The Catholic Parliamentary Liaison Office in Cape Town (CPLO) and the Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSF) recently hosted a dinner at which three of the main speakers were Ms Yvonne Phosa, member of the National Assembly and Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Appropriations; Ms Thamo Mzobe, the Chief Executive Officer of the National Development Agency, and Dr Peter Ramsauer, a visiting German MP and Chairperson of the Bundestag’s Committee on Economic Co-operation and Development.

The chairman of the Committee on Economic Cooperation & Development in the German Bundestag, MP Dr Peter Ramsauer, from the Christian Social Union (CSU), visited Cape Town recently to discuss the building of sustainable political coalitions with high-ranking South African politicians, and to strengthen the economic and development cooperation between South Africa and Germany.

A high-level South African delegation comprising politicians, police officers and experts from security think tanks recently visited Bavaria to learn about German violence prevention strategies, the involvement of civil society in community safety initiatives and service-oriented policing. The delegation was led by Daniel Plato, the Minister for Community Safety in the Western Cape – a partner province of Bavaria.

Together with several partner organisations, the Civics Academy project of the Hanns Seidel Foundation in South Africa recently organised the first pilot workshop “Youth Making Local Government Work”. The two-day event was held at Sibelius High School Wynberg in Retreat in the Western Cape.

This was the theme of a Roundtable Discussion we held last week together with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, one of our partner organisations in South Africa. Our speakers on the panel were Panyaza Lesufi, the popular MEC (Minister) for Education in Gauteng, Trudi Makhaya, renowned Economist and Business Day Analyst and Dr. Jakkie Cilliers, Head of the African Futures and Innovation Project at the Institute for Security Studies.