ACCORD has published a report titled Views and Visions of Coexistence in South Africa. The report documents a series of community consultations in three South African communities – Stutterheim in the Eastern Cape and Muden and Mpumalanga in KwaZulu Natal, where community members were invited to share their remarkable stories of transiting from violent conflict to cooperative post-conflict coexistence.

On 27 March 2009 ACCORD staff Jerome Sachane (Deputy Director), Hayden Allen (General Manager: Corporate Affairs), and Karishma Rajoo (Manager: Interventions), attended an election briefing update by the KwaZulu Natal Provincial Office of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC).

On 24 March 2009 ACCORD Senior Advisor Tor Sellstrom and Shauna Mottiar, a Senior Researcher at ACCORD, attended the Democracy Development Programme’s political party debate which was held at the Elangeni Hotel in Durban, South Africa. Seven South African political parties, who will participate in the upcoming elections to be held in South Africa on 22 April 2009, were represented on the panel.

ACCORD hosted the first Annual General Meeting of the Association of Security Sector Education and Training (ASSET), which was held in Durban from 4-6 March 2009. The meeting brought together a variety of institutions from across the continent involved in SSR training and education to engage and share information and ideas on the challenges encountered in current Security Sector Reform (SSR) agendas and avenues of moving forward to address these challenges.