The Community Liaison Department (CLD) was tasked to develop the Constitutional Assembly's Public Participation Programme (PPP), a unique development in national constitution-making and designed to ensure broad-based input and resulting public legitimacy of the Constitution. The CLD developed and implemented the face-to-face component of the PPP. The PPP held 1,253 interactions across South Africa during a two-year timespan – 1994 to 1996 – to broadly engage society across many domains, levels, social groupings, and locations.

Its work was supported by a massive media campaigns. All communication was in plain language and in all official languages through community liaison campaigns across all provinces to stimulate and collect public submissions. A significant part of the programme was directed towards people living in remote rural areas and historically disadvantaged urban areas. Civil society organisations were also targeted for participation. These interactions included public hearings, meetings, workshops, consultations, and briefings which accessed approximately 117,184 people. Submissions were conveyed to the appropriate structures of the Constitutional Assembly. Over 2 million submissions were received, all of which were processed through elected decision makers for their attention.

Edward Shalala served as head of Constitutional Assembly Community Liaison Department (CLD) from September 1994 – May 1996. He holds BA (Hons), LLB, LLM in the areas of Law and Political Science and studied at the University of Cape Town, University of the Western Cape, and St Johns Christian Brothers College.

Synnøve Skjelten moved to South Africa in the early 1990s. She is the author of A People's Constitution: Public Participation in the South African Constitution-making Process (Institute for Global Dialogue, 2006). She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oslo, Norway and a Master’s in Political Science from the University of Cape Town in 1999.