Imtiaz Sooliman – Closing keynote at Trialogue Business in Society Conference 2024
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The speakers discuss the need for South African society to remove ego and work together to improve the people of their area, including the impact of drought and poor farming conditions. They also emphasize the importance of supporting farmers, including using sugar and sugar weight to help bees and producing more sugar to help animals. The challenges faced by healthcare systems, including severe mental health challenges and the need for people to make money, are discussed, along with the need for people to make money and not spend it on health and education. A commitment for four years to become a consultant and teachers with special education needs is also emphasized.
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All they said is, tell us what to do. The people who directed them
were two women who don't ever have a university degree,
and those people followed instructions to show what South
Africans can do together.
The NGO sector, the religious sector, came and said, we can
help. And within a short space of time, 20,000 families were
assisted with food parcels, hygiene packs, sanitary pads,
diapers and all those kind of items. Then people came and said,
What about the cat and the dog? So I said, What about the cat and the
dog?
They said, whilst you're feeding the people, the cats and the dogs
have no food.
Corporate, country company responded, and within few hours,
we have 30 tons of pet food. The cats and the dogs had a party.
They had nurse in that kind of cat food and dog food before
and then some there was another request. What about the animals?
They said, You know why the fire was so big? There was a drought in
Nizam. So the sheep, the dog, the horse, the cow, the pig, all were
hungry, the animals in the wild and elephant in the park. I didn't
understand anything about water. I said, just tell us what we must
get.
And of course, we supplied that to everyone. The point I'm trying to
make is that as South Africans, we need to remove the ego, and we
need to work together in the interest of the people of
Nazareth. One example. The same thing happened in Georgia last
week,
and whilst we were doing that, somebody came to the warehouse and
said I didn't get sugar. So I asked my team members, why didn't
you get sugar? So he said, he's right. The sugar is finished. It's
coming from checkers just now. So he said, it's not for me. So I
said, and who's it for your neighbor? You said, No, it's for
the bees.
I said, this guy is drinking too much.
What is he talking about? I said, Look, I don't understand what this
guy is saying. Just give him some sugar for the bees. I went away
and I said, No, the story is not complete. So I called him. I said,
You better come back tomorrow. I did an explanation. So he comes
back the next morning with two other people, and he says,
you know that this fire is because of the drought. You know, there's
no plants. You know, the bees couldn't eat on anything in this
fire. There were 300 beehives. Each beehive has 75,000 to 80,000
bees. We lost 22 million bees in the fire.
The Cape honeybee is the most versatile and most resilient bee
in the world. It is haploid and diploid. These are not my words. I
know nothing about bees. This is a haploid and diploid, and they can
make their own queen bee. And he said, you can understand what will
happen to the flora and the fauna.
So I said, That still doesn't explain about the sugar. So he
said, in the absence of plants, you have a nectar, pollen
substitute. In the absence, which is very expensive, in the absence
of that, we make a sugar solution to look after the bees. We brought
in 30 tons of sugar to help the bees. Then he took me on site, and
he said, You got to see the bees. Who had to wear that bee outfit?
Was I scared? Because I've been stung many times. He opens a box,
and then he starts screaming. I thought, we're going to be
attacked by a swab of bees. I said, What is wrong with you?
He said, the queen bee. The Queen Bee, the queen bee. He said, you
don't see the queen. Be in a hurry. Can you see it?
They all look the same to me.
I said, Yes, I can see it. I don't know what Delhi was talking
about. Any case, you said, there's a good omen, a good sign. We
supported them with 300 new beehives, nectar, pollen,
substitute. Gave them money to grow new plants, 30 tons of sugar,
and they set up a research facility. Up till today,
university professors, students and everyone goes to the site to
see how bees are rescued and how to save bees all over the country.
