Professor Susan Booysen is a political scientist, author and analyst of South African politics. She is also director of research at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA), emeritus professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa and visiting professor at the Wits School of Governance.

Booysen’s third book in her Wits University Press trilogy of research-driven books on the African National Congress of South Africa, Precarious Power: Compliance and discontent under Ramaphosa’s ANC, was published in 2021. The first two parts of the set were The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Political Power (2011) and Dominance and Decline: The ANC in the Time of Zuma (2015). Precarious Power (http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/precarious-power/) is available from South African bookshops and digitally from online stores such as Amazon’s Kindle Store and Barnes & Noble.

Booysen has also edited a range of books on South and Southern African politics. Her latest edited volume, for the Mapungubwe Institute, is Marriages of Inconvenience: Coalition politics in South Africa (to be published mid-2021). Her two previous edited books are FeesMustFall: Student Revolt, Decolonisation and Governance in South Africa (WUP, 2016) and Local Elections in South Africa: People, parties, politics (SUN Press, 2012). She co-edited Democracy and Elections in Southern Africa (2009) with Denis Kadima.
She holds a D.Litt. et Phil. from the University of Johannesburg (1988). Her areas of specialisation are South African and Southern African politics, public policy, governance, elections, comparative politics of Southern Africa, political sociology and research methodology. Her research fellowships include a post-doctoral fellowship at the Southern African Research Program (SARP) at Yale University, USA. She is past president of the South African Association of Political Studies (SAAPS) and is on the editorial board of the South African Journal of Political Studies, Politikon. She does peer reviews for a wide range of South African and international scholarly journals.

Susan Booysen is a recognised media commentator and analyst. She has published over a hundred refereed academic articles in national and international journals, chapters in books, and monographs. Her 2012 e-book, The ANC’s Battle of Mangaung (Tafelberg Publishers), focused on a particular turning point in the ANC trajectory. She has concluded around a wide range of full-scale consultancy and academic research projects, and presents her findings regularly at national and international conferences in African Studies, Political Studies, Policy Studies, as well as to other specialised audiences.

Booysen’s academic career has included early times at the University of Johannesburg and professorships at Nelson Mandela University (1998-2005) and Wits University (2005-2018). At MISTRA she works with a team of researchers to publish strategic research in the form of edited manuscripts. The volumes produced under her directorship of research at MISTRA include Mintirho ya vulavula: Arts, national identities and democracy in South Africa (2021); Land in South Africa: Contested meanings and nation formation (2021); Africa and the World: Navigating shifting geopolitics (2020); Epidemics and the Health of African Nations (2019); Traditional Leaders in a Democracy: Resources, respect and resistance (2020); and The Future of Mining in South Africa: Sunset or sunrise? (2018).