I would like to offer my rule for good sex for life. But, first I would like to ask the hard question: why does sex play such a dominant role in South Africa — more than anywhere else I believe — and, more specifically, in our HIV/Aids discourse? (If you are not interested in this, […]
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 inGeneral
Buenos Aires! Tony Leon and the new(ish) Evita
Next Wednesday, Tony Leon’s friends will be bid him and Michal a fond adios as they depart for wonderful Argentina. I am seething with envy. So is Richard Calland. His M&G column “Tony, I want your job in Buenos Aries” two weeks ago was so full of animus, it demands a response — albeit a […]
Posted inNews/Politics
McCauley: Zuma’s camerlengo is a threat to liberal democracy
Ray McCauley and the Rhema Church exercise an inappropriate influence over President Jacob Zuma and seek to change South Africa’s liberal democratic Constitution. Though the relationship between Zuma and McCauley is not institutionally formalised, the Rhema founded National Interfaith Leadership Council, as Mandy Rossouw’s rigorous investigative reporting last week reveals, plans to challenge the Constitution: […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The curious case of the apartheid lawsuits
President Jacob Zuma is, as the cliche goes, the consummate politician. One of his most likeable qualities is that he is an instinctive politician. He feels it in the gut: his political antennae uncannily aligned to the electorate’s bandwidth. Clearly a “people’s person”, Zuma is an eminently likeable, charming, dapper dude. Refreshingly too, unlike most […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Accountability is on the march
Robert Gabriel Mugabe’s inane giggle (testified to by those who have seen him up close and nervous) came straight to mind when I read the Presbyterian-sounding judgement of Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Secretary. The ruling paved the way for the stomach-churning scenes of Lockerbie bomber Mr al-Megrahi returning to a hero’s welcome in Tripoli. […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Exit Buthelezi? Real change must emanate on the ground
The images of demonstrators brandishing placards along Durban Club Place, the street that runs outside the IFP head office in Durban, evoke the atmosphere of the pre-1994 city and country where so much that mattered to the people on the ground had to be proclaimed on the periphery of the formal decision-making processes. Why do […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Healthcare: Obama’s plan is relevant to SA
A recent lightening visiting to the US, albeit to Democrat-controlled New York and the fabled Kennedy’s playground of Cape Cod, gave me a sense of how President Barack Obama is rapidly redefining not just the rhetoric, but the terms of engagement in the American national discourse, too. Observing the first six months of Obama’s administration […]
Posted inGeneral
A more Liberal Britain
Two major political anniversaries were commemorated recently: the thirtieth anniversary of the election of Baroness Margaret Thatcher as Britain’s first woman prime minister and the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York. Both watershed events have been the subject of widespread review and commentary. The Stonewall riots were the first time in America […]