Richard Calland
Richard Calland has for over twenty years been working in the fields of democratic governance and sustainable development in South Africa and beyond. Based at the University of Cape Town (UCT), where he is Associate Professor in Public Law, he built and led its Democratic Governance & Rights Unit from 2007-2016. Calland specializes in freedom of information law and serves as a member of the Independent Access to Information Appeals Board of the World Bank. In the past, he has advised the governments of Mali, Peru, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Jamaica on transparency law reform and policy, and the Construction Sector Transparency Initiative (CoST) on matters of governance and multi-stakeholder process. In 2015, he was retained by the US Securities Exchange Commission as an expert witness in its prosecution of Hitachi under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Before moving to South Africa in 1994, Calland practiced law for seven years at the London Bar. From 1995-2011 (called in 1987 to Lincoln's Inn), he headed the Political Information & Monitoring Service and then the Economic Governance programme at Idasa – which was at that time Africa's leading democracy Institute. He is a founding member of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (CASAC) and with others he also founded the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) and the Open Democracy Advice Centre (ODAC), a law centre that supports the implementation of freedom of information law and advises whistleblowers, which he served as its first Executive Director from 2001-2010. Calland is a Fellow of the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, and has been a member of faculty on a series of strategic leadership programmes for, amongst others, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, PWC, Nedbank, Namdeb, Network Rail and Tata.
He is also the co-director of the niche organisation, the African Climate Finance Hub, supporting governments and multilateral organisations in Africa on issues relating to access and use of climate finance. He is a retained adviser on governance and politics to Massmart/Walmart and regularly gives political risk analysis to the clients of investment banks such as UBS and Citi, and is a founding partner of The Paternoster Group: African Political Insight. In 2005, he spent two terms at Cambridge University, as a visiting scholar at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. In 2006, he spent a month as a visiting lecturer in constitutional law at the Faculty of Law at Meiji University, Tokyo. He holds an LLM from the University of Cape Town, a Diploma in World Politics from the London School of Economics and a BA(Hons) Law from the University of Durham. He is a regular commentator in the media and his political column has been carried in the Mail & Guardian newspaper since 2001. Author of Anatomy of South Africa (2006) and The Zuma Years (2013), Calland's latest book on politics, Make or Break: How the next three years will shape South Africa's next three decades, was published in September 2016 by Penguin Random House.
Richard Calland has for over twenty years been working in the fields of democratic governance and sustainable development in South Africa and beyond. Based at the University of Cape Town (UCT), where he is Associate Professor in Public Law, he built and led its Democratic Governance & Rights Unit from 2007-2016. Calland specializes in freedom of information law and serves as a member of the Independent Access to Information Appeals Board of the World Bank. In the past, he has advised the governments of Mali, Peru, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Jamaica on transparency law reform and policy, and the Construction Sector Transparency Initiative (CoST) on matters of governance and multi-stakeholder process. In 2015, he was retained by the US Securities Exchange Commission as an expert witness in its prosecution of Hitachi under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Before moving to South Africa in 1994, Calland practiced law for seven years at the London Bar. From 1995-2011 (called in 1987 to Lincoln's Inn), he headed the Political Information & Monitoring Service and then the Economic Governance programme at Idasa – which was at that time Africa's leading democracy Institute. He is a founding member of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (CASAC) and with others he also founded the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) and the Open Democracy Advice Centre (ODAC), a law centre that supports the implementation of freedom of information law and advises whistleblowers, which he served as its first Executive Director from 2001-2010. Calland is a Fellow of the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, and has been a member of faculty on a series of strategic leadership programmes for, amongst others, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, PWC, Nedbank, Namdeb, Network Rail and Tata.
He is also the co-director of the niche organisation, the African Climate Finance Hub, supporting governments and multilateral organisations in Africa on issues relating to access and use of climate finance. He is a retained adviser on governance and politics to Massmart/Walmart and regularly gives political risk analysis to the clients of investment banks such as UBS and Citi, and is a founding partner of The Paternoster Group: African Political Insight. In 2005, he spent two terms at Cambridge University, as a visiting scholar at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. In 2006, he spent a month as a visiting lecturer in constitutional law at the Faculty of Law at Meiji University, Tokyo. He holds an LLM from the University of Cape Town, a Diploma in World Politics from the London School of Economics and a BA(Hons) Law from the University of Durham. He is a regular commentator in the media and his political column has been carried in the Mail & Guardian newspaper since 2001. Author of Anatomy of South Africa (2006) and The Zuma Years (2013), Calland's latest book on politics, Make or Break: How the next three years will shape South Africa's next three decades, was published in September 2016 by Penguin Random House.
