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 the Witwatersrand, 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 to complete her specialisation in fundraising and political campaign strategy. She has spent 30 years working in the South African and US non-profit sectors managing fundraising, policy analysis and media relations. She worked as a specialist election monitor during South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, has coordinated and fundraised for political campaigns at various levels of government in the State of Ohio, and has taught political behaviour, campaign management, fundraising strategy, and civic and human rights education in both the US and South Africa. Ms Thuynsma has published articles on human rights education for the United Nations and on South Africa’s political campaigns and electoral strategy for the Electoral Institute of South Africa. She is currently the Communications Manager for the Faculty of Humanities but also supervises postgraduate students and co-teaches the Honours-level course on Comparative Politics, that incorporates The Global Classroom, in the Department of Political Sciences. This postgraduate course won the Vice-Chancellor (2019) and the Faculty of Humanities’ (2018) Teaching and Learning awards. Ms Thuynsma has been a contributing editor of three book-length publications: Brittle Democracies: Comparing Politics in Anglophone Africa; Political Parties in South Africa: Do they Undermine or Underpin Democracy?, and, Public Opinion and Interest Group Politics: South Africa’s Missing Links? And with Prof Vasu Reddy (Dean: Faculty of Humanities) has co-edited the monograph The Undiscovered Country: 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 parties and advocacy groups in Angola, Cote D’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, the US, Zambia, Zimbabwe.