Steven Gruzd's passing leaves a gap in the fraternity of skilled, thoughtful South African political scientists. This author now has unfinished work he had looked forward to pursuing with the deceased.

As many readers already know, political scientist, commentator and friend Steven Gruzd met a sad, horrific end to his life recently. Given the warmth of his spirit as well as the quality of his analytical and writing skills, there have already been many published and broadcast encomiums of him, following his passing.

Like everyone else, I found him to be a thoughtful, nuanced thinker with a knack for delivering telling details as well as setting out the broad framework for his arguments and analyses.

I first met him back in 2004 when I had a research fellowship at the South African Institute of International Affairs, following my retirement as an American diplomat, and as I stayed on in SA. My office at the institute's Jan Smuts House on the Wits campus (really a snug, windowless cubicle) was upstairs from the more capacious office suite where he and his colleagues were building the institute's capabilities to measure, analyse and promote the African Peer Review Network.

Given what has happened too often on this continent, I sometimes said to myself that his peer review project could resemble Sisyphus' legendary task with that big rock that simply would not stay uphill once Sisyphus...