We’re sharing the latest edition of the New South Institute’s quarterly newsletter. It brings together updates on our research, engagements and partnerships, and reflects a period of organisational growth. Readers can download the PDF and subscribe via the NSI homepage to receive future editions.

This issue opens with a note from our director detailing how the Institute is expanding to consolidate recent work on public service reform. The Public Service Reform programme has added new staff, with further senior research capacity to follow. We have welcomed the first participant in our Journalist-in-Residence initiative and launched both the NSI Fellowship in Public Sector Reform and the NSI Young Scholar Programme. The newsletter also notes forthcoming engagement with the Select Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs in the National Council of Provinces (NCOP).

The publications section highlights our data-driven analysis, ‘Retiring the 1994 Generation of Public Servants’, which examines the ageing of South Africa’s public service and its implications for professionalisation. It also introduces Missing Voices, a series of conversations with leading thinkers on the shifting global order, alongside new working papers: ‘The Making of a Settler Colony’ and ‘Conceptualising the New Global South: Perspectives from International Law’. A chapter by Michael Mutava surveys trends in African migration within a new edited volume.

The newsletter covers recent events and outreach. NSI co-hosted the On Think Tanks Conference in Johannesburg with SAIIA and GIBS, convened a seminar on global lessons from state capture featuring Daniel Kaufmann, and co-hosted a public lecture at Stellenbosch University on the global evolution of state capture. Team members contributed to policy dialogues in South Africa and internationally, including a Presidency-led roundtable addressed by Deputy President Paul Mashatile, the 10th Continental Africa Public Service Day in Addis Ababa, an international migration conference in Brazil, and a discussion on South Africa’s migration policy hosted by the Southern African Liaison Office.

Finally, the media section gathers recent interviews and commentary, including television coverage of our work on public service reform and op-eds on the Public Service Amendment Bill and the ageing public service workforce.

Download the full PDF newsletter and subscribe on the NSI homepage to receive future issues.