On 24 March 2009 ACCORD Senior Advisor Tor Sellstrom and Shauna Mottiar, a Senior Researcher at ACCORD, attended the Democracy Development Programme’s political party debate which was held at the Elangeni Hotel in Durban, South Africa. Seven South African political parties, who will participate in the upcoming elections to be held in South Africa on 22 April 2009, were represented on the panel.
The parties addressed various issues of provincial and national relevance. These included: economic inequality and poverty, education, land reform, social services, development and crime.
During South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994 ACCORD trained over 4000 domestic election monitors and several groupings of international observers, including contributing to the drafting of a Manual for Training Monitors, a Manual for Training Observers, a Handbook for Observers and a Handbook for Monitors published by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). In addition, ACCORD participated in mediation panels to manage relations among political parties contesting elections in the Province of Kwa-Zulu Natal. In 1999 ACCORD trained over 2000 domestic monitors in Nigeria ahead of their elections, which included a Training-of-Trainers (TOTs) programme for election monitors and observers. The training of election observers in Nigeria was the first of its kind to be carried out by an African organisation in a collaborative effort.
In the past ACCORD also ran an ‘Elections and Conflict Management Programme’, which was aimed at strengthening and improving electoral processes and advancing valuable elements of conflict prevention and mitigation of election-related conflicts in the SADC region.
