[1] Born in Pretoria to an Afrikaner family, Slabbert grew up in Pietersburg (now Polokwane) in northern Transvaal (now the Limpopo Province of South Africa).
[1] During his academic studies, Slabbert developed an active interest in politics, which led him to reject apartheid and to stand for a seat on Stellenbosch University's Students' Representative Council.
[2] In 1986, Slabbert resigned from his position as leader of the opposition because he felt that Parliament was becoming an irrelevant institution in the context of South Africa's political problems.
[5][6] Critics from the left charged that it "pushed an essentially neoliberal agenda" focussing on limited forms of representative democracy in which economic questions were not subject to democratic control.
The task team completed its work by early 2003, and presented a report to Cabinet, including draft legislation, recommending a closed-list, mixed member proportional electoral system.
Slabbert also worked as regional facilitator for the George Soros-backed funding organisation, the Open Society Initiative of Southern Africa, which identifies and invests in worthy projects in nine African countries.
Slabbert was appointed as chairman of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed Adcorp Holdings in 1998 and also sat on the boards of several other JSE-listed companies such as Wooltru, Investec, Caxton and Radiospoor.
Slabbert was appointed as the 13th chancellor of Stellenbosch University on 1 August 2008, but he suffered a heart attack at the end of the same year, an event that led to him having a pacemaker inserted.