Roger Southall is an honorary professor in sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand and was previously Distinguished Research Fellow at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and Professor of Political Studies at Rhodes University. Prior to that he worked in universities in Uganda, Lesotho, Canada and the UK. He is the author or editor of around a dozen books. He founded the HSRC’s State of the Nation project and coedited the first four volumes. He has also published extensively on African politics, political economy and labour in leading academic journals, as well as contributing chapters to numerous books. He is editor of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies.

Collette Schulz-Herzenberg holds a BA Hons in politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (London University), an MSc in democratic governance and a PhD in politics from the University of Cape Town (UCT). She completed her postdoctoral fellowship with the Centre for Social Science Research at UCT in 2013, specialising in South African voter behaviour. Collette’s academic interests include political behaviour, elections and voters, party systems, democratization and research methods. Her teaching specialisations include political behaviour and political theory, survey research and quantitative methodologies.

Kealeboga J Maphunye is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Sciences and former WIPHOLDBrigalia Bam Research Chair in Electoral Democracy in Africa at Unisa. He holds a Doctoral Degree in Government from the University of Essex (UK), Master of Public Administration (MPA) (UB, Botswana) and Bachelor of Science in Sociology (Hons.) (UZ, Zimbabwe). He has worked for the School of Government, University of the Western Cape as an academic and has conducted commissioned research for South Africa’s national government departments.