Professor Gerrit Olivier is a South African academic and diplomat. He joined the apartheid diplomatic corp in 1983 and became the director of the communication and planning division. In 1991, he became the first diplomatic representative of apartheid South Africa to the Soviet Union and in 1992 he was appointed as the first South African Ambassador to the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan. He is currently Extraordinary Professor in the Dept of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria.
Olivier gained his doctorate from the University of Pretoria in the discipline of international politics. He subsequently became senior lecturer in political science at the University of Zululand before being appointed to the chair of International Politics at Pretoria.[1]
In 1983, he left academia to enter the diplomatic service of the apartheid government.[2] During that time he campaigned against the sanctions that had been imposed on apartheid South Africa and was considered close to the apartheid regime.[3] Prior to this he had defended South Africa's apartheid government in his academic work.[4] In 1991 he became apartheid South Africa's first diplomat on mission to the Soviet Union and was first Ambassador to the Russian Federation, also representing South Africa in Kazakhstan.[1] In 1996 Olivier returned to his academic career and was appointed as director of the Centre for European Studies at what was then the Rand Afrikaans University. He was a founding member, and later president, for 8 years, of the South African Political Science Association, and first editor of Politikon – a journal in political science.[5] He remains an active member of the committees of several institutions, including the Pretoria Branch of the South African Institute of International Affairs, the South African Business Chamber, the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa and commissioner on the Afrikaanse Taalmuseum Council. He is Professor Extraordinaire in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pretoria. He remains involved in the study of Russian foreign and security policy and SA/Africa/Russian relations and is the founder and Chairman of the South African/Russian Dialogue Forum (SARDF). He wrote various books, chapters in books and articles on international relations,[1] as well as op-ed articles for South African Newspapers, also commenting on radio and television on current events.
In 2013, Prof Oliver was awarded the Stals Award for political science from the "Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns".