Globally, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the pendulum has been swinging with accelerating momentum from “thinking globally and acting locally" to the inward-looking voices of own interests foremost, for example expressed by Johnson's “Brexit" and Trump's “America First". Not only international politics, but limits and current use of strategic resources such as water, food and fossil fuels are contributing to a sense of crises.

Some people and even nations, feeling threatened by such global forces now seek solutions in closing ranks and building new walls of separation, meeting migration with hostility and even opting for trajectories of strife, unleashing a new arms race between global superpowers. Governments struggle to maintain credibility by failing to satisfy the needs of the middle class for creating stability and predictability and by failing the poor through lack of improving their plight.

Is humankind escalating itself into self-destruction? In South Africa, as elsewhere in many countries, “state capture", “parallel state" and “xenophobia" in political discourse serve to define a growing sense of failure amidst conditions of uncertainty. It is the duty of public leaders to combat the cause of the disease and not its victims. The failure of public values, ethics, institutions and distorted markets call for a critical evaluation of public management paradigms.

It is necessary to map a course through turmoil and uncertainty and separatism whereby the acknowledged failures of public values, ethics, institutions and markets are countered from the bottom up.  Is it mere theory, or does it frame real-life solutions and already offer best practices? Do we search for one big global enlightenment, thereby missing the thousand blooms of success springing up from between the grassroots? Are we looking up to the top, when looking down to the masses would be more enlightening?

The 16th International Winelands Conference on Public Policy, Management and Development, to be held in the beautiful university town of Stellenbosch, South Africa, in April 2018, provides a platform for scholars and practitioners to engage with these questions. Since the first conference in 1987, these biennial conferences provided opportunity for exploring South African and global public value policy and service issues, best practices and trends. The Winelands Conference series is one of the most prominent events for academics and practitioners in its field of study in Southern Africa and is recognised globally. The 15th Conference in 2016 explored governance of transitions in a complex world, and the 2018 theme offers a logical progression.