All Things Freedom

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 theWitwatersrand, 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 tocomplete her specialisation in fundraising and political campaign strategy. She hasspent 30 years working in the South African and US non-profit sectors managingfundraising, policy analysis and media relations. She worked as a specialist electionmonitor during South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, has coordinated andfundraised for political campaigns at various levels of government in the State ofOhio, and has taught political behaviour, campaign management, fundraisingstrategy, and civic and human rights education in both the US and South Africa.Ms Thuynsma has published articles on human rights education for the UnitedNations and on South Africa’s political campaigns and electoral strategy for theElectoral Institute of South Africa. She is currently the Communications Manager forthe Faculty of Humanities but also supervises postgraduate students and co-teachesthe Honours-level course on Comparative Politics, that incorporates The GlobalClassroom, in the Department of Political Sciences. This postgraduate course wonthe Vice-Chancellor (2019) and the Faculty of Humanities’ (2018) Teaching andLearning awards.Ms Thuynsma has been a contributing editor of three book-length publications: BrittleDemocracies: Comparing Politics in Anglophone Africa; Political Parties in SouthAfrica: Do they Undermine or Underpin Democracy?, and, Public Opinion andInterest Group Politics: South Africa’s Missing Links? And with Prof Vasu Reddy(Dean: Faculty of Humanities) has co-edited the monograph The UndiscoveredCountry: 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 partiesand advocacy groups in Angola, Cote D’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo,Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Senegal, SouthAfrica, Tanzania, Uganda, the US, Zambia, Zimbabwe.