Senior Staff
Dr Simon Dagut
Simon Dagut is a senior manager: research and projects at CDE. He has worked on a wide range of South African and African public policy issues including migration policy, unemployment, enterprise development, welfare and pension policy, regulatory reform and regulatory impact assessment. He holds a PhD in History from Cambridge University and a Masters in Public Policy from Princeton University. At CDE, he manages research staff and projects, and writes and edits reports. His main historical interests are the social history of migration, civil service history and the long-run determinants of economic development.
 
Iona Cameron
Iona Cameron is a project and research coordinator at CDE. She received a MA from Rhodes University in 2005 with a dissertation in the field of Trade and Labour.  Her BA majors were in Political Science and Economics.  She has lectured and tutored at Rhodes University in the Economics Department and has been involved in teaching at the St. John Ambulance foundation.  She also holds an Advanced Certificate in Overseas Trade from the Institute of Export, London.  Prior to joining CDE, she was involved in a large economic research project on Foreign Direct Investment at the EDGE Institute, Johannesburg.
 
Researchers
 
Megan MacGarry
Megan MacGarry is a researcher at CDE.  She received her Masters Degree in Development Studies from the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu Natal in 2007.  There she focused her research on inner city redevelopment and regeneration, concentrating on Newtown Precinct in Johannesburg as her case study.  She holds a Bachelor of Social Science degree from the same university, majoring in Political Science and English Literature.  She has been involved in numerous research and development projects, and was previously employed as a Development Economist by Urban Econ Pty Ltd.
 
David Shepherd
David Shepherd is a researcher at CDE. He received his Masters Degree in Political Studies from the School of Political Studies at Witwatersrand University in 2007. His dissertation involved a case study of aspects of the Human Sciences Research Council as they relate to democratic theory in South Africa. He holds an Honours degree in International Relations from Rhodes University. He has also worked as a researcher for the Public Service Accountability Monitor.

Board
CDE''s Board provides the organisation with strategy and policy advice and oversees its governance functions.  The members of the Board are:
                      

  Laurie Dippenaar (chairman) was appointed as the first Chief Executive of FirstRand Ltd in May 1998. He serves as Chairman of Momentum Group and OUTsurance and is on the board of FirstRand, FirstRand Bank Holdings and Rand Merchant Bank Holdings. Laurie Dippenaar holds a number of leadership positions in business organisations. He is a trustee of the Business Trust and serves on the Board of Governors of Business Leadership South Africa, a business organisation representing the sixty largest domestic and multi-national corporations in South Africa. He was President of Business Leadership South Africa (then the South Africa Foundation) in 2002 and 2003. He is a member of the Big Business Working Group that meets regularly with the President and senior members of Government. In addition to his business leadership commitments, Laurie Dippenaar is on the governing bodies of several educational institutions including the University of Pretoria and Michaelhouse school.
  Ann Bernstein is CDE’s Executive Director. 
 
Click here for her biography.
 
