
Rhodes University is a public research university located in Makhanda (Grahamstown) in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. It is one of four universities in the province.
The South African Police Service (SAPS) is the national police force of the Republic of South Africa. Its 1,154 police stations in South Africa are divided according to the provincial borders, and a Provincial Commissioner is appointed in each province. The nine Provincial Commissioners report directly to the National Commissioner. The head office is in the Wachthuis Building in Pretoria.
Anglo American Platinum Limited is the world's largest primary producer of platinum, accounting for about 38% of the world's annual supply.
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Jayaseelan Naidoo is a South African politician and businessman who served as the founding general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) from 1985 to 1993. He then served as Minister responsible for the Reconstruction and Development Programme in the first post-apartheid cabinet of President Nelson Mandela (1994–1996) and as Minister of Post, Telecommunications, and Broadcasting (1996–1999).
Sandile Ngcobo is a retired South African judge who was the Chief Justice of South Africa from October 2009 to August 2011. He served in the Constitutional Court of South Africa from August 1999 until his retirement in August 2011. Before that, he was a judge of the Cape Provincial Division and the Labour Appeal Court.
Susan Shabangu is a South African politician who has been a member of parliament representing the African National Congress since May 1994. She previously held the position of Minister of Social Development. Prior to that, she served as the inaugural Minister of Women in the Presidency, created by President Jacob Zuma in May 2014. She was the Minister of Mineral Resources from 2009 to 2014.
Pius Nkonzo LangaSCOB was Chief Justice of South Africa from June 2005 to October 2009. Formerly a human rights lawyer, he was appointed as a puisne judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa upon its inception in 1995. He was the Deputy Chief Justice of South Africa from November 2001 until May 2005, when President Thabo Mbeki elevated him to the Chief Justiceship. He was South Africa's first black African Chief Justice.
Dikgang Ernest Moseneke OLG is a South African jurist and former Deputy Chief Justice of South Africa.
South Africa has been dubbed "the protest capital of the world", with one of the highest rates of public protests in the world.
Kumi Naidoo is a human rights and climate justice activist. He was International Executive Director of Greenpeace International and Secretary General of Amnesty International. Naidoo served as the Secretary-General of CIVICUS, the international alliance for citizen participation, from 1998 to 2008. As a fifteen-year old, he organised students in school boycotts against the apartheid regime and its educational system in South Africa. Naidoo’s activism went from neighbourhood organising and community youth work to civil disobedience with mass mobilisations against the white controlled apartheid government. Naidoo is a co-founder of the Helping Hands Youth Organisation. He has written about his activism in this period in his memoirs titled, Letters to My Mother: The Making of a Troublemaker. In the book Naidoo recounts the day of his mother’s suicide when he was just 15 and how it became a catalyst for his journey into radical action against the Nationalist Party’s apartheid regime.
The Constitution of South Africa protects all basic political freedoms. However, there have been many incidents of political repression, dating back to at least 2002, as well as threats of future repression in violation of this constitution leading some analysts, civil society organisations and popular movements to conclude that there is a new climate of political repression or a decline in political tolerance.
The Marikana massacre was the killing of thirty-four miners by the South African Police Service (SAPS) on 16 August 2012 during a six-week wildcat strike at the Lonmin platinum mine at Marikana near Rustenburg in South Africa's North West province. The massacre constituted the most lethal use of force by South African security forces against civilians since the Soweto uprising in 1976 and has been compared to the 1960 Sharpeville massacre.
Mbuyiseli Russel Madlanga is a judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. He joined the bench on 1 August 2013 on the appointment of President Jacob Zuma. Formerly an advocate in the Eastern Cape, he first served as a judge in the Transkei Division between 1996 and 2001.
Robben Island Prison is an inactive prison on Robben Island in Table Bay, 6.9 kilometers (4.3 mi) west of the coast of Bloubergstrand, Cape Town, South Africa. Nobel Laureate and former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela was imprisoned there for 18 of the 27 years he served behind bars before the fall of apartheid. Since then, three former inmates of the prison have gone on to become President of South Africa.
Daluxolo Christopher Mpofu is a South African lawyer, politician, and former businessman who was the National Chairperson of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) from 2014 to 2019. He served on the Judicial Service Commission from 2017 to 2022 and formerly served as chief executive officer of the South African Broadcasting Corporation from 2005 to 2009.
Nokulunga Primrose Sonti is a South African politician from the North West who has been serving as a Member of the National Assembly of South Africa for the Economic Freedom Fighters since May 2014. Sonti was previously a member of the African National Congress.
David Unterhalter is a South African jurist and judge of the Gauteng Division of the High Court of South Africa. He is also professor of law at the University of Cape Town. Before he was appointed to the bench in January 2018, Unterhalter was a prominent advocate, specialising in public law, competition law, and trade law. He was called to the Johannesburg Bar in 1990 and took silk in 2002.
Bantubonke Regent Tokota is a South African judge of the High Court of South Africa. He was appointed to the Eastern Cape Division in October 2017 after 20 years as a practising advocate in Pretoria. He was Senior Counsel from 2006 onwards and also served on the Marikana Commission of Inquiry between 2012 and 2014.