The opposition’s motion of no confidence in President Jacob Zuma coincided with the Shakespearean fall of CIA director David Petraeus. Both Zuma and Petraeus know about modern insurgencies. Petraeus wrote the US Army counterinsurgency strategy handbook when America was losing her wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Zuma, with less success, is trying to fight off […]
Jon Cayzer
Jon was an Edward S. Mason Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government from 2010 - 2011, and holds a Masters Degree in Public Administration. He was awarded the Gundle South African Public Service Fellowship.
Jon is the speechwriter to Democratic Alliance Leader, Helen Zille.
He has also served as the speechwriter to the leader of the official opposition, private secretary to elder statesman, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and, briefly, as the Head of Ministry of Transport and Public Works in the Democratic Alliance-led Western Cape Provincial Government.
He spent time at the Tony Blair Faith Foundation in London in 2011 working on the Faith and Globalisation, and Faiths Acts programmes. In 2000 he worked as a consultant policy writer for the then Democratic Party.
Twitter: jonthekaizer
Posted inNews/Politics
Why SA demands a reluctant Obama
President Barack Obama’s re-election last week reminds us that the embrace of diversity is America’s greatest gift to the world. South Africa, like the United States, is one of the world’s most diverse countries with a similar burden of history of racial separation. This had led some of us in the small cocooned world of […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Zuma only has his cockups to blame
The orgiastic furore surrounding the depiction of President Jacob Zuma’s genitalia in an infamous painting, The Spear, is yet to reach a climax in the public square. The painting has power for one reason, and one reason alone: it crystallised a public narrative in pictorial form. As I have written here before, sex is controversially […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Obama: Rip those conservatives apart
Four years ago, Barack Obama and his rival, John McCain, both embodied the American idea of nobility in their respective campaigns. This time Obama enjoys the power of incumbency, and he will fight on his record. While all political figures become repositories of hope by virtue of taking office, Obama had built his entire campaign […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
FW: Why sorry is the hardest word
Amidst the blanket coverage of FW De Klerk’s remarks on CNN, few have stopped to consider that Mr de Klerk may actually have meant what he said, and said what he meant. I believe De Klerk will be judged a towering figure of history, and that his closest historical proxy is Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev did […]
Posted inGeneral
Notes on a genocidal scandal
The memories of the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia Herzegovina in the mid-nineties must never be extinguished from our hearts. The reason why the ending of one was successful, and the failure to end the other is the darkest page in post-war US foreign policy, is banally simple. Bosnia stirred the conscience of the West, […]
Posted inNews/Politics
‘Arab Awakening’ or doomsday?
The kaleidoscope of power is spinning wildly in the Arab region. While most of us rejoice at the blossoming of the crescent democratic movements from Tunis to Amman, others are asking if the fragile balance of power in the region could be recast. Have decision-makers considered the consequences of if the “Arab Awakening” turns rouge? […]
Posted inGeneral
Doing evil to do good
I have just finished reading Robert McNamara’s In Retrospect, which seeks to provide answers to why the “best and brightest”, who, after skilfully navigating the Cuban Missile Crisis, led the US into the tragic Vietnam War. President Barack Obama’s team, apparently, diligently studied this period of history when they drew up the new administration’s Afghanistan […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Ronald Reagan at 100: The legacy
Ronald Reagan turned 100 this month, and his legacy continues to shape American politics from the social democrat White House to that woman from Alaska — especially in the realm of statecraft. Reagan, like President Barack Obama in 2008, was elected on a “transformational ticket” and, indeed, the former — politics apart — is said […]
Posted inGeneral
‘Brokeback Mountain’ hits Downing Street
A fictional (?) account of the first post-summer meeting between the British prime minister and his deputy at 10 Downing Street ACT ONE (Tuesday 5 September 2010) Nick’s heart is pounding. First proper day back after covering while Number One and Sam Cam were in Cornwall, delivering babies. Four months on, he still cannot quite […]
Posted inLifestyle
The great white heard my heartbeat
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 there? After a sprightly 5am pick-up […]
Posted inNews/Politics
A bad year for African governance?
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 bad year for governance in Africa. The prize is […]