At the time of this interview, Reverend Gift Moerane was a member of the South African National Peace Accord, spokesperson for the South African Council of Churches. He served as a member of the Electoral Commission’s Conflict Management Mediation Panels since 1999. He was born in the Vaal Triangle in the Meyerton Township. He completed teacher training at the College of Education in Groblersdal. In 1984, after working as a clerk for the Meyerton municipality, he started working for the Council of Churches, assisting families of detainees and political prisoners.

At the time of this interview, Judy Parfitt was General Manager of Human Resources (HR) at the South African Revenue Services (SARS). She began her career in journalism. But, in the wake of state censorship exercised in South Africa during the state of emergency declared in the late 1980s, Parfitt returned to school and obtained a Master’s in International Relations in Warrick, United Kingdom (U.K.). She then worked for Volkswagen South Africa, and later helped set up the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration in South Africa, specifically the Eastern Cape region. In 1998, Parfitt was recruited by SARS.

Khabele Matlosa began his studies in Lesotho before pursuing a Master’s degree at the University of Leeds in the U.K., and a doctorate at the University of Western Cape in South Africa. He lectured at the University of Lesotho and worked briefly with the South African Regional Institute of Policy Studies in Zimbabwe before taking up his role as director of programs at the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa.

South Africa's Independent Electoral Commission initially hired Howard Sackstein in February 1994 to investigate breaches of the electoral code of conduct in Mpumalanga.  Within a few weeks of joining the organization, he was promoted to coordinate the Gauteng office of the commission’s Investigations Unit, where he oversaw 36 lawyers.  After the 1994 elections, Sackstein was one of two people retained to shut down the operations of the temporary Independent Electoral Commission, before the creation of the permanent Independent Electoral Commission.  He played a key role in the 1999 elections.  In early 2010 he was running his own technology firm, Saicom Voice Services.

At the time of this interview, Jeremy Cronin was the deputy minister for transport of South Africa and an African National Congress member of Parliament, as well as deputy general-secretary of the South African Communist Party. He was appointed as deputy minister of transport in 2009 and had been an MP since 1999. He previously worked on the South African Reconstruction and Development Programme, and he served as deputy general-secretary of the South African Communist Party since 1995. He was a political prisoner under apartheid for seven years, from 1976-1983. A respected poet, Cronin also worked as a lecturer in political philosophy at the University of Cape Town in the early 1970s.

At the time of the interview, David Beretti was the executive director of corporate services for the City of Cape Town, having worked for the city for 38 years. Beretti previously held positions in the finance, engineering, planning and human resources departments of the City of Cape Town. In his current position, he is responsible for the full human resource functions for 25,000 employees.  He also manages the legal services, information systems and technology departments. During his time as executive director of corporate services, Beretti oversaw the reformation of Cape Town from an original 39 municipalities in to one streamlined city government.    

At the time of this interview, Mangosuthu Buthelezi had been a member of parliament from the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) since 1994. Following the elections after the apartheid regime relinquished power, Buthelezi served as minister of affairs and, during President Mandela’s absence, as acting president of South Africa. A member of the Zulu royal family, he became involved in liberation politics after his studies at Fort Hare University in 1950. He returned home in 1953 to assume chieftainship of the Buthelezi clan. As traditional prime minister of the Zulu nation, Buthelezi also holds the title Undunankulu Ka Zulu. He was named chief executive officer of the Kwazulu Territorial Authority in 1970. He organized the IFP in 1975 with support of the African National Congress (ANC). In 2004, President Mbeki offered Buthelezi the Deputy Presidency. Because this meant the IFP would lose its political position in Kwazulu-Natal, Buthelesze refused and the IFP left the unity government.

Gareth Newham studied organizational psychology and political studies at the University of Cape Town. He completed a post-graduate degree in political studies and wrote his honors dissertation on civil-military relations and how South Africa could ensure democratic control of the military. In 2002, he received a master’s degree from the Graduate School for Public and Development Management at Wits University. His master’s dissertation looked at how to promote police integrity at Hillbrow Police Station, a corrupt inner-city station. Newham previously worked for the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) where he led the Provincial Parliamentary Monitoring Project and conducted research on provincial legislatures. He later served as project manager for the Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) where he focused on police management issues and crime prevention. In March 2006, Newham became the policy and strategy adviser to the Gauteng MEC (Member of the Executive Cabinet) for Community Safety, a post he continued to hold at the time of this interview.