Imtiaz Sooliman – Business Caf 22 June 2023 PART 2

Four people from you,

the same thing in government, and then everybody talks about the

President is indecisive. He's too slow. He can't make a decision. He

can't do this. He can't do it. Correct? Is that correct?

But we don't look at the other part. We must give credit where

it's due.

Who put Edward kiswata into SARS Cyril lapoza,

that at the time, after 2019 floods, covid, civil unrest as

comprom and the floods, in case, in Edward kisswater, with 12 and a

half 1000 dedicated SaaS employees, took in 2 trillion Rand

in Texas. The first time in our history, it has never been done

before. What time six up a system that has been broken. When they

try to mess it up, they claim, and they started fixing it

up. The head of the SIU and advocate Andy motibi is a

dedicated, committed man. If he had more resources, he will catch

many more people, and he's been doing a great job. Same with the

Hawks, same with people in the Police Services.

I was in Free State in Bloemfontein, the police always

invite me. And it was the awards day. An African lady comes to the

front. There were like nine categories of awards, and she gets

this one award. In this one category. The award was Award. The

award was for catching corrupt cops. She was in a police function

getting an award from the police. What all the police inside there?

And the award was about catching corrupt, poor cops and getting

them locked up. She got the biggest applause from the police,

you see, because they all don't want to be labeled, because those

people take bullets to somebody else and they die, and we forget

their memory, we forget the service that they are given. The

bad ones are always around. We need to separate the bad ones from

the good ones. So a lot of good is being done. We just don't see it.

And the last two months, I've interacted on a lot of government,

politicians and civil servants, and they are trying really hard to

fix the system with everything against them. We need to do this

together. Hold hands with government. Come together as

private sector and the public. There's a big shortage of skills

in the government. They don't have the experience. A lot of them have

the heart. Let's take a fire and read the lady mayor that time when

I walked in, the mayor came to me and said, We don't know what to

do. She was honest. She was honest. She said, we didn't know

what to do. You admire that type of honesty. To say, look, okay, we

understand you don't have the skills. We will support you.

Nobody's going to say no. If person comes in honesty and say,

Look, we can't do it. Everybody can't do everything. And Mario and

his team, with a four by fours, took so many people out from the

houses and went along the sea to save people's lives.

The greatest heroes in the 2022 floods, in case again, were the

people themselves.

They didn't say, let's wait for disaster management. Wait for

this. Wait for that. No, they didn't do that. The moment the

water started rising and people in difficulty, the people told the

people at the bottom part of the river, Come up. Come to my house.

Come stay with me. And as they were coming up, they said, old

lady floating inside the house, they opened the door. They catch

an epolar out in Tonga at half past five in the afternoon on the

11th of April, 2022

the water rose eight meters in 45 minutes. And the man is standing

at the second floor of his house, and he says, Oops, the water is

coming. And shouts and all the ordinary people, these are not

divers, these are not experts in swimming. These are not qualified

disaster management people, ordinary South Africans came. They

didn't look at your face, your color, your religion, your race,

your status as South Africa needs help. As South Africa needs to

respond to another South African. We have that quality, we have that

capability. We can do that. That's why no problems insurmountable in

this country. We can fix anything. Because, like the people of 27

April, all of us have got it of working together. And

let's go that little further on that. Let me build on that. You

see something different happen in corporate South Africa when the

covid hit,

normally, the CSI guy calls you the first thing they asked you,

how many B points you're going to get? Will you get a tax

certificate? Will you get some right type in the media and then

give you some stupid project after that?

Corporate, CS, this, MDS, and the CEO of companies called during

covid

and said, forget all those things. Just tell us how we can save lives

and help our country when compassion comes into materialism,

you know, as a nation, we can't fail in 2021

when the civil unrest happened, who responded first? The guy whose

wealth was burnt, whose pellets were stolen, whose truck was

destroyed, whose highest there was taken, was all zippers lost.

Become a GP. I don't want to do it then, and I don't want to do it

now. I never vote, but I had to do it. It was no other alternative.

