Imtiaz Sooliman – Closing keynote at Trialogue Business in Society Conference 2024

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.