  Judge Fikile Bam obtained the degree of BA (Law) from the University of Cape Town (1960) as well as B Proc (1975) and LLB (1976) from the University of South Africa (UNISA). He was admitted as an advocate in 1978 and joined the Johannesburg Bar until his deportation to the Transkei, where he practised from 1980 to 1985. He was chairman of the Transkei Bar in 1984 and 1985, director of the Legal Resources Centre in Port Elizabeth in 1985 and became a member of IMSSA (Independent Mediation Services of South Africa) in 1987. He sat as an additional member of the Industrial Courts in both the Ciskei and the Transkei, becoming a member of the Eastern Cape Bar in 1992.  He also sat as a commissioner of the Goldstone Commission during 1992 and 1993.  He joined the Johannesburg legal firm of Deneys Reitz as a partner in 1994, specialising in constitutional law and was appointed judge-president of the Land Claims Court in 1995.   Judge Bam is a board member of the Open Society Foundation for South Africa, Project Literacy and the Trust for Educational Advancement in South Africa.  He was awarded a LL.D by Rhodes University in 2001 and is currently Professor Extraordinary of Stellenbosch University.
  Elisabeth Bradley was educated at the University of the Orange Free State (B Sc) and London University (M Sc). She was appointed Managing Director of Wesco Investments Ltd in 1986 and Executive Chairman in July 1991. She is also Chairman of Metair Investments Ltd. In December 2002 she was appointed non-executive chairman of Toyota SA Ltd, and she holds directorships of The Standard Bank Group Ltd, Tongaat Hulett Ltd, Sasol Ltd and Anglogold Ashanti Ltd.  She is Deputy Chairman of the SA Institute of International Affairs, Chairman of the audit committee of Tongaat Hulett Ltd, and a member of the Council of the University of the Witwatersrand.  Elisabeth Bradley was founding chairman of CDE’s Board and served in that capacity from 1995-2006. 
  Cas Coovadia is the Managing Director of the Banking Association of South Africa. He also heads the Executive Secretariat of the SADC Banking Association, which is made up of the national associations of banks from SADC countries. He played a central role in the negotiations leading to the signing of the Financial Services Charter and is playing a critical role in the implementation of agreements reached in the Charter. Cas Coovadia is Vice-Chairman of the African Union for Housing Finance and the Trust for Urban Housing Finance and chairs the National Business Initiative and the Johannesburg Civic Theatre. He is also Business Vice-President of Business Unity South Africa (BUSA).
  Abraham (Bram) de Klerk was educated at the University of Pretoria (B.Sc. Mechanical Engineering, 1973) and the University of Potchefstroom (M.B.A, 1978). He started his career at Sasol One in 1973 and held various positions in design, projects, maintenance and operations.  In 1990 he joined Natref, the crude oil refinery in Sasolburg, where he was appointed Managing Director in 1994.  He was appointed Managing Director of Sasol Synfuels in 1998, and was appointed Group General Manager of Sasol Limited in 2003.  He is also director of several companies in the Sasol Group.
  Prof Brian Figaji retired as the Vice Chancellor of the Peninsula Technikon in Cape Town at the end of 2004. He currently serves (2005 – 2009) as South Africa’s representative on the Executive Board at UNESCO (United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation)  He is a director of companies and serves on a variety of education-related trusts and NGOs. Before joining Peninsula Technikon in 1980 Prof Figaji spent ten years working as a consulting civil engineer and as a site agent for a large civil engineering construction company. He also taught at a high school in Cape Town for a short while. Prof Figaji is a Fellow of the SA Institute of Civil Engineers, a Fellow of the SA Society for Professional Engineers, a Fellow of the Academy of Engineering and a member of the SA Academy of Science. He served two terms as a member of the Council on Higher Education (CHE). Prof Figaji is a graduate of the universities of the Western Cape, Cape Town, UNISA and Harvard.  He has also been awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Coventry in the UK and California State University.
  Samuel Jonah is the former President of AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. He is currently the Executive Chairman of Jonah Capital (Pty) Ltd, an investment holding company in South Africa. He has been awarded many decorations and honours, including the Companion of the Order of the Star, Ghana’s highest national award. In 2003 Queen Elizabeth II conferred an Honorary Knighthood on him. Sam Jonah holds numerous offices and titles including: Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, Ghana; member of the International Investment Advisory Councils of African Presidents in Ghana, South Africa and Nigeria; member of the United Nations Secretary General’s Global Compact Advisory Council; member of the African Regional Advisory Board of the London Business School; visiting professor of business at the University of Witwatersrand Business School, in Johannesburg; Trustee of the Nelson Mandela Legacy Trust (UK). Sam Jonah serves on various boards of public and private companies including Titanium Resources Group Ltd, Transnet, the Standard Bank Group, Sierra Rutile Ltd (SRL), Uramin, and Moto Mining (Listed on the Canadian Stock Exchange).
  Sipho Maseko was educated at the University of the Witwatersrand (BA, LLB).  He previously worked at Werksmans and the Financial Services Board (Financial Markets).  He joined BP in 1997 and held various roles, both in South Africa and London.  He then went on to serve as Chief Operating Officer, BP Africa BU and Deputy CEO BP Africa. He is currently the Chief Executive Officer of BP Africa. 
  Ishmael Mkhabela is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Interfaith Community Development Association (ICDA), an agency which, for the past sixteen years, has pioneered and promoted broad-based relational community organising and community conflict resolution in South Africa. In 2001 Mkhabela founded ICDA Housing and Development Consultants (Pty) Ltd, a business arm that provides urban development services to a range of clients, including business, government agencies and nongovernmental organizations that support socio-economic development as well as housing and urban renewal programmes. Mkhabela chairs the boards of a number of trusts and companies, including the Johannesburg Social Housing Company, the Central Johannesburg Partnership, the Steve Biko Foundation and the Kabo Development Trust.
  Soto Ndukwana took an interest in politics at an early age and was arrested and sent to Robben Island at age 19, where he served a ten-year sentence. While in prison he completed matric, a BA and a B.Com (Hons). After his release he completed a B.Admin and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Education. His initial employment was at Munich Re Insurance Group of South Africa from 1987 – 1989.  From 1990 to 1993 he was employed by South African Breweries (SAB) where he was a Board member responsible for Corporate Affairs/Marketing. He held this position until his move to Makana Investments in 1998 and remained a non-executive Director of SAB Ltd until 2000.  Together with Peter-Paul Ngwenya, he set up Makana Investment Corporation (MIC) (Pty) Ltd. Soto Ndukwana served as MIC’s Chairman and CEO until he resigned in 2003 to assume his current position of Executive Chairman of IFULA Holdings.
  Prof Wiseman Nkuhlu was educated at the Universities of Fort Hare, Cape Town and New York. He was Principal and Vice Chancellor of the University of Transkei from 1987 to 1991. From 1998 to 2002 he was the first Chairman of the Council on Higher Education (CHE). He joined the Independent Development Trust as Chief Executive in 1990 and was Chairman of the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) from 1993 to 2000.  He served as economic advisor to President Thabo Mbeki and as Chief Executive of the Secretariat of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) from 2000 to 2005.  He is currently Chairman of Metropolitan Insurance, Kagiso Trust Investments, Bigen Africa Group and Pan-African Capital, as well as a director of AngloGold Ashanti and Datatec Ltd. Prof Nkuhlu has received honorary doctorates from the Universities of the Free State, Stellenbosch, Cape Town, Pretoria and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. 
  Simon Ridley attended the University of Natal where he obtained a Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1980 and a Higher Diploma in Accounting in 1981. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1982. In 1994 he completed an Advanced Management Programme at Oxford University. He left the computer audit department at KPMG in 1984 and then held various finance positions at Momentum Life, United Bank and ABSA before joining Standard Bank in 1999 as Director, Finance and Operations in Standard Corporate and Merchant Bank (now Standard Bank: Corporate and Investment Banking).  He was appointed Chief Financial Officer of the Standard Bank Group in 2002. 
  Michael Spicer is the Chief Executive Officer of Business Leadership South Africa. Prior to his arrival at Business Leadership, Michael was an Executive Vice President at Anglo American plc and Executive Director of Anglo American South Africa.  He remains on the Board of Anglo American South Africa in a non-executive capacity and is a Board member of Rothschild South Africa.  Michael Spicer has a wide involvement in business and public life, being Deputy Chairman of the National Business Initiative, a member of President Mbeki’s Big Business Working Group and International Marketing Council, and a board member of the Business Trust.  He was appointed in 2006 as an inaugural member of the Presidential International Advisory Board of Mozambique.  He is also immediate past Chairman of the Council at St. John’s College, from where he matriculated before completing his BA and MA degrees at Rhodes University with distinction.
  Eugene van As joined Sappi in December 1976 as the Managing Director of Sappi Kraft (Pty) Ltd and was appointed to the board in January 1977.   He was appointed Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Sappi Ltd in 1978 and Executive Chairman in 1991.  He became Non-executive Chairman on his retirement as Chief Executive in 2003.  He is also a trustee of a number of education and research bodies. 
  Tony van Kralingen started as a trainee at South African Breweries (SAB) in 1982. During his stay he worked in Human Resources and Brand Management before taking up a position as General Manager, United Breweries in 1989, followed by General Manager, Natal in 1992. He was appointed to the Beer Division Board in 1994 as Operations Director and Marketing Director in 1997. In January 2000 he moved to Prague, Czech Republic, as Chief Executive Officer of Pilsner Urquell Group. In 2001 responsibility for European Procurement and Slovakia were added to his portfolio. He was appointed as Managing Director, SAB Ltd in 2003. 
 