So I did it something I didn't want to do. I said, maybe later

I'll go back to study if an opportunity arises. So I moved to

marysburg in january 1986 to start a practice there. The same week

that I got there, an Afrikaner guy from Pretoria. Came from America

to South Africa, and he also came there. My neighbor came and talked

to me, and he said, I got this Afrikaner guy. He bought meat from

me. My name is abucha, but he got a medical problem. He needs a

doctor. So Mullah and I meet and Muller. I treat him quite a few

times. Then one day he says, Look, I think I know you long enough now

I'm going to tell you a

story. And he says, Mother says I was walking through the streets of

New York, because, as you know, I was in America, he tells me, and

that one day my soul fell empty. I had no spirit. I was depressed. I

was dejected. I didn't know the value of the meaning of life

anymore. I was just totally lost.

From the corner of my eye, I saw a man looking at me.

I looked towards the man I don't know this man. My heart tells me

to follow that man.

We have a teaching that when you uncertain about something, always,

if listen to your heart, not your head, your heart.

And he listened to his heart and he walked, and he followed this

man,

he said, The man walked into St John the Divine, a huge Church in

New York. I've been there on my way to 80 for a specific reason.

He said, When the man went in and I got close to him, I realized the

man was a Muslim,

a Turk,

a master of spirituality, a master of Sufism

in the church, the man made a zikr.

A zikr, in Islamic terminology is the recitation of God's names in

Arabic. So in all scriptures, you would say the one and only kind,

compassionate, merciful, Evolver, cherisher, nourisher, sustainer,

absolute, eternal. And so he goes.

And he said, as he made it, in the church, there were Jewish rabbi,

Christian priests, Hindu pundits, and other people of different

religions and people of no religion, and everybody joined in

the

zikr. That's absolutely amazing. You see, they tell us religion

causes conflict. Religion doesn't cause conflict. It's people who

move away from religion that caused conflict.

If the lawyer steals from the road accident fund, do you say the

legal profession is rotten?

You don't say that. Do you when doctors do malpractice? Do we shut

down the medical profession? We don't do that. Do we

we have to fix the individual? That's why I said look in the

mirror. There's nothing wrong with the system. So because the country

is controlled by people, we give titles, government, public,

private, civil, corporate. Yes, we give all those titles, but those

titles, or the entities, are made up of people. If the people is

messed up, the system will be messed up. So we need to focus on

fixing the people, to fix the country. So he tells me, after a

while, you need to go to Turkey. So I said, Mola, are you having

too much of this? He

said, what you mean? I said, in 1986 I haven't even seen Cape

Town. When am I going to see Turkey?

He said something very profound. He said, What God wills happens?

Mario, can tell you about the fire, about what God wills

happened. Listen to your story. One day you said, there's a time

and a place, and the time and place was August 91

my wife and I landed up in Turkey. It's a long story. Landed up in

Turkey What mother saw in New York. I saw in Istanbul, what is

so in a church? I saw in the Muslim holy place, the place of

Sufis, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Americans, Muslims, Russians,

people from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Australia, New

Zealand, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, parts of

Austria, parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, all day in a

Muslim the holy place. But the situation was different. This was

post Gulf War.

During the Gulf War, around that time, Samuel Huntington spoke of a

clash of civilizations. The perception was east on one side,

west on the other side, and coming from an apartheid past really

didn't help. And when I walked inside there, when I saw this, I

was totally confused. The

spiritual teacher looks at my face and understood the power of

spirituality. They don't waste time. They address.

Is what's affecting you. He didn't ask me, where did you come from?

How was the flight? Where you staying? Did you eat something?

Normally, I also do that to a guest. What you're doing? Are you

okay? Do you need something? No, none of the above. His first

question to me was, what do you see? He read my soul. He knew I

was in turmoil in my head because I couldn't understand what was

going on here?

I said, I'm confused. Why all these people of different

religions, different countries, in a Muslim only place, and we just

fought with them, and we fought with them all over the world. What

are they doing here?

You said, My son, you see, right? Mankind is one single nation. You

said, Any Imam, Priest, Pandit, Sheik, Rabbi that preaches

violence, extremism, terrorism, Discord, conflict or disorder, is

not a man of God. Don't follow him. Any person that preaches

love, kindness, compassion and mercy. Is a man of God. Follow

him, the essence of humanity, the essence of people is love and

compassion. Show love and compassion to each other across

rich and poor, black and white, Indian color, and you will see

what a difference it will make to rebuild this country and to

rebuild the world. You.