He was appointed Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism in the Thabo Mbeki administration after merging his party with the ruling African National Congress (ANC), despite the poor performance of the former in the 2004 General Election.

He was a national serviceman in the South African Defence Force (SADF) from 1978 to 1979 and later attended the Rand Afrikaans University, where he earned a Masters of Arts in political science and a B Proc.

As a prominent student leader of whites in the 1980s, he was a founding member and chairman of Jeugkrag (Afrikaans for Youth Power), an organisation purportedly opposed to the Afrikaner establishment, but which was secretly funded by military intelligence.

[5] His political career began during the late apartheid years at the Rand Afrikaans University as chairman of the Student Representative Council (SRC), the Afrikaanse Studentebond (ASB), and later of the Ruiterwag, the youth wing of the Broederbond.

[7] In March 2010, he was nominated by South African President Jacob Zuma to succeed Yvo de Boer as the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.