Executive Director
  Ann Bernstein is the founding director of the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE).  She was educated at the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of California, Los Angeles.  She was awarded an Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Fellowship to study in the US.
 
The first part of Ann’s professional career was spent working for the Urban Foundation, a privately funded NGO that was instrumental in using the power and influence of business to persuade the apartheid government to reform key aspects of its approach to black urbanization.  In 1989 she was appointed an executive director of the Foundation and served in that capacity for 5 years until its closure in early 1995. 
 
In 1991 she was a Visiting Fellow at Peter Berger’s Institute for the Study of Economic Culture, Boston University. 
 
In 1994 she was appointed to the Development Bank Transformation Team and subsequently to the Transitional Board of the Development Bank of Southern Africa.  From 1997 – 2001 she was a member of the Board of the Development Bank.  In 2007 she was appointed to the board of the Brenthurst Foundation, which focuses on African economic development.
 
Acknowledged as one of the country''s leading development experts, she is a strong proponent of the importance of economic growth in promoting democracy and sustainable development.  Bernstein regularly addresses conferences and other meetings in South Africa and abroad, and contributes to journals and newspapers on a wide range of national issues. 
 
She has published extensively on business, democracy, development and policy-making in South Africa, including the books Migration and Refugee Policies (with M. Weiner, 1999), Business and Democracy: Cohabitation or Contradiction? (with P.L. Berger, 1998), and Policy Making in A New Democracy: South Africa’s Challenges for the 21st Century. She has been a Visiting Lecturer at Wits University and subsequently a Visiting Professor at the University of Cape Town.
 
In 2005 she was selected as a Reagan-Fascell Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington DC.  She returned to South Africa in March 2006 after a five month period in Washington.
 
Senior Consultants
Prof Peter Delius
Department of History, University of the Witwatersrand
 
Prof Delius is one of South Africa''s most respected and widely published historians. In a number of classic studies in the field of South African rural and agrarian history, he has researched the impact of colonialism, urbanisation, and labour migrancy, as well as new forms of political culture on African rural societies. His work has explored both the rural and urban dimensions of these processes. He has undertaken numerous research and policy projects for, inter alia, the National Economic Forum, the National Land Committee, the National Business Initiative, the Department of Land Affairs, the Mvula Trust, and the National Rural Development Forum.
 
Dr Sandy Johnston
Senior Research Consultant
 
Sandy Johnston is a senior associate at CDE.  He is a former professor of political science and head of the school of undergraduate studies in the faculty of human sciences at the University of Natal, Durban (now UKZN). He holds MA and M Ed degrees from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, and a PhD from the University of Natal.
 
Dr Robin Lee
Director, Robin H Lee Associates
 
Robin Lee is former managing director of the Urban Foundation, and senior research fellow of the Centre for Policy Studies at the Business School of the University of the Witwatersrand, where he specialised in the relation between business and government.  He held the position of Dean of the Faculty of Management at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1996/7 and was Executive Director of the Income Generation Programme from 1997 to 1999.  Dr Lee’s work has focused on business, technological development, strategic planning and socio-economic development issues including crime, education, housing, micro-enterprise, youth development, NGO management and developmental economics.  He teaches several courses on the global environment of SA business at three SA business schools, and is Visiting Professor and Honorary Research Associate at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Cape Town.  He presently runs his own consulting company. 
 
