Imtiaz Sooliman – Coffeeberry TST featuring
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss various topics including the success of their nationalist movement, the recent COVID-19 pandemic, and protecting people from the virus. They also talk about various projects, including coffee drive through concepts, the mental state of children in school, and the importance of trust in healthcare. The conversation shifts to the "slackner model" in the COVID-19 pandemic and how it has changed the behavior of healthcare workers. The importance of trust and helping everyone, particularly those with financial difficulties, is emphasized. The conversation ends with a news announcement about a social event and a future event.
AI: Summary ©
I
See you.
Ready
to go. We took
it right. Good evening again, ladies and gentlemen. And good
evening to our viewers all over the world. Welcome to Coffee berry
cafe. We're a small restaurant in Pietermaritzburg in the province
of corozulla, natal South Africa, and we are really honored to
probably be having one of the most momentous evenings in the history,
the 16 year history of coffee Berry. So
to put it in his own words, when this incredible gentleman gets
asked what drives him, what his vision is, this is what for
probably the last 30 years in his journey, what his vision is. And
it goes something like this. You feel the calling, you feel the
need, you see the suffering of man, and you want to do something.
There's a lot of prayer involved. You've been shown.
At war with the Muslim world, people in the same place, but not
an iota of friction,
no conflict, no discord. Everybody's speaking to each other
in a very harmonious, respectful manner. And we trying to think,
how is this possible? How is this possible with so much friction in
the world.
The spiritual teacher, which I saw for the first time made eye
contact immediately, and when that eye contact happened, it touched
my soul. This is a very spiritual journey. What I'm telling you
about. It's not very normal. So eye contact immediately, and then
he told me he worked it out same time, but I'll be saying a word.
And he speaks Turkish only.
And he said to a translator initially, at that point,
what do you see?
I said, I'm confused. I see people from all nations, all religions,
we all fight with each other all over the world. How come we all
together the same place? And he says, My son, mankind is one
single nation. The God of all mankind is one. We just call him
by different names, any in person, Imam, Sheik, Rabbi, Priest,
Pandit, if any one of them preaches violence, Discord,
terrorism, undertaking of innocent lives. He's 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. We
were there for a week. We saw a lot of things, and the heart was
already attached. In 92
the calling came. I needed to go back. And sixth, August, 1992 it
happened
10pm on a Thursday night. They have in a Sufi place what is
called Zikr. Zikr, basically, is a recitation of God Almighty's
names. In the other scriptures, you would say God the Almighty,
the one and only kind, compassionate, merciful,
cherisher, nourisher, sustainer. And it so goes, goes on. And after
that program at 10pm the spiritual teacher is standing in that
sitting in that sitting in that corner of the room, and I'm
sitting in this corner of the room, he makes eye contact again.
He makes eye contact and he looks heavenwards at the same time.
And then he tells me, in FLUENT Turkish, and I don't speak a word
of Turkish, but I understood every single word that he said. He
said, My son,
I am not asking you,
I am instructing you to form an organization. The name in Arabic
will be walkful wakifin, translated it means gift of the
givers. You will serve all people of all races, all religions, all
colors, all classes, all cultures, of any geographical location and
of any political affiliation, but you will serve them
unconditionally. You will expect nothing in return, not even a
thank you. In fact, in what you're going to be doing for the rest of
your life, expect to get a kick up your back. If you don't get a kick
up your back, regard it as a bonus.
Serve people with love, kindness, compassion and mercy, and remember
the dignity of man is foremost. So if somebody is down in the ground,
don't push them down further, hold them, elevate them. Wipe the tear
of a grieving child,
cares the head of an orphan, say words of good counsel to a widow.
These things are free. They don't cost anything,
clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and provide water to the thirsty,
and in everything that you do, be the best at what you do,
not because of ego, but because we're dealing with human life,
human emotion and human dignity.
He went on to say, hyrunas May and found us an Arabic word statement,
meaning, which is our motto. Best among people are those who benefit
mankind. He repeated it three times. He said, My emphasis is on
the word mankind, not Muslim, not Indian, not Arab, all of mankind,
unconditionally. This is an instruction for you for the rest
of your life. And then he said, Remember, my son. The most
important thing to remember is.
Us that whatever you do
is done through you and not by you.
I didn't get up one morning
and say, Let's form an organization. We'll get some
members, we'll write some constitution, and we'll write what
we're going to do. No India. Suriman has informed gift of the
givers.
The gift of the givers came as a spiritual instruction from a
spiritual master in Istanbul, as an instruction for the rest of my
life. I told you, I don't speak a word of Turkish, and I understood
every single word he said.
And asked him, How is this possible?
And he said to me, my son, when the hearts connect and the souls
connect, the words become understandable.
I told him, now you've told me all these things. What do they mean?
What are you referring to? What aspect of serving people are you
referring to? What am I supposed to do? I'm a doctor in private
practice in a place called Peter marisburg in South Africa, and I
have three surgeries. What I'm supposed to do. And when
he told me one line,
you will know, that's all you will know for 29 years, I do know what
to do, when to do, how to do, what not to do, what to touch and what
not to touch.
And the moment I walked out of there, the inspiration came
respond to the civil war in Bosnia, which I did. August, 1992
31 containers of aid. November, 1992 another six containers of
aid. We took it across into Bosnia, and then it was very clear
that, in essence, gift of the givers was going to be a disaster
response agency. That is going to be our mandate, and this is what
we're going to follow, and everything else was, by the way,
that was built around disasters. We have 21 different categories of
projects, not project types, categories, education, this water
that health, that agriculture, that all different things under 21
categories of projects, 20 of them, one being the first one
being the disaster, and 20 other projects around that. So we build
21 types of projects over a period of time. And almost everything
that I know in disasters, 85 to 90%
I learnt in that first project, war zones, conflict between
religions and cultures, delivering aid, Reserve Bank clearance,
transfer of funds, customs, shipping, logistics, conflict
management, dealing with groups, emotions, temperament, anxiety,
getting bombed, everything I learned virtually in that first
mission, who, in his right mind, forms an organization. And the
first project goes to a war zone. You
start off with something simple, a food parcel, a blanket
distribution, a soup kitchen, helping the elderly, helping the
orphanage. No, the first one I'm thrown into is into a war zone all
alone.
