A large ominous shadow loomed about two metres away. Then a roll and the distinct white belly. I was in striking distance of man's most feared predator. How, you might ask, did I -- not known among my friends and foes for a love of danger -- end up t...
Is Africa advancing? This was the crisp question we asked ourselves at the Mo Ibrahim shindig in Dar es Salaam two weeks ago. The Prize Committee had been unable to select a winner this year. Time magazine put it succinctly last month: 2009 has been ...
A funeral attended by presidents past and present. It is Senator Edward Kennedy's final farewell held at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Boston. A milieu has come full circle in American politics. The "new king" presides over a ceremony rich in symboli...
A genocide which has claimed more lives than Adolf Hitler's gas chambers: the 20th century African holocaust. Who is to blame this time? What devil lurks in the background wreaking such ruin on our people? The answer is plain and simple -- party poli...
On cue, at 12h25, just five minutes before President Jacob Zuma was due to give an economic briefing at Tuynhuys, the wind picked up in the parliamentary precinct and it started to rain. Cold drops in spring. Was the grey, leaden sky, I wondered, a p...
"Premier appoints all male cabinet", "All male cabinet is a betrayal of women" ranted the headlines in May. I am writing, of course, of the headlines in Britain's newspapers when Margaret Hilda Thatcher, a grocer's daughter, appointed an all-male cab...
In the last two weeks two young talented men, both in their thirties, have tragically died: Stephen Gately, the former Boyzone singer, aged 33, and Garth Stead, the brilliant Cape Town photographer, aged 37, who literally painted images of lyrical be...
Julius Malema is fast becoming a national treasure: the pantomime's grand dame of South African politics.
He is also, unwittingly, a fabulous source of national unity: he draws us all altogether in mirth, condemnation and embarrassment. Yet, I am ...
Could I abuse someone? This is a question I have repeatedly asked myself recently after reading the voluminous blogs on this site about abuse and its many grotesque manifestations: child abuse, rape and violence against women, to name a few. As someo...
Barack Obama, to be candid, probably clinched the Nobel Peace Prize when he secured the Democratic Party's presidential nomination last year. He has proved that words, not just actions, have power to heal in the television age. His elegant and powerf...
Jon is a Mason Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and was recently awarded the Gundle South Africa Public Service Fellowship. As well as participating in the Mason Program, he is studying for a Masters Degree in Public Administration and Management.
Jon has served as the private secretary to elder statesman, Mangosuthu Buthelezi and, more recently, briefly as the Head of Ministry of Transport and Public Works in the Western Cape Provincial Government.
Jon is a committed liberal democrat and is a member of the Democratic Alliance. In 2000 he worked as a consultant policy writer for the then Democratic Party.
Jon is a graduate of public policy and politics, and has also studied in South Africa, the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic.
