At the launch of MISTRA’s publication, Traditional Leaders in a Democracy: Resources, respect and resistance, the issue was raised about the need to reflect, more explicitly, on the conceptual underpinning to South Africa’s constitutional system about traditional leadership and how this can be further improved.

In March 2020, MISTRA developed a working paper, titled Traditional Leadership in the Era of Multi-Party Democracy: A focus on South Africa, authored by Lungisile Ntsebeza, a scholar on traditional leadership and democracy. In December 2020, MISTRA hosted a webinar on the same subject.

These activities were undertaken not only to gather more information from stakeholders, but also to identify issues that require broader societal discussion. Key arguments gathered through the working paper and the webinar are captured in the document attached.