He is an Advisory Board Member of the Global Public Policy Institute, Berlin and Advisory Board Member of the Global Reporting Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

He ran the course on public policy, including how to put together the National Budget for Members of Parliament of all political parties in South Africa. He ran the programs for Members of Parliament of the British Commonwealth on financial management of Parliaments and how to conduct themselves ethically as MPs, for the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. He taught an economic development program for members of the South African National Cabinet.

He was the Independent Advisor & Chairperson of the KPMG Public Interest Fund, stress-testing the KPMG governance strategy following a series of public corruption scandals, which threatened the collapse of the company in SA, establishing the KPMG Public Interest Fund and was Chairperson of the fund, in which the equivalent of the alleged corrupt money was deposited to be distributed to social enterprises and charities and community groups to tackle inequality, poverty and corruption.

He was a Member of the High-Level Task Team of President Cyril Ramaphosa advising government on the restructuring and professionalization of the South African public service. He co-chaired the South African government’s 2009 Developmental State Conference.

He is Co-Founder and Co-Convener, of the Drakensberg Inclusive Economic Growth Forum, organized under the auspices of former South African President Kgalema Motlanthe Foundation, bringing together Cabinet members, government, business, and civil society leaders to discuss the key development priorities for the country.

He was the Co-Founder & Co- Principal Author of South Africa’s 2010 Development Report. He was the Co-Founder of the Public Sector Audit Forum, established under the auspices of the National Treasury and the Institute of Directors of Southern Africa, to improve the capacity of public sector audit committees.

He modeled South Africa’s Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO), the National Treasury’s Infrastructure Project Preparation Fund (IPPF) and we was a member of the team that established the Green Fund of South Africa.

He was a Principal Advisor for the 2009 Presidential Review Committee on State-Owned Entities (SOEs). He was Principal Author and Team Leader of the 2017 Review of State-owned Land and Properties in South Africa for the South African Cabinet, and conceptualized an agency that could house the property and land holdings of the South African state.

He was a member of the 2014 task team that conducted the institutional review of the capacity of South Africa's state-owned Water Research Commission, the state of South Africa's water resources, the country's future water needs and how to safeguard the country's water resources.

He was author of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report on Models to reform African State-Owned Companies. He was Advisor to the UNESCO World Social Science Report 2016. Challenging Inequalities – Pathways to a Just World, Paris.

He contributed to Argentina’s G20 Presidency report on the changing global political and economic dynamics. He was the Lead Author of the Empowerment Strategy of the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC), Kawasaki-city, Kanagawa (2007).

He chaired the boards or audit committees of a number of public organisations, including Chairperson, Audit Committee, Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA); Deputy Chairperson, Audit Committee, Legal Aid South Africa; Chairperson Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital (Johannesburg General Hospital) and Lead Independent Director (Alternate Chairperson), South African National Blood Service.

He mediated in several country civil and communal conflicts, including the eSwatini (Swaziland) violent country conflict between the king and his allies and opposition parties ahead of the 2013 national elections. He advised several African governments on alternative approaches to hold violent belligerents accountable following civil wars, including the civil war between Christians and Muslims in the Central African Republic. He was the facilitator in the healing and reparation process between the mine, victims, and communities, following the 2012 Marikana Massacre in South Africa.

He was the facilitator, chairing the session on tackling the ANC’s difficult relationship with Civil Society and Business, at the 2017 ANC National Consultative Conference of ANC Veterans and Stalwarts. 

He was seconded to the South African Truth and Reconcilition Commission. He was Area Coordinator and Political Violence Mediator for the National Peace Committee, established to intervene in political conflict between SA’s major political parties which threatened to derail the country’s negotiated settlement to transition from apartheid to democracy between 1991 and 1994.

He was advisor in the project to take South African journalists and civil society activists to Israel and Palestine to meet both sides. He was host of the project to bring leaders from Iran to South Africa, to learn from South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy. He was on the faculty of the New School University’s project to bring leading Israelis and Palestinians together in Jerusalem and Ramallah to co-learn from conflict settlements in South Africa and Eastern Europe.

He was former Senior Associate Member and Oppenheimer Fellow, St Antony’s College, Oxford; Program Director, Africa-Asia Centre, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; and Course-Leader, Central European University, Budapest. He was Senior Research Associate, London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE); Visiting Fellow, Wolfson College, Cambridge University; Course-Leader, New School University, New York; and Visiting Fellow, Duke University, North Carolina.

He writes for The Guardian, Washington Post, New Statesman, and the Sunday Times (Johannesburg). He presented the Letter from Africa Radio Column for the BBC World Service Radio, London; was an Editorial Panel Member, PostGlobal, Newsweek and Washington Post; Deputy Editor, The Sowetan newspaper; and Editor-at-Large, The Namibian newspaper.

He has won a number of South African and international awards for activism, journalism, and writing, including Special Commendation, UNESCO Noma Literary Prize (2006), the British Diageo Award for Excellence in Reporting on Africa (2005), the South African Excellence in Business Journalism Award (2001), the South African Courageous Journalism Award (1996) and the Ollemans Trophy (1995) for Best Young Journalist.

His books range from the number one bestseller, Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC, to the bestselling children’s book, A Kite’s Flight. He also paints, runs marathons and does kickboxing in his free time. He is a life-long blood, bone-marrow and organ donor.

He studied at the Universities of the Witwatersrand, Utrecht, Aarhus, Cardiff, and New York.  

He was born on 11 July 1970 in South Africa. He is one of seven siblings, raised, mostly on the Cape Flats, by a single-mom. He lives in Johannesburg but has also lived in Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.