The 2022/23 financial year of the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) was an eventful one, as South Africa and the world started recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic.

During 2021/22, MISTRA launched three comprehensive publications: on the agency of South African youth; on a just transition to a low-carbon future which takes into account protection of the livelihoods of the working people and just transition finance; and on ‘marriages of inconvenience’ which seem to characterise the politics of coalitions in South Africa, and how the dynamics of these can be managed going forward.

Eleven years ago, when we established the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA), we characterised it as ‘an idea whose time has come’. This was based on our assessment of the critical importance of long-term strategic research. But we did not, at that stage, anticipate the overwhelming interest among various sectors of South African society in high-level intellectual engagement which draws from various systems of knowledge and is not constrained by short-term considerations.

As MISTRA was commemorating its tenth anniversary during the 2020/2021 financial year, the world was beleaguered by the COVID-19 pandemic. This experience has further reinforced the centrality of an effective ‘think industry’ within our country and across the globe. It has confirmed MISTRA’s unique and timely addition to the landscape of strategic research and discourse in South Africa.