Lessons from the Field: A Decade of Democracy was a project of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, supported by the Ford Foundation. A series of seven roundtables took place from June to August this year, focusing on key areas of South African life in which there has been a strong transformational agenda over the past 10 years. Themes included citizen capacity, local government, Parliament, budget transparency, schools, higher education and land reform. The roundtables involved groups of 25 to 35 people, invited both for their experience in a particular field as well as for their ability to reflect on issues from different perspectives. The aim of the roundtables was to go beyond platitudes and oft-repeated observations, to identify important lessons from our first decade of democracy as well as major challenges for the next 10 years. In addition to the roundtables, a larger symposium brought together editors of five major studies of the last decade with an audience of more than 80 people.

 

This publication is intended to bring some of the main themes of the roundtable series into the broader public discourse about democracy in South Africa. This year has been marked by many commemorative events. In Lessons from the Field, IDASA aimed specifically to examine the impact of transformation in a few key areas on the democracy building project in our country.