Report: 2023 KAS-SAIIA Scholars’ Welcome Event

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KAS-SAIIA Scholar's Welcome Event

The Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung's Regional Programme –Political Dialogue for Sub-Saharan Africa (PolDiSSA) welcomed the 2023 cohort of KAS scholars at an event held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in collaboration with the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA). The KAS-SAIIA scholarship is one of the flagship programmes of the organisation, dating as far back as 1998. Annually, the teams from KAS and SAIIA select five master's candidates within the social sciences and humanities disciplines to complete a year-long internship at SAIIA offices in Cape town or Johannesburg while pursuing their studies.

Following rigorous processes, including completing a timed online quiz on theories and contemporary affairs, panel interviews and assessing geopolitical scenarios, this year's scholarships were awarded to Shaun Kinnes, Kuhle Zondeka, Keanen Isaacs, Siyakudumisa Zicina and Adrian Joseph. While the programme attracts extraordinary applicants yearly, the above candidates were most deserving, exhibiting strong academic credentials that aligned with SAIIA’s research themes and KAS’ underlying principles as a value-based organisation.

The majority of the scholars are new entrants into the corporate world; for some, the scholarship is their first professional experience, creating the necessity to equip them beyond academics. This year's welcome event featured guest speakers, including Ms. Minenhle Nene, Climate Policy Officer at the Embassy of Netherlands in Pretoria and former KAS-SAIIA scholar. Her remarks emphasised the importance of building a relationship with senior researchers and mentors assigned to each scholar during the internship and with institutional partners and networks accessible through KAS and SAIIA. Ms. Nene’s career trajectory (challenged, in part, by the COVID-19 pandemic) provided an experiential perspective, which, we hope, encouraged this year's cohort of scholars and guests.

The keynote speech was delivered by Dr. Emmanuel Owusu-Seykere, Director of Research at the Africa Center for Economic Transformation (ACET), a think-tank based in Accra, Ghana. Dr. Owusu-Seykere’s remarks reinstated the need to leverage technological tools accessible to ‘this generation’ to ensure that one's contributions are research and evidence-based. He stated the difference between "having a master's degree and being a master within a particular field," which requires innovativeness, conscientiousness, the ability to work with others, and ethics.

In addition, Dr. Holger Dix, Director of the PolDiSSA programme, reflected on Germany's unification and the work of the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic, Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967), which guides KAS’ prioritisation of democracy, freedom and justice till date. SAIIA’s Director of Research, Ms. Neuma Grobbelaar, in her welcome remarks to the scholars, substantiated the need to maximise opportunities provided by KAS. She added the importance of having a global perspective on topical issues such as climate change, natural resource management and conflict resolution, mentioning also Russia's invasion of Ukraine and extremist insurgencies in Mozambique. 

This year's KAS-SAIIA scholar's welcome event featured a tour of the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Center (JHGC), facilitated by the centre's head of education, Ms. Catherine Boyd. Participants visited a temporary exhibition – "Seeing Auschwitz," which showed artefacts from the concentration camp from the viewpoints of victims and workers, perpetrators and survivors. They discussed the different methodologies used by the Nazis during the Holocaust and assessed and interpreted the exhibitions based on the visible cues, expressions and depictions on drawings. The exhibition ended with a printout on the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect, which stated,

If we remain blind to such unfolding atrocities, if the international community does not become more effective in preventing genocide [torture, systemic killings, war crimes], can we really say that we have ‘seen’ Auschwitz at all?

For more information on this event, please watch the highlights on PolDiSSA’s official Youtube page. You may also visit JHGC for more details on the above topic.