THE JUDGES

BILL NASSON (Chair)

Nasson is a professor of history at the University of Stellenbosch. A historian of modern South Africa and the British Empire, he has also taught at the University of Cape Town and universities in the US, the UK, Ireland and Australia. A former editor of The Journal of African History, Nasson has published across a wide range of fields, including oral history, education and politics.

His books include Britannia’s Empire: A Short History of the British Empire (2006); Springboks on the Somme: South Africa in the Great War, 1914-1918 (2007); The War for South Africa: The Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902 (2010); The Cambridge History of South Africa, Volume 2 (2011, co-editor); South Africa at War 1939-1945 (2012); The War At Home: Women and Families in the Anglo-Boer War (2013, co-editor); and World War 1 and the People of South Africa (2014).

PREGS GOVENDER

Govender is the South African Human Rights Commission deputy chair and leads its work on water, sanitation, health and access to information. A political activist since 1974, Govender qualified as a teacher and contributed to education, trade union and women’s movements. As an MP, she initiated South Africa’s “women’s budget” in the 1994 budget debates and chaired parliament’s women’s committee. In 2001, during President Thabo Mbeki’s first term, she chaired hearings on HIV/Aids. After being the only MP to register opposition to the arms deal in the defence budget vote, Govender resigned.

In the 10th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture, in 2012, Mary Robinson, the former UN high commissioner for human rights and former president of Ireland, quoted Govender’s book, Love and Courage: A Story of Insubordination . Govender’s work is referenced in more than 100 leadership, feminism and policy texts across the world.

SHAUN JOHNSON

Johnson studied at Rhodes University and was a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford. After a long career as an antiapartheid journalist, editor and newspaper executive, he helped establish the Mandela Rhodes Foundation in 2003, of which he is CEO.

Johnson’s first book was the non-fiction bestseller Strange Days Indeed. In 2007, his novel The Native Commissioner won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book in Africa, the M-Net Literary Award, and the Nielsen Booksellers’ Choice Book of the Year. The novel was prescribed as an English setwork by the Independent Examinations Board in South Africa.