And everything I to learn, 85 to 90% happened there
and as and that gift of the giver started off what only delivering
aid. There were no volunteers, no medical teams, no other teams. It
just started off with delivering aid, and it evolved over the
years. Now, something very strange happened, not even a few months
later, after I came back from the place, and after I came back from
Bosnia, the idea came to take in a containerized mobile hospital into
the war zone. And because I met a teacher, and because prejudice was
gone and there was no prejudice against white, against Christian,
against Africana. Everything was gone because the teacher, teacher
taught us that you look at the good of every human being, and
don't put them in a box. You look at the goodness of every human
being, and you relate to human beings according to the goodness.
And even when you see bad people, you look for the good and the bad
people, and you promote that and that overall will bring goodness.
So I go to Pretoria and this company, you guys should,
everybody should know it. You saw that. See the trailers on the
road. Effort fund the veteran engineering. I met Johan at her
from the veteran and I said, You guys have built a container, a
theater, a sterilization unit and an extra unit for arms core. We
need to build a whole hospital. He said, whole hospital. I said, it's
the same thing. Do three things to do some extra units. What
difference is there? So we got together the medical companies,
and we designed the world's first containerized mobile hospital. We.
Now what's significant about that
is that it was built in Africa.
Another part of this message is Africans don't believe in Africa.
We don't believe in ourselves. We don't believe in our capability.
We don't believe in everything that we can do. We always have to
take lessons from northern countries. We always said it comes
from there only. But this Hospital was built in Pretoria in South
Africa and taken to Europe. It was taken to Bosnia. And the CNN
commentator, when he saw the hospital on the first of February,
1994
in a place called mosta. He said the South African containerized
mobile hospital is equal to any of the best hospitals in Europe. And
he wasn't comparing it to other mobile hospitals. He was comparing
it to buildings, fixed building hospitals. We brought in the best
technology, the best equipment. And we took the thing across, and
we sent in 10 containers of backup supplies, a generator. So what? So
that the whole hospital could function in an underground walls
warehouse for a whole year to save lives in 2005
my wife, my family, we were invited by the Bosnian government
to come to Bosnia. They said, We haven't paid any courtesy for what
you guys have done for the country. I said, it's not
necessary. He said, but you gotta come. So we went, and we went to
mosta, and the guy I put in charge of the hospital in 2000 in 1993
was the same guy that was there in 2005
and he comes to me. He said, Remember, you said that this
theater can do any procedure besides heart surgery. I said,
Yes, that's what I told you. He brings the lady. He said, meet
this lady. He said, This lady had shrapnel in her heart, and we took
out a SHPE in the heart in the same theater that you South
Africans provided. And then he said, you see these four children.
They were born of this lady after the Shepherd was removed in this
theater and in the same hospital. All these four children were born
after the Shepherd was removed. That's why the Bosnian government
has called you, because we identify South Africans. What the
saving of life and healing. Now we post another question.
If we can do this overseas,
why can't we do this here?
Why can't we walk with each other as teams, as races, as religions,
as colors, as classes in this country? Because there's a lot
going on, and there's a lot of goodness that has come out with
covid 19 and the case that then recent civil unrest, a lot of good
has come. It's about changing our perceptions, our mentality, and
being altruistic about anything. We have proven it, and I tell you,
as we go along, the other things that happen
in 2004 a few months earlier,
it was for the first time that we took a medical team. Now, the
tsunami struck 13 countries, and all of you remember Indonesia,
Thailand, Andaman Islands in India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and all
of other countries on that side. But what people don't know is that
a tsunami also struck a country, a corner of Somalia, North East
Somalia, a place called hafun. It's a fishing village, and he
wiped out the whole area. The people survived. Few people died.
And we decided to respond to that area, and we went to hafun. Very
difficult. I'm not going to the details. It's going to take too
long. We went to tahafun, and it's the first time in our development
that we took a primary health care team.
A few months later, in August, 2005
we responded to a to Niger this story, I'm going to explain a
little longer.
Again, a primary health care team. We got to the area. Announcement
was made, there's a medical team from South Africa. They got
suppliers, and they've come the first shop we got. This is famine.
There's no food, there's no medical care, there's no support
system, there's no functioning health system. And we make the
announcement, and the Governor and the Mayor and the nurses make the
announcement, a South African team is here.
1000s of people come up. But this is very, very strange. In those
people that come up are only mothers and babies five years and
below,
no bigger babies, no teenagers, no adult males, and the mothers
themselves don't ask for treatment. Now we can't understand
this. Why are they doing this? And then we realize this is not going
to work. We only got seven guys. How are we going to do all this in
short space of time? So I walked into the crowds, looked at the
babies, and I said, Hmm, okay, I did this. I told the mother, you
can go. Your baby is fine. She gave me a big smile, because she
understood.
Took the sign language and she walked out. I said, How is this
possible? Let me try a second time. Same thing,
big smile, and walks out five times, six times, 10 times, and
they all walk out. We try to figure out, how come they can do
that. They got no medical care, and they just walk out and they
give a big smile. On top of
that, that evening, we got together. When I fly, I have media
with me. I have people from the president's office and people from
delko table with us. So we sat down, you guys know, to the Caesar
simulane. He's on the NCA now. He was at SABC radio that time. He
goes first. He says, I like to speak. So he says, I went to the
villages, and when I went inside there, they told me three to five
children were dying every day.
I said to the seas, where I understand what happened today?
I said, no adult male came, no teenagers came, no big kids came,
and the mothers didn't ask for any help, because they wanted us to
save this children that are here, that are critically ill. So they
were prepared to forego the treatment for their own children
that may be okay for the next five to seven days. There's no
guarantee another medical team is coming. There's no guarantee if
more food is coming. There's no guarantee other medication is
coming. But they were prepared to sacrifice their own children that
you may save some other child's life who may be critically ill in
that crowd, and that's why they walked out.
And I said, people only remember Africa for bad things. This is the
spirituality, the Ubuntu, the dedication and the sacrifice of
Africa that nobody understands and we saved every single child that
came to us Ill simply because the people of Niger helped us by
walking out of the queue and not coming for that treatment.
That mission happened just after we went to Bosnia in 2005
and soon after that eighth October, 2005
a massive earthquake hit Pakistan. Now, an earthquake hits one city.
First earthquake wiped out an entire region from Rawalpindi
right up to the Kashmir border in Muzaffarabad. Move born, whole
region gone.
We learn in Rawalpindi medical a mixed team. This was an
advancement in hafun. We had a primary healthcare team in
Nigeria. We had a primary healthcare team in Pakistan. It
was different. We had a primary healthcare team, a trauma team,
surgeons, General, surgeons, orthopedic surgeons, anesthetist
theater, nurses, ICU nurses, other intensive whole range. And plus,
we had post op, rehab patients, rehab specialist, sorry,
we get there. The Pakistani government know we're coming. The
first secretary from the South African Embassy told them that we
get to the tarmac. And they come to us very politely, and they say,
do you mind not going to the earthquake?
So I said, Yes, we won't go. Which hospital you giving me? He says,
you understand? I said, I understand clearly, I said. He
says, I'll give you the cantonment hospital of Rawalpindi. I said,
Thank you. We'll go there just now,
the teams asked me, What do you mean? You come to that quick, and
we can't go to that quick.
I said, You don't understand what this man is saying. This man is
telling you that everything is gone. There's nothing there,
buildings, hospitals, clinics, government. Everything is gone,
and only people are walking around in the mountains. So I asked him,
Can I you have, can you give me helicopters to go there and take
people across my teams to stabilize those that are alive? He
said, My Friend, all the helicopters are gone on emergency
missions. We got a serious problem here. I said, don't worry. That
advantage of civil society work is you don't follow protocol, you
don't follow bureaucracy, you don't follow red tape, you don't
follow government instructions. You just look around, and then you
see the American Air Force. And you walk to the American Air
Force, and I see a big black guy. I said, my brother, where you
from?
He says, I'm from America. I said, No, you're from Africa. You only
landed up in America.
He says, Yes, I'm from Africa. I said, Me too. I'm from Africa. He
said, How can I help you? I said, You know what? We brought the
South African team here. We need to go to the mountain. I need a
helicopter for you, my brother, anything. Take three helicopters,
two minutes, two minutes, two Black Hawks and another
helicopter. So the team's going to mountain, to the top and
stabilize. I take the general. We go to the hospital. He says, You
go there. My junior will take you there. We walk into the hospital.
We get this man the smell of death, the stench of gangrene.
Kids on the stretch were no parents because they died. They
all orphans, no IV lines, no doctors, no.
Disinfectant, nothing. We call him back said, What is this? Is this
an organized killing field? Would you put your mother here? So he
said, what you mean? The superintendent comes and says,
Don't you know we're shutting this hospital down. I said, You guys
are crazy. There's nothing wrong with this hospital. So he says,
What can we do? I said, I give a shopping list. If you follow this,
we will show you what South Africans can do. In the meantime,
agencies from northern countries walk past where you guys from now.
Remember, South Africa is very complicated. You got a guy with a
beard like hashimala. Then you got the Indian, Hindu guy. He got his
just ban. And then you got Africa, and a guy with a big voice, an
English guy with a British voice. And then you got a call Zaina
Zulu, and he tried to figure out, Where the * are these guys
from? And when they tell us South Africa, they get more dear Makar
to supposed to be a black continent, black people in Africa,
they can't understand that.
So we see we from South Africa. They call us the rainbow nation.
Oh, you from Africa. What did you come to fetch? You guys always
want things for free. You always come with a begging bowl. You
always asking for things. I'll tell you, my friend, you will eat
your words in less than 24 hours, the
military guy comes back, and in less than 24 hours, the shopping
list is fulfilled, and a hospital that was shutting down a South
African medical team converted that into a 400 bed emergency
hospital. We did 70 operations a day, and we saved hundreds of
lives for that, the Pakistan President Parviz Musharraf, in
2006 a year later, gave us the Presidential Award, the only
organization in Africa to receive that, because of what our teams
done. But there's another part to the story. I
we speak about, I'm a very friend guy, so you want to get offended.
We speak about difference in color, in race, in religion. That
same year, we sent our fifth team. We've never sent so many teams
before, but we sent our 15,
and a lady from Pretoria University comes forward and puts
up. Her name is, her name is Karina extien, Africana, Christian
lady, deeply religious, and she says, I want to go to Pakistan. I
said, when she says, Christmas, I said, you're not feeling well. Who
wants to go to Christmas? Which Christian wants to go to Pakistan?
Muslim country in Christmas, she says at the time, I'm free.
So she goes to Pakistan. She's a spinal rehab specialist. She was
there for three weeks. The day she was leaving,
the patients cried,
the nurses cried, the patient's family cried, the doctors cried
and the military cried. They said, Where did you find this lady from?
Many of them here would never have walked, but because of this lady,
they walked. A Christian lady came to a Muslim country. Humanity
transversed everything. There was no race, no religion, no color. It
was about humanity to humanity, and it's building relationships.
2010 we're fast forwarding a little bit now. 2010
we just walked in from Syria.
We got home. I get into the house. Seven or two calls. I'm just
walking to the house. Six in the morning. He said, Have you heard
there's an earthquake in Haiti? I said, my friend, I just got off
the plane. I walked into the house. He said, put the TV on. So
I put the TV on. I said, oops, there's a big problem here. And I
looked at the screen, I said, and what I'm seeing, there's already
25,000 people there. Just in this picture,
it worked out
just a few days later
that in that 42nd earthquake, 250,000
people died. You asked
me, 20 minutes later, are you sending anybody?
We said, yes, we've got a new dimension. After Pakistan, whilst
we were planning, we now have our own search and rescue team,
primary health care, trauma care, trauma team, post op, rehab and
now search and rescue. So within two hours, the search and rescue
team is ready. We tell derko to speak to the French Embassy, the
French Consulate in Joburg says, No problem, we go inside there and
we get a Schengen visa in 10 minutes. But you know what's
important? We got it for free. You know, we Indians, we like free
things,
so we got it for free. And then we said, Okay, we'll give Air France
the business, and Air France.
Says, Thank you very much. I said, Will you get my teams to border
Prince, capital of 80? They said, Yes. I said, you won't. They said,
We will. I said, you won't. I said, the airport will close. They
said the airport is open. I said it will close. They said it's
open. So I said, Give it to me in writing. Which airline gives it
you in writing? They give it to me in writing, email, we'll get you
to border Prince. I said, Fine. Thank you very much. Here's the
tickets we booked plain the guys go on the seat. But I knew that's
not going to happen. So I'm sitting in my office in
mattersburg. I phoned the Catholic society in Joburg. I said, I need
the Pope. That guy got the idea into why does the Muslim guy wants
the Pope?
Maybe got a connection to some I don't know. So the guy sits there,
he can't speak. I said, No, man, aren't you Christian guys
connected all over the world. We Muslims reconnected all over the
world. So he said, what you want? I said, I want a Catholic team
organization to meet my South African team in Dominican Republic
and take us across the border into border prince said, Oh,
cross back three, three hours later, and he said it arranged
Caritas and Catholic Relief Services, CRS will meet your teams
in Dominican Republic. Team lands in France and Paris. Phone me. We
got a problem. I said, I know you guys can't fly the border Prince.
I said, it's already arranged. Because when that happened, I took
the email and it showed Air France. I said, What did you say?
Guarantee?
I said, reroute. I'm not, I'm not unreasonable. Reroute. The whole
team to Dominican Republic. I said. I said, Your flight is in
2000 when the time that you guys landed, get to Dominican Republic.
Characters and CRS, big board, South African team. Welcome,
hotel, water, food, transport, visas arranged to the camp in Port
au Prince, and they take them across.
20th, January,
2010
the South African team made world history.
They were in the Catholic church that had collapsed. A lot of
people died, but schools collapsed, hospitals collapsed,
churches collapsed. Everybody was inside, and people died. They
sounds. They said, We have to cut the call.
They call me three hours later. They said, 20th January, eight
days after the earthquake, no oxygen, no food, no medical care.
Grab an only rubble and a fractured heap. They pull out
alive, 64 year old and Azizi from the Catholic Church and the old
world's media film. This is a and the first words that come out of
our mouth is, I love God Almighty. We've instilled hope and faith in
somebody several 1000 kilometers away. And the next thing she says
is, I love you. She tells the South African team,
the medical team comes behind,
and they move around, and other teams said, from other northern
countries. Again, everything is too messed up here. It's a
disaster. The South African teams come forward. We got mixed teams
South Africa. The guy said the Bucha plan. He
thought he was too clever. I told him the India's plan.
And he comes out, called everybody together, and we start reacting
the country, to teams from other countries. Came forward and said,
If you want healing and you want help and you want to be saved,
then go to the Dream Team. And the Dream Team is from South Africa.
We don't understand, we don't appreciate the quality, the level
of our training in this country. I'm
just going to fast forward to some other things in 2013
I send the president and the International Relations message. I
said, I'm going to enter Syria legally or illegally. They said
we'd be very unhappy if you do it illegally, but we can't stop you.
I said, when it comes to bombing people, decisions are taking very
quickly. When it comes to saving life, it takes weeks and months to
get that things done. So we will do it the way I want to do it. If
the normal border doesn't work, I am going to go in illegally. So we
get there and the normal border doesn't work, and we're going
illegally. And the South African media is with us, and they film us
entering illegally, and they send it worldwide illegally.
And a week later, parliament passes a motion of support for
gift of the givers walk in Syria to benefit the people of Syria.
Now, when the people were there, I want to give a spiritual message
our first day in October 2012 and I went again in October 2000 and
December, 2012 before the teams came to set up the infrastructure,
I was very disappointed. I couldn't find anybody could speak
English. I couldn't find anybody could tell me about the medical
support in the country. And as I was about to walk out.
In december 2012
a guy comes and I hear Him speaking English. I say, Hey,
here's the guy that speaks English. I meet him. His name is
Doctor Ahmed gandur. I said, You speak English? He said, Yes. I
said, You're a doctor? He said, Yes. I said, What do you do? He
said, I'm a cardiothoracic surgeon. I said, Do you have a
building here which we can convert into an emergency facility? He
says, yes. So it takes me down the road. It gives me a building
that's lying empty for a long time. They were supposed to put
elderly people's facility there, and no elderly people went. The
children took care of them, so they didn't use the facility. I
said, Ahmad, this building is too small, but for now, we got no
choice.
So I said, You know what? We need to find an engineer that can tell
us if you can expand this building. So because I came with a
shirt and my team member was with me, there was curiosity in the
town. So people came to check who's these people, where they
came from. And so inside the building where we were talking,
people were walking around,
and then one guy comes. I said, Did I hear you say you want an
engineer? He tells in Arabic, Swami says, yes, we want an
engineer. So I asked, Can we go upwards, backwards, sidewards and
forwards? The guy doesn't even think. He says, Yes, as a Oh,
where did you study?
I said, What kind of engineer Are you? You didn't even see the floor
plan. You didn't see the architecture. You didn't see the
engineering plans. You didn't see the concrete, you didn't see the
steel structure. But you just say, Yes.
He says, My friend, don't get so excited. I'm the guy that build
this building.
But what's the chances of 15 million people being displaced in
Syria. The man doesn't live there anymore,
and the day I need him is the day he's in that same building. What's
the chances of that happening? Mathematically?
And we did it. We went upwards, we went backwards, we went sideways,
we went forwards, and we put in six other buildings. We got blood
transfusion, kidney dialysis, CT Scans, Cardiac sterilization and
everything in this hospital in Syria, it's the largest hospital
and the most effective one in North Syria.
2016 is the last international one. I'll tell you, we made plans
ahead. When you go to Nepal, to the earthquake, the Nepalese
government is very fussy. No non Nepalese government doctors can
work in a government facility. They will tell you, you can walk
into a private hospital. Now, what is the chances if an earthquake
happens here and net care and life and medical clinic and busama will
say, any overseas team come work in our private hospitals. Will
that ever happen? They'll say, You're crazy, even as a thing like
that.
So we tell the government guy, look, we got a plan. We slightly
smart, because we brought Nepalese doctors who live in South Africa,
and we brought South African doctors who trained in Nepal. So
we two thirds the way there only 1/3 is the problem, South Africans
who trained in South Africa. So I said, Okay, let's make a deal. You
watch our teams give us one patient, we operate on the one
patient, and then you say yes or no. So they said, Fine, we can
make that deal. So halfway to the operation, they say the deal is
made. Any South African is allowed to doctor is allowed to work in
any government hospital, anywhere in Nepal, we were the only guys
given that privilege. And he said, Can you do me one favor? Can you
take our doctors to South Africa to train them further in your guys
techniques
we can't underestimate underscore the value of our training. 2016
the year later, I decided to kill all international marketing, not
the project the marketing, because the media was focusing too much on
the international projects and not the local ones.
2017
the fire happened in naisuna, and it is for the first time the South
African media and the public could see the skill that out himself. We
had our own. Firefighters, advanced life support paramedics,
advanced life support ambulances. We sent in medical teams. We moved
patients from Niza to George and everywhere else. We put in two
lady project managers. Checkers gave us the whole warehouse. They
all supervised 20,000 food parcels, the blankets, side
effects, the diapers and everything else. And then somebody
came and said, What about the cats and the dogs? So I said, What
about the cats and the dogs? They said, the hungry dogs are affected
by the fire. So we get 30 tons of cat food and dog food. We bring
that in. And then somebody comes and says, you know why the fire
took so long? Because there's a drought here. I said, Oh, so now
what's the problem? The animals are hungry, so we bring fodder for
the animals. And then somebody else comes and says, But what
about the animals in the wild? We need fodder for them too, so we
arrange that. And then somebody says, What about the elephant
Park? I said, What else? So we give them that. And then.
A guy walks into the warehouse, and that guy was with me at home
two days ago, after 2017 he's come home for the first time. I see him
after four years, he walks into my house on Sunday and we relive the
story. I got there on a Thursday. This man walked into the warehouse
on a Thursday. He says, I need sugar. So I said, Did you not get
sugar? He says, No, but it's not for me. So I asked my project
manager. I said, Emily, where's the sugar? So she said. Checker
said, come fetch it. Which is going to fetch it? So I said, the
sugar is coming. We'll give it to you. So he said, it's not for me.
So I said, Then who's it for? He says, For the bees I'm taking. Is
this man drunk or something? Since men do busy sugar, just that they
lost tea also.
So I'm saying now what's happening here? So I said, This man want
sugar, this Kim sugar for the bees. I don't know what else he's
talking about. So I phoned macro, and I sent me 30 tons of sugar.
Send the sugar to him. I said, No, the story was not complete. So
that Thursday night I called him. I said, Grant, I need to talk to
you tomorrow. I don't understand what you're telling me. Tell me
some you are bees, since we do busy sugar. So then he comes the
next day, brings to other people, and he says, You see, when the
drought happened, the food, the plants that the faint boss, and
everything else that the bees take nectar from and they feed on all
that died.
When the fire came, it wiped out 300 beehives. Each beehive has
75,000 to 80,000 bees. He said, we lost 22 million bees. And then I'm
starting to think. Then I said, Why sugar? He said, after the
plants, the other thing is pollen substitute, but it's very, very
expensive. So sugar is the last, it's the least, it's not the best,
it's not ideal, but you make a sugar solution. So I said, Okay,
we'll give you that. Then say, What about the beehives? We send
the beehives from marysburg, 300 beehives from marysburg. And he
said, we now go and we will rehabilitate the bees that's
there. And we supported that project. After today,
brehabilitation became something new that we did. And when it came
yesterday, on Sunday, I said, grant. We would support more beef
projects in the area.
From that point when they said, animals hungry, I'm come to an
end. Now they said, Sutherland is in crisis. The animals are dying.
The sheep count was 440,000
by 30th January this year, the sheep count dropped to 32,000
we intervened in July, 2018
and we drilled 223
boreholes at our cost to save the farmers, to save the animals and
to do what we can. We now busy with further and nutritionally
enriched pallets to help the sheep count start coming up, and it's
starting to come up. The same year we got involved in Cape Town in
day zero. We sent in 300 containers of water from Joburg
and those areas, and from Durban, my ship that job up my road, and
they went by ship to have Cape Town with day zero, and we drill
balls in 2019 we walked into Makanda because of the crisis of
the drought, and we still there, and we still stuck there two years
later in Makanda, and the drought carried on all other parts of
Eastern Cape, and we're still busy with that. We're still drilling
bowls, we're still putting filtration systems. We still have
water tankers, and we're still providing water because the dam
levels haven't gone they've gone worse. No, there's no rain, and in
2020 came covid. 19, we delivered eight to 210 hospitals nationwide,
PPEs, pulse oximeters, contacted, non contact thermometers, scraps,
high flow oxygen machines, visual ankle scopes that all ordinances
they require. And then solidarity spoke to us, and we delivered 3000
CPAP machines with an oxygen delivery device, and that saved
lives in a lot of hospitals. We started doing hospital
infrastructure upgrades, Mitchell's plane settlers, Bishop,
hospital lady, gray, gray. Alice, Victoria, hospital Alice. We put
in both. And then now we're putting balls in Rema, Musa and
Helen Joseph. Infrastructure is continuing, and even building
balls are continuing. Four days continuing. Support is continuing.
Feeding schemes, food parcels were delivered 400,000 food parcels,
and we still doing that. And we supported 100 pigeons, and we're
still doing that. And the last thing that happened this year was
the KZN civil unrest, we got involved, and up till now, we've
delivered close to 50,000 food parcels. We supported feeding
centers, supporting hospitals, and we start supporting covid 19
nationwide. These are just some of the things we do, and we like to
thank all of you for your support and passing the word around and
whole lot of things that happen. As I said, we got 21 different
categories of projects. I'm only touching of some of them. Thank
you very much. I'll take any questions after this, thank you
very much.
Thank you. Thank you very much. And tears. It was inspired.
In incredible we look forward to the next session. We're going to
take a break now, let's say 20 minutes, and for those on the live
feed, we'll be back at five past eight. Thank you very much. In the
meantime,
you can order from Your friend, dway Tron, thank you. You
the nebram power came about when we decided we wanted to bring up a
little bit of upliftment in these times of lockdown difficulties,
this is a little way of sending a green shoot out of the barren
wasteland that covid has presented us. So we came up with this
concept to give away free coffee for an hour. It's a way that we at
Nedbank, business banking, want to give back to the entire community
in Pietermaritzburg. I So coffee box is a coffee drive through.
It's the first dedicated coffee drive through of its kind in South
Africa. It's such a unique concept, and that's why we chose
to do it with coffee box.
Because employer in the country, they actually provide the biggest
chunk of employment to the man in the street. And small businesses
today grow into the big businesses of tomorrow.
This lockdown has been probably one of the biggest challenges I
faced in over 30 years of business, I never thought in my
life that I would be staying at home not knowing when I'm gonna go
back. Thank goodness for our partners and people like Nedbank,
Small Business Banking, that have been there to assist us and guide
us through it. People, they don't think that they can get free
things while we on this lockdown, but we're able to give free
coffees at coffee pods. Yeah,
my prediction is we gonna smash it and we're gonna do 200 coffees
this hour. I don't think I'm as enthusiastic as con I'm thinking
about 180 in the beginning. I thought we're gonna do like maybe
60 or 70, but we have said and did hundreds and 68 coffees. Dealing
with Nedbank, Small Business Banking. Through this whole thing,
they've either been on the other side of a phone call or a
WhatsApp. It's like family day and night. They've been there to
answer my queries and my questions and make me feel confident that we
can get through This. I
I'm
just going to announce just gonna announce the next
speaker. Can we have your attention? Please?
Hello. You.
That 20 minutes has gone by very quickly. But ja, as what we
normally do is we will, I'm announcing now the next speaker at
our next True Story Tuesday. I've forgotten a date, but the date
will come up. It's on a Tuesday next month. And ja, the big thing
is, we haven't gone live with this yet, so you as being guests here,
have first bite. You'll see that we
have a new thing now. You don't have to tell the people. That's
just simply an email address that you get onto. You can get onto
your phone right now to secure your position and please. There
was lots of tears after, I think it was one hour of going live with
the announcement of Doctor intima Suliman talking, and we had cues
and waiting lists. So our next speaker is
somebody that's dedicated his life to looking after animals. So a
very interesting man and a public speaker as well. So please get at
[email protected]
the visuals will come up shortly. Can we have the poster? Please?
Sean,
no poster. Some of the there's been a technical glitch, but our
next speaker is Grant folds. And as you could gather now by the
pictures, he has dedicated his life to looking after the animals,
and in particular the rhinos. And he really, really has an
interesting story, and he's worked very closely with Kingsley
Holgate, and it's guaranteed to be an amazing evening. And if we can
just get that poster so that I know what date it is, I'll ask my
technical crew here to to find it for me quickly. Sorry, there was a
glitch that should have been up. But yep, to get I'll give you that
date shortly again and but to get back to Dr Suleman, I was kind of
a little bit gobsmacked after his talk, and I didn't really know
what to say when I came up here. And I think my son summed it up,
and what I was thinking the very same thing is, he makes it sound
so easy. I mean, can you just imagine the logistics we have a
freak out about going away for the weekend to the boat, let alone
putting a whole medical team in a foreign country, and not like,
yeah, it's, it's incredible. So I'm sure there are lots of
questions and so on, and I will announce, I will announce that
date shortly, we might even get the post up. But thank you very
much.
Is there anybody that's going to kick off now with some questions.
Dr Suleman, you
David, Patrick is going to kick us off, David, if you understand, up
so that the camera can can zoom in on you.
Dr Suleman, in a nutshell, could you tell us how you got Steve
McGowan out of Al qaeda's captivity?
That's not going to be in a nutshell. The guy was there for
seven years.
Okay, it started off
whilst we were busy. What we took yolani Cocky out on the 10th of
January, 2014
when that happened? Stevens mcau father came to me, it was February
2014
and it says, Look, my son has been in captivity since november 2011
and nobody gives me information. I've spent so much of money I
don't know how to get him out. I don't know what to do. I'm stuck.
He says, but I know your busy time to get Pierre cocky out, and I
don't want to interfere with that process. I told him, Malcolm, I'm
really sorry, but one hostage at a time is more than enough. It's
easier to turn the whole medical team to a disaster zone than to
take out one hostage. I said, if you make any mistake, they execute
hostage, and then that responsibility is on your head. So
you spend so much of time, you have to be consistent. You have to
say the same messages, and they watch you all the time. So we were
busy with Pierre, and then by 2014 the day we were getting him out,
that's the day he got killed. The teams were going to fetch him, and
the Americans went in and Luke summers and he both died six
december 2014
I told Malcolm, I've got another problem. I have no leverage in
hostage negotiations. Leverage is very important. I said, nobody
knows me in Mali, we don't haven't delivered one grain of rice in
Mali, nobody knows us. There's going to be very, very
complicated. So in december 2014 when we lost beer, my office
manager was going to see his son, who was being he was in.
All some religious activities in Mauritania. So he went and seen
him. I said, look, the closest we can do is Mauritania is border
with Mali. Let's start there. It was the wrong part of the year. It
was December, wrong time. Nobody was around. We came back with
zero. We couldn't do anything in Yemen. We could do something
because on an office day we were delivering goods. We were spending
sending stuff all over the provinces. We knew the government,
we knew the security agencies, we knew all the people, we knew the
tribes. And I started increasing the number of containers across
into Yemen to win over goodwill from the public. And we achieved
that. But Mali, I couldn't do that. So in june 2015
the TV was on my own, and suddenly I saw this video where Johan
Gustafson and Malcolm, I mean, Stephen McGowan, on the video. I
looked at it, and every half an hour, he plays again, and I found
Malcolm. I said, Malcolm, these guys want to talk. They telling us
they want to they want to negotiate. From this video, I can
tell you that right now. I told you. I think I will help you, but
it's going to be very difficult. I know nobody in Mali. I got no
leverage. I don't know, but let's see what we can do.
The same day, I went on ANC and 702
I said, is there anybody in South Africa who's of Mali origin?
I need you to come forward. If you are prepared to be a hostage
negotiator, it's very dangerous. You need to know the government,
the tribes. You need to know all the different people in the areas.
Within three hours, a guy walks into into my office in
Johannesburg. I'm in marysburg Now, again, as part of
spirituality, as part of our teaching, we are told you can make
out a person's goodness by his face, not just not a physical
look. There's something beyond that and the voice. So the guy
walks in the office and my manager says, I think this guy is okay. I
said, Put him on the phone. No video call. Just that time, no
video call. I just listened to his voice. I said, he's the right guy.
The next day, somebody else walks in, tells me the same thing. I'm
prepared to do it. I listen to his voice. I said, Throw him out of
the office. Guys lying.
This guy that we took. His name is Muhammad Yahya Diko. I said,
Muhammad, do you know the President's people? Do you know
the Mali security? Do you know the government? Do you know the tribal
leaders? Do you know the area? He said, Yes. I said, there's no
money here. It's free. It's a risk you take to go inside. There.
We're doing it for a lady, you know, so for a father and a
mother, that one day, the son back, and of course, his wife
said, My wife said, I must do it. I said, maybe your wife doesn't
want to anymore in the
house. So he agrees. Now I started putting it in the media. There's a
strategy you gotta use. I got lots of pictures with him, in the
newspapers, on TV, everything I put on social media and on our
pages, on our website.
I said, Now when you go across, announce it loudly, not
discreetly, loudly, that every guy that wants to shoot you will be
able to shoot you. Say that I'm here in Mali. Go to Kidal, go to
Bamako, go to Niger border, go to Algeria border. Go everywhere. And
say I'm Muhammadi adiko. I'm from South Africa. I came to look for
Stephen McGowan. Say it loudly, so nobody must have any doubts on
you. So they're sending from place to place to place. I said you're
going to go in the desert. Take the bus, take the horse, take
whatever you have to do, but go everywhere, because al Qaeda is in
the desert. They said they moved to be like smoke. So he goes. The
guy tells him, next town, next town. Eventually they send him to
Niger.
He went to Niger
in naimi, the capital. He meets the guy, and the guy says, Yes, we
can help, but the help has to come from inside Mali, not from DJ,
because he was taken in that country, not in our country. So he
says, Okay. And he said, the guy that can help you was here
yesterday,
so I'm giving you his number, and I'm giving him your number. So he
calls the guy, and the guy says, come. He goes to Bamako. And he
says, Okay, I will meet you within two hours. I thought the guy would
call him to his place, but he goes to where yah is staying, and he
goes, he calls us two hours later. He says, the guys on the other
side say, there's no proof. You representing anybody. In the
meantime, we had already put the stuff on the social media pages
and on the website, so I told my social media people, he was the
stuff. Put it right in the front, in their face. So he puts we got a
letter from Malcolm's family, coming from Steven's family, and
you want gustavs family in Sweden. We asked them, do we represent
you? Also? They said, Yes. I said, because if it takes Stephen out,
Jones will be left there alone. So they said, Please do it. And
Malcolm knew Gustav's family. They were in touch all the time,
so we put it on the front pages. Called back two hours later, al
Qaeda agreed that you are the representative of Stephen McGowan
and Johan Gustafson. For the first time, we got message to the family
that they are alive in.
Terms of we got to try to take their word, and then we know how
it kind of operated in Yemen. So we knew the thinking was the same.
So we knew the process is going to be the same. So Malcolm said, In
five, four years, nobody gave me one bit of information about
Steven. You guys did it in six weeks. In six weeks, we made the
contact. Well, you don't make the contact with them. They made a
contact with you. When they decide they going to call you, they call
you, but it's like a long chain of people. It immediately, you don't
know what the guys actually are. And when that, when we establish
that process, that they have now accepted us as negotiators, we
then went back and we started. Now, what do you guys want? And
the price started like, like, couple of million dollars. And if,
and if, and, you know, and we start negotiating, and we said,
look, this guy is not American, of France, French or Italian. We work
in lands that they couldn't understand, that, you know, the
money has to come down. We spoke, we spoke, we spoke. And eventually
things were changing. And then when,
every time we went, we kept on. We said, Okay, now let's do
something. Ramadan man came. We provide food at fast breaking.
They wanted some meat during sacrifice time, we provided that.
They wanted something built. They wanted some water. So we started
doing social investment in the country. It cost us over 5 million
Rand in social investment, right, just to get a foothold into it.
And eventually, they told us the procedure, what you gotta do, who
you gotta speak, you have to go to the State Security, you have to go
to the president's office. And we learn the procedure along the
line. And eventually, after they build a trust, they told us,
right, we've reached a point beyond this point, you can't
cross. You guys can't do this. Your government has to speak to
the Mali government. The Mali state security will speak to our
people. And eventually there's a system how to take them out,
because this involves the military. The captains are telling
us that. And eventually it was reached. I spoke to the
government. They went across, and within seven days they got Stephen
back. What happened in the last part? We don't know. Yes,
something was most likely paid. But how much was paid? We don't
know. But we know we dropped the figure from over several million
dollars to just under one or $2 million you get because in in
Yemen, when we spoke to them, when others, my guy who spoke to them,
he says, Look,
you guys can't take money. You need to take drastic out, and
governments don't pay money. So they started laughing at us. They
said, You think we give everybody here for free? All the governments
stay in the media don't pay, and all of them pay under the table.
And they say, this government paid 13 million for that one, this one
paid 15 million for that one, that one paid 10 million for that one,
and that's how the guys are released. So it was
the same process we follow, and that's how we take people out. So
we learned how the system works in in Yemen Pierce cocky was cases
very complicated. I mean, it'll take too long to explain that now,
but to use the same experience from there. And it is simple. We
had no leverage. We had nobody in the country create some news from
the country. So we took here. We found Yahya. We sent him to the
country. We made him visible. We got nothing to hide. We put his
credentials on the website. They saw it, accepted it. They got a
middleman. We got a middleman. We spoke to them, and the chill Don
goes down the chain. Everything they said. We followed the system.