Dr Jeff McCarthy
Senior Research Consultant
 
A former visiting professor in urban and regional planning and fellow in the Graduate School of Business at the University of Durban-Westville, Jeff McCarthy has intensively researched national economic growth patterns, urban development and South African cities, and regional development. He is a former member of the board of directors of the Urban Foundation and of the economic and development reference group in the Office of the President, and former chair of the National Coastal Policy Programme. He has published over 100 books and articles on subjects pertaining to urban and regional development, the most recent of which is the co-edited volume Urban Reconstruction in Developing Countries (Heinemann 2004). He is currently a senior consultant to CDE and major SA companies, especially in regard to research and strategy pertaining to urban development. 
 
Prof Lawrence Schlemmer
Director of the strategic research company MarkData
 
One of South Africa''s foremost social scientists, Prof Schlemmer is a former dean of the faculty of social science at the University of Natal, director of the Centre for Policy Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, and vice-president of the Human Sciences Research Council. Until recently he was the director of the Helen Suzman Foundation. He is an elected founder member of the South African Academy of Science, and an honorary professor in development studies at the University of Potchefstroom. He has participated in large policy research projects for various government departments, parastatal bodies, NGOs, and corporations, and is involved as a consultant in various local development projects.
 
Dr Nick Segal
Independent consultant and director of companies
 
Nick Segal has had a diverse career in South Africa and abroad. A chemical engineer and economist by academic background, his career includes being director of the University of Cape Town''s Graduate School of Business, director of South African mining companies and president of the SA Chamber of Mines, founder and chief executive of SQW (an international economic development consultancy based in Cambridge, UK), director of a regional development strategy for northern England and senior economist on India in the World Bank. He has served on various advisory and governance bodies such as President Mandela’s Labour Market Commission, an EU panel on science and technology policy and regional development, the Council of the University of the Witwatersrand and the Cambridge Health Authority. He has also been involved in and published on a variety of issues, typically from the perspectives of economic development and the government-business interface, such as industrial as well as science/technology and spatial development policies, academic-industry linkages, SME development and corporate governance. He currently holds visiting positions at the Universities of Cambridge (Wolfson College) and of Pretoria.
 
Prof Charles Simkins
Helen Suzman Professor of Political Economy, School of Economics and Business Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand
 
One of South Africa''s best-known development economists, Prof Simkins is an expert in demography, poverty and income distribution, labour market analysis, and education financing. He is a consultant to the Department of Education and the Treasury, and a member of the Statistics Council.  He has a BSc, an MA and a PhD (Economics).
 
Consultants
Dr Stephen Rule
Research Consultant
 
Stephen Rule is a senior research executive at the CDE. He holds a PhD in political geography from the University of the Witwatersrand. He has managed quantitative and qualitative studies and authored reports, articles and books on a range of topics, including public perceptions on social and religious issues; domestic tourism; the film and video industry; social impacts of investment in IT and of gambling; employer compliance with BEE; nuances of consumer demand for cell phones; monitoring of elections across southern Africa; educational needs in inner-city Johannesburg; and informal housing upgrading. He is an independent consultant to CDE and has worked at HSRC, Social Development Ministry, CASE and Soweto’s Vista University.
 
Dr Stefan Schirmer
Research Consultant
 
Stefan Schirmer received his PhD in history in 1994 and obtained an honours degree in economics in 1995. He teaches economic history and development at the University of the Witwatersrand.  He has published articles on land reform, on agricultural development and on economic growth in numerous local and international journals. He has spent many years consulting on ways to alleviate poverty, overcoming the legacies of Apartheid and promoting economic growth.
 
Riaan de Villiers
Publishing Consultant
 
A former journalist, Riaan de Villiers is a publishing consultant with many years of experience. He edits and produces all CDE''s publications.