Student Organization

Deputy Chair of the Executive Committee on Campus (elected unopposed and in first year)

Democratic Alliance Students Organization (DASO) at the University of the Witwatersrand

June 2009 – March 2010 (10 months) Empire and Yale Road, Johannesburg

When I accepted the position, I was informed that I was the first ever First Year student ever to be elected to the position. As my grandfather was a politician for the Progressive Party, in Welkom, who campaigned on the platform that Apartheid was damaging the economy, I thought it interesting to join the student body of the Democratic Alliance, into which this party was later amalgamated. I spent half a year on the executive of DASO, a time in which I thoroughly utilised my political techniques, knowledge, and expertise to help insure we were optimally productive, and to prevent very present special interests of outside forces from crushing our mandate. I subsequently chose to resign at a bi-election after the already tenuous working of the executive collapsed due to differences between the then president and chairperson, whereby I was promoted from third to second in charge, and it appeared the committee had become defunct given we did not have the numbers in the executive to proceed normally. My resignation was almost immediately after registration for 2010, where I determined not to sign up for DASO but to become politically unaffiliated, given the DA's union with the Independent Democrats and my uncertainty as to the future direction of the party. I remain politically unaffiliated but involved in my community, which I think is possibly for me, a beneficial position, given the fast moving, often changing political climate in South African politics. When I do vote I vote on the merits of a candidate in a particular political contest and not due to any loyalty to one or other party. I pride myself in my respect for the views of people who either support the various parties as well as those who support none, or who vote based on a particular candidate or other, and I believe our diversity as a nation, and our ability to vote for the party of our choice are vital institutions of a democracy, despite my unaffiliated, but politically involved status.