Political communication is not spin. It is not the management of perception for its own sake. It is the disciplined practice of ensuring that what an organisation says about itself, its work, and its position in the world is credible, responsible, contextually aware, and structurally grounded.
I have been doing this work for two decades, not as a communications generalist, but as a political analyst who communicates. The difference matters. Most communications advisors work from the message outward. I work from the political reality inward. I begin with an honest reading of the environment, who holds power, what is at stake, what the risks of getting this wrong are, and build the communications position from there.
My approach to political communication is grounded in the same analytical framework I bring to political intelligence work. Before a message is shaped, the political environment it will land in has to be read. Before a position is taken, the stakeholder landscape has to be mapped. Before a spokesperson is briefed, the risks, reputational, relational, and political, have to be assessed.
This produces communications that are not just well written. They are politically literate, ethically grounded, and built to hold under pressure.
I work across three registers:
- Advisory Advising leaders, executives, and organisations on how to navigate politically sensitive communications moments. What to say, what not to say, when to speak, and how to position a message for maximum credibility and minimum risk.
- Framing and Narrative Development Developing the overarching narrative architecture that holds an organisation's communications together, its positioning, its language, its thematic priorities, and the story it tells about its work in the world.
- Drafting and Editorial Producing and shaping politically sensitive communications materials, including speeches, Op-Eds, briefing notes, policy statements, stakeholder communications, and public-facing documents that require both analytical depth and communicative precision.
- At the Royal Norwegian Embassy I led the political communications function, developing the communications strategy in close collaboration with the Ambassador and Counsellors, placing Op-Eds and profiling articles by the Ambassador, visiting Ministers, and other prominent Norwegian actors across Sunday Times, Sowetan, City Press, SABC, and Newzroom Afrika, and securing interviews with leading foreign affairs journalists. I managed the Embassy's media relationships to strategically amplify its policy positions in a politically sensitive bilateral context.
- As Opinions Editor at Sowetan I exercised political communications judgement on a daily basis, assessing the risk, credibility, and positioning of commentary from political figures, civil society leaders, and public intellectuals before publication in a high-scrutiny national media environment.
- Across a four-country EU-funded democracy promotion programme I developed and managed the political communications framing for a politically sensitive initiative operating simultaneously in Botswana, Zambia, Tanzania, and South Africa, each with its own political context, its own stakeholder landscape, and its own reputational risks.
- Over three hundred published pieces. A weekly political column that ran for three years. A monthly political intelligence column that continues today. A five-part documentary series. These are not just writing credentials. They are evidence of a practitioner who has been communicating in politically contested environments, at scale, under editorial and public scrutiny, for two decades.