This is
nedbang likes green things, isn't it? We project. We did the
invitation. Something else happened. I told you, they asked
for the food for the horse, the pig, the cow and the sheep. Whilst
we were there, we got a call from Sutherland, and they said, the
farmers in Sutherland are desperate. This is a story of
faith, of resilience, of spirituality and positivity. We
asked, What's the problem? And the drought was big at that time, and
the drought is still there. And they said the drought has affected
the sheep cow, the prize merino sheep are in serious trouble.
The Count from 442,000
eventually dropped to 32,000
farms closed.
Any people lost their jobs. So some farmers shot themselves. They
took the kids out of university. They couldn't provide food for
them. They had to put the laborers off. They couldn't take the Bucky
to go and fetch for the because they had no money for fuel. The
credit cards were mixed. The corporate did not give them any
much credit. The banks did not have them anymore. They were
collapsing, and they were crying.
We spend from 2017 up to today, 400 million Rand to save the
farmer, the sheep, the families and the workers, when we started
selling the fodder across they were overjoyed when Day Zero hit
Cape Town in January, 2018
by June, the farmers called back, and they said, we appreciate your
help, but we can't go on any longer. And we said, now, what's
the problem? They said, all the boreholes have dried up. Fodder
without water is of no use. We have to throw the towel in. We
said, Give to the givers. We don't believe in that philosophy. For
us, nothing is insurmountable. I sent in my own drilling team. We
drilled 238
boreholes to provide water, to save the sheep, to save the farms,
to save the jobs, to save lives.
Two years ago, finally, the sheep County, January 2022
the sheep county started climbing one of the farmers that works with
us, Shyan and Sabal fasaki, decided to put up a pallet making
machine. A pallet making machine takes any type of fodder that's
messed up, wet to bread quality to that you add loosen maize and
molasses, and you make a highly energized, nutrified product, like
you have energy foods, and once we started feeding it to the farmers,
the farmership count started rising. Then came the Ukraine war,
and the maize price went up, and the farmers couldn't afford five
Rand extra on a bag. Again, they said we're going to shut down. We
have subsidized every bag up till today. We've gone through it for
seven years, and you know the turnaround time. Welcome when you
do CSI, don't look for short term gain again. Look for something
that's sustainable, that has impact. When this thing turns
around, agriculture and the GDP gets supported by 18 to 9.2%
the job created by farm workers taking care of their families also
takes a huge social burden of the country, and we have to be support
them all the way seven years of patience and resilience, the
turnaround has to come at some point. I couldn't stop in 2017
I couldn't stop in 2018 the job would have been half done, and
everything would have been wasted. And up till today, two to 300,000
Rand at a time we are still funding to make sure that this
thing turns around in 2018 of course, we got involved with
helping Cape Town with boreholes and water intervention for day
zero. Then came the big move into Eastern Cape in 2019
again, a very critical decision. Makanda was in serious trouble.
We got calls from the municipality, from the citizens,
from the university, to say, there's a serious problem with the
dams in Makanda. They said, We need your help for three days.
We're there for five years already.
Had we not intervened,
Makanda is a university town. If people then come to the
university, the University would have closed all those conferences
they have at. Settlers would have closed all the franchise,
franchise shops. Would have closed all the bed and breakfast would
have closed the entire town, and Alice and everything around them
would have closed a total massive loss of jobs. All it required was
the intervention. What boreholes? We put in five balls in
university. We put in a massive ball in a school called and sika.
It's our Super Bowl in the country. Produces 1 million liters
of water a day. We then pipelines into the townships called kailitha
and the other areas. And we put in altogether 15 balls, including at
saps, at the SPCA, at the dog unit in other schools. And it settles
to make sure that the town survives up till today. That was a
huge intervention corporate South Africa. Unfortunately, up till
many years ago, was only interested in ticking the
register, getting a tax certificate and getting some write
up or some coverage by Sheldon and other media. Your projects were
not very effective. They were not there no social impact. They were
there to tick the register. But something changed in 2020
when covid happened, corporates.
