2024 Francis Wilson Memorial Lecture

On 16 April, the University of Cape Town, SALDRU, and DataFirst hosted the second annual Francis Wilson Memorial Lecture, which was delivered by former Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel. The title of his talk was “How to build – and break – a capable state: structural reform and institution building in the democratic era”.

During the lecture, Mr Manuel shared some of the steps and motivation behind the building of some of the institutions and policies in the early years of South Africa’s democracy; and how attempts were made to dismantle some of these in later years. At the end of the lecture he reminded attendees that we should “understand that we have the ability to rebuild. We have done it once; we can do it again.” Mr Manuel then answered a series of questions from in-person and online attendees of the lecture.

Read a UCT News article about the lecture.

Watch the recording of the lecture: