South Africa’s 2026 local government elections are approaching, and at the University of KwaZulu-Natal on August 3, students packed Howard College Theatre to hear experts debate what the country’s future might actually look like.
The inaugural Own Wisdom and Lead (OWL) and AMP Student Debate Series brought together three panellists with distinct but complementary backgrounds: Dr Vasu Gounden, Founder and Executive Director of ACCORD; Professor Emeritus Paulus Zulu, Director of the Maurice Webb Race Relations Unit at UKZN; and Mr Thabani Zulu (CA), Chief Executive Officer of Stella Lumen. Ms Lynette Ntuli moderated. The turnout was substantial, signalling a genuine appetite among young South Africans for platforms where national challenges can be examined openly and without evasion.
For ordinary citizens, the stakes of the discussion were immediate. Governance, institutional resilience, and social cohesion formed the core of the debate, each touching directly on the public services and civic structures that people depend on daily. Whether key institutions can sustain public confidence is not an abstract question. It shapes how reliably those institutions function for the communities they serve.
Dr Gounden drew on decades of African mediation and peacebuilding work to push the conversation beyond South Africa’s own borders. He examined the underlying causes of conflict and how institutions across the continent respond to, and sometimes deepen, tensions within their societies. That continental framing gave students a way to situate South Africa’s pressures within a broader regional pattern, where governance strain and social fragmentation are not unique to one country.
Meanwhile, the debate’s collaborative foundation reflected a deliberate effort to build this kind of civic engagement into university life. The series is a joint initiative involving OWL, AMP, the Maurice Webb Race Relations Unit, and UKZN, designed to foster dialogue among emerging leaders and thinkers across the continent.
The event is documented in full at https://www.accord.org.za/news/accord-participates-in-university-of-kwazulu-natals-ukzns-panel-on-the-state-of-affairs-in-south-africa-ahead-of-the-2026-local-government-elections/
What the Howard College Theatre session demonstrated is that students are not waiting to be handed conclusions. They showed up, they engaged, and they pressed serious questions about the systems that govern their lives. As the electoral cycle advances, the more pressing question is whether those systems will give citizens, young and old, sufficient reason to trust them.