South Africa, the mindset changed, not the CSI, not I'm not saying
the CSI was important, but the CEO and the MDS of companies started
calling and they asked, and they said, forget the media coverage.
Don't worry about tax certificate. Just tell us what you need and how
much do you need. We need to save our people, and we need to save
our country. That sentiment has been running for four years now.
We supported 210 hospitals in the country during covid We put in
5000 oxygen machines, 12,000 scrubs, surgery gowns, surgical
gowns for the various theaters. We even put in food for the patients.
We supported the healthcare workers with mental health
support. We put in additional staff. We brought in oxygen
points. We put in special high flow nasal oxygen machines. We
brought in other types of machines. We did infrastructure
upgrades at hospitals. We made dedicated covid wards. We put in
boreholes in Rahima, Musa and Helen Joseph and other hospitals
in the country men in the Eastern Cape, simply to save life. But we
couldn't do that without corporate South Africa. No questions asked.
Just do what you have to do.
Came to civil unrest in july 2021
people understood it was not an insurrection, and neither was it a
riot. I'm not going to that now, but civil unrest came in 2021 the
corporates were quick off the mark. What in 72 hours, everybody
was calmed down. Again. We worked in a very different way. Gifts,
prize itself in buying the items ourselves, loading our trucks,
ourselves, offloading ourselves, taking into the areas ourselves
and distributing it ourselves. But so many hundreds of 1000 people
hunger in KZN, that system was never going to work.
We partnered game reserves, hotels, companies, NGOs, people on
the ground, sports people, they came with their trucks, or we sent
our trucks. We didn't pre pack everything in our warehouse. We
send the items with bug and we pre packed they took people. Everybody
was nobody was working. Everybody was available. But we took trusted
people. Win this business for 32 years. We know we can trust and
who we can't trust. We've been to every corner of this country. We
knew exactly who to work with and who not to work with. Again, South
Africans came together and peace was brought into to the area
immediately.
Seven april 2022
the floods. It KZN, five o'clock in the evening, the water rose in
Tonga, eight meters in 45 minutes, we were expecting everybody to
call us. We want boats, divers, helicopters, rescue people. No
such calls. The only calls we got up till one o'clock in the morning
was from corporate South Africa. What do you need and how much do
you need
when you have that kind of support, when you have that kind
of humanity? We can't fail as a country. We need that
spirituality. We need that compassion and we need that care.
Yes, make money. I'm not saying don't make money. Make much money,
but making the money. Understand, there's a share for those who
don't have you see, we have a teaching what you don't spend is
not yours. So I can give all of you 2 billion rand this afternoon.
My only question to you is, how many lives you going to love to
spend that money? You're not going to be able to spend that money.
There's a point when you say, enough is enough.
The enrichment of the soul comes through giving help to others,
quietly, in a dignified way. You can't understand that unless you
do it itself, yourself. I'm doing this for 34 years, 32 years from
gift of the givers, and two years before that. So I know exactly
what I'm talking about.
Now. We have new challenges in the country, post covid, number one,
severe mental health challenges in healthcare workers. 2 billion
people in the world are affected by that we don't have enough
psychologists in this country. Where should you be putting your
money training psychologists and funding the psychologists once
they at work at schools and universities and in the public?
Because the government doesn't have the budgets. There's a
temporary
budget they constrain right now, which will get sorted out in time.
You see, we can't keep saying the government is corrupt.
Government doesn't corrupt itself. Corporates have a huge role to
play in corruption and overpricing. We need to be very,
very careful about pointing figures. Government is not
corrupt. There are corrupt people in government. It's very
different, like corporate is not corrupt. There are corrupt people
in corporate and in mosques and in churches and in central Congress,
we have them everywhere, and in NGO sector, we have them
everywhere. Don't take it away that everybody is in the best same
picture. We need to understand there are good people who want to
make the system work, and we need to harness that good people and
encourage them and say this.
