Cyril is Executive Chairman of Shanduka Group; a black owned and managed Investment Company with investments in Resources, Energy, Financial Services and Property. He is non-executive chairman of Johnnic Holdings, MTN Group Limited and the Bidvest Group. His directorships include South African Breweries plc, Macsteel Holdings, Alexander Forbes and Standard Bank Group. He is the past Chairman of the Black Economic Empowerment Commission.

In 1982 Cyril was elected as the first General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers. In 1991 he was elected Secretary General of the African National Congress. He became head of the negotiation team of the ANC in negotiating with the apartheid government. In 1994 he became a Member of Parliament and Chairperson of the Constitutional Assembly, which negotiated  South Africa 's first democratic dispensation. He resigned from these positions in 1997 to move into the private sector. He remains a National Executive Member of the African National Congress.

Cyril received the Olof Palme prize in 1987 in Stockholm . In October 1991 he was a visiting Professor of Law at Stanford University in the United States of America . He has received several honorary doctorates.

Cyril was the first Deputy Chairman of the Commonwealth Business Council and is Vice Chairman of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS. He sits on the Coca-Cola Company International Advisory Board and the Unilever Africa Advisory Council. He was appointed, along with President Maarti Ahtisaari, as a weapons inspector in Northern Ireland . He also sits on the International Commission of Intervention and State Sovereignty, on the UN Secretary-General's Advisory Panel on International Support for NEPAD and is an Honorary Consul General for Iceland in South Africa . He is a member of the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum.