Steven Friedman is Research Associate at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) and Visiting professor of Politics, Rhodes University.
He is a political scientist whose has specialized in the study of democracy. During the 1980s, he produced a series of studies of reform apartheid and its implications for a democratic future. He researched and wrote widely on the South African transition to democracy both before and after the elections of 1994 and has, over the past decade, largely written on the relationship between democracy on the one hand, social inequality and economic growth on the other. In particular, he has stressed the role of citizen voice in strengthening democracy and promoting equality.
He is the author of Building Tomorrow Today, a study of the South African trade union movement and the implications of its growth for democracy, and the editor of The Long Journey and The Small Miracle (with Doreen Atkinson), which presented the outcome of two research projects on the South African transition. He is currently studying the role of citizen action in strengthening and sustaining democracy, with a particular focus on the activism of people living with HIV and AIDS.
Read Professor Friedman’s recent piece, "Prejudice, not affirmative action, keeps SA on a losing wicket"
Read Professor Friedman’s piece, "Prejudice before perspicacity on the uneven cricket fields of SA"
Read Professor Friedman’s draft of "COUNTING ON ‘RACE’: What the Surveys Say (And Do Not Say) About ‘Race’ and Redress"