We have to do so what? Covid itself? Psychology. Psychologists
are dying in short supply of psychologists. Universities don't
take too many.
The second major problem that we have is catch up surgery, waiting
eight to 10 years for a new operation or a cataract surgery.
We got involved in yesterday in Cape Town, we wiped out the entire
backlog of cataract surgery. We did the same for Victoria
Hospital. They all came to Yes, but I wanted it sounds very simple
cataract surgery. Let it. Let me make it to you a bit more
understandable in terms of the emotional impact.
A wife takes out tabandish from the eyes after surgery, she looks
at the husband and says, You gone old. The
husband also had cataracts. He takes off his bandage, he looks at
the wife and he says, You gone old, too.
Eight years. Eight years. The husband and wife could not see
each other.
Love life, romance, happiness, eight years gone. How long does
the cataract operation take? Eight minutes. They waited eight years
for something that takes eight minutes. We should stop
complaining. Only rich people complain. We need to change our
system and be grateful for what we have and put back whatever we can
into help those who cannot help themselves. Catch up surgery is
huge in this country. We have the competent, dedicated healthcare
professionals who want to do it. They need the support. So catch up
surgery is a huge field. Psychologist is a huge field,
another big field, which I'm calling out corporate in South
Africa, we need to fund registrars in the health system. The
government has frozen all registrar posts. That's a total
disaster. Registrars train medical officers and children doctors
below them. They get their training from registrars.
Registrars do the research. Registrars become consultants.
Registrars carried the entire health system. If registrars are
not there, the system is going to collapse. You're going to get
litigation, you're going to get improper care, you're going to
have lack of dignity. We need to fund registrars. How much does it
cost? 900,000 Rand a year. What is 900,000 for a corporate company,
let's be honest. But you need a commitment for four years, because
it takes four years to become a consultant,
the registrar. So those who want to train are even willing to take
a knock, to take 600,000 Rand the salary of an intern, because they
want to serve our country. These are the committed people we need
to hold their hands. We need teachers. The teachers are getting
old, but more than ordinary teachers, we need teachers with
special education needs. My wife went into a school called Tamil
Protective Association school, TPA inquiry matters during her
internship there, she studied over years because there were lots of
bumps on the road, and finally she became a counseling psychologist.
The moment she walked into school, she came back, she said, there's a
huge problem. 171 kids in the school have learning disorders.
You can't cope with normal kids in a class. How can you cope with
kids with learning disorders that come from fragmented, broken
homes? We put in psychologists, teachers with special learning
disorders. We upgraded the toilets, we upgraded the
classrooms. We provided food parcels, and we provide full
support to that school. One example, don't have to do 100 and
all we have to do is replicate the process so education, schools,
teachers, special education needs and toilets, kids cannot go to the
type of schools is indignified to go to toilets like that we see in
our country. We're putting them throughout the country. Also, you
need to spend money on that. Don't think this is not fancy. You know,
it doesn't look macho, it doesn't look great. It doesn't matter how
it looks. What matters? It's what difference it makes to the life of
the people in this country. If you in that school, if your child was
in school, what would you expect? Put yourself in the position of
those people, and don't worry about fancy look at how it looks,
for the image, and what kind of marketing you to get. Forget the
marketing. Do what is right.
And then, of course, the hunger in the country. And I want to finish
off here. There's lots of other projects, but focus on health,
education, the water, which is a big requirement, and I mean
hunger, I'll give you the final example.
Six August last year, coinciding with our 31st anniversary, we get
the sad news that a mother has killed her three children and
killed herself in a tobelo village in Butterworth. What's
the story?
She had no food, no means of income, no support. She borrowed
some money from the neighbor. Neighbor gave the money and said,
afterwards, I need the money back. The mother didn't have the money.
She had rat X. She put rat X in the food, and she killed two
children. She didn't have any.