Tutu Fellows have attended and participated in the Mo Ibrahim Foundation's Governance Weekends' for several years.  The organization and the event deals with many of the issues that Fellows grapple with in their various sectors and countries and it provides an excellent forum to network and gain feedback on developments.  This year was no exception.  The Governance Weekend was early in April this year and was held in Marrakesh, Morocco.  This year, the focus was on leadership in the 21st century.

Organisers noted that the globalised world appears threatened by a democratic recession with autocratic leaders seducing increasingly concerned and disillusioned electors using fear of real and imagined security challenges. So it was fitting, perhaps, that 2014 Tutu Fellow Sello Hatang was among the speakers at the event. Hatang is the CEO of the Nelson Mandela Foundation.  He participated on a panel that discussed the risk of a democratic recession along with Abdoulaye Bathily, the Head of the United Nations Regional Office for Central Africa (UNOCA); Mark Malloch-Brown, the Chair of the Business and Sustainable Development Commission; and Amina Mohammed, the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations.  Zeinab Badawi, a BBC presenter and Chair of the Royal African Society moderated the discussion. Among the subject matter discussed was the difficulty of liberation movements finding it hard to make the transition to a political party.  This could result in countries becoming de facto one-party state and that elections were only one test that should be applied to determine if the country was an effective multiparty state.

Gallery below: Fellows at the Mo Ibrahim Governance weekend.