And eventually they said, Look, call your governing. And at one
point they said, we do need your favor. We only asking for money,
and we're dropping the price because we explained to us about
South Africans. And then they said, in other cases, we asked for
release of prisoners. I said,
if you do that, might the country is going to be indebted to you, to
the Mali. They asked for that to happen. I said, that's not going
to work. And they said, in some cases, we only ask for exchange of
prisoners or release of prisoners, and we don't take any money. So
there are three options, one is money, one is release of
prisoners, and the third option, we really don't like you. We ask
for both. So it depends what you want to do, and they have done it
in many cases, but eventually it was done. And I went to Sweden, I
met the Swedish government explained to them the process, and
eventually they went their own route. I said, there's a special
procedure. What caused more complex
video, put our logo in it. They said, if you want to know the
process, go to gift of the girls. They know how to do the process. I
said, You guys are made to do such things. And then,
of course, we got called by different governments. There's a
Colombian nun that's stuck, there's an Australian doctor
that's stuck. There was a German guy that's stuck. There was a
Swedish other national stuck. And there were whole lot of different
people. And eventually a lot of government spoke to us, and we
told them to proceed. Yeah, some are outside. I
can't tell you more than that.
I anybody else?
I think I have a question. Dr Suleiman, just thinking, you've
obviously got really big shoes to fill, and you can't carry on at
this pace your whole life.
Yes, is there somebody being groomed to come through and take
this great organization forward in the next decade? That process
started four years ago already, right? It started. What I what we
did is we stream. We got project managers. Each one knows their
work well on the ground. We've set up social media teams. We have set
up the search industry teams, the medical teams, and the different
divisions of the different things that we do. Everybody specializes
in those systems. My wife runs a counseling service. My son is
coming because both of them, all of my family, has been as a
spiritual teacher, because it's a spiritual link. You have to have
somebody who's got a spiritual link. That's that's the key part
of the organization. So my son left his job, and I'm a multi
choice on his own. I don't force him. And he came and says, I want
to join you. He's taken over. He's right now in Malawi, and he's
going to Kenya. He's taken over a huge responsibility. He takes care
of Malawi, Zimbabwe. Is it guy. He takes care of all it stuff. And he
said, Look, so we need to create a social media department that's
separate from us. So we created a lot of separate structures, and
then in 2040
30 in December, when we responded to the Typhoon Haiyan in the
Philippines, I told the guys that came back from who took out the
lady alive in Haiti, I said, this mission, I'm not coming with you
guys. I lead the teaching missions every time, but this time I'm not
coming with you guys. Are going to do it alone. You guys are going to
go first. And when you guys have a problem there, you guys can't
phone me because I already died, so you gotta solve the problem
yourself. And they went across and they had issues, and they had
challenges, and they sorted it out. Nepal was the next one.
Exactly the same thing. They went across, they sort of the prom
house, and he did it. And locally, that's why we've trained so many
people. For every person we have, we gotta back up to that person.
So the infrastructure part, the logistics part, the PR The only
part that's going to be difficult is to hold all this together.
Because I control several countries. I got offices and
several teams and several projects. That's the part that
eventually, you know, it has to be controlled, but the system is in
place already. A lot of stuff is, you know, people say delegate the
promise. When you delegate, we have 10 project managers, 10 of
them send you new ideas. When you had one project manager, you only
had one idea. Now you got 10 ideas, 10 guys out doing each
other, and the workloads is actually multiplied instead of
getting less.
Thank you so much. Does anybody else?
Carl Smith,
Hello, Dr Suleman, and I must say, I'm absolutely in awe of not only
what I've heard tonight, but what we've all heard before tonight as
well. And something I just can't get my head around is how a little
organization in marisburg can be operating all over the world. How
big is your organization, from a point of view of people working
for it full time now, and where do you get the funds for this? What
are your main source of funds? Because it's blows my mind. I
think of the magnitude of what you do,
that's normally the first question, Where does the money
come from? The
spiritual teacher told me, You will never look for money.
For 29 years, we've never looked for money. Project happens, a
disaster happens, or even it's not a disaster, because everything is
not disasters. It's also, you know, developmental projects.
People come to us and to say, the money is in your account. It
started off with ordinary people, very ordinary people, in volume.
Then the professionals came. Then the ladies, at home, pensioners,
school kids, business people and in 2000 and also, look, there was
a bit of an issue because of before 1994 and because of the
terrorism issue all over the world, mostly support came from
Muslims and other people found it difficult to understand, because a
lot of the countries, we have no Muslim countries that were
affected by difficulties. So at that time, initially, the money
was only from Muslims, and then as change, things changed. And people
saw us going to different countries, people from other
groups realized, you know what, there's got nothing to do with
religion. It's to do with humanitarian support. And of
course, the media travel with us. So media, it was transparent.
People could see we were helping. So other groups started coming.
But the turnaround came in terms of money in South Africa, when we
did the nice enough fire, when people shot the bees and the
fodder and the pet food and the cat food and the balls and that we
drill in Beaufort West. After that, in three weeks, we got in 20
million from the corporates, which has never happened before.
And then after that, when we did other projects and when covid
came, I mean, the money just came in a big way, even now, but KZN
across the country and even from across the world, across the
world, it's starting, not in a big way, but it's starting to come.
People are more and more seeing what we do. In terms of staff. I
was the only staff where we started off, and then we had a
receptionist in office. My wife did the Careline counseling
business. That's all we had. And the kids and the family used to
have, and my father in law and other family members used to have.
It was.
There was no money, and we did what we could. And it was like a
million year a year project. Last year, it was 500 million that we
did in projects
locally and internationally. So it started growing, and we only had
one office, the one in mattersburg that we bought a building in 1995
no 1999 that's Sorry, sorry, 95 that's the first office we bought
in 1995 in Prince Alfred Street. The next office we put up was only
2006 in Johannesburg, 2008 in Durban, 2009 in Cape Town. And
then we started in other countries, and all our staff that
we took, we had no volunteers. As the disasters started going on,
when I say we had no volunteers are qualified that I wanted full
time staff because I can't have volunteers in local disasters
because they don't understand the system. The only volunteers we had
was for the counseling service, where they would sit on the phone.
You got a marital problem, they got a drug problem, and only in
marysburg. But even then, few years later, a few years ago, I
said, Let's pay them a stipend, because everybody's got financial
issues and we can afford it. So we started paying the people, they
volunteers, but we gave them a stipend, anybody who walked us as
a volunteer for a long period. We pay them also. The staff started
developing and officers started growing. We now have in South
Africa about 98 full time staff. All are paid volunteers. We which
we use, besides the Caroline people, are the medical teams and
the search and rescue teams. Now they don't get paid, but the
entire cost of omission, of taking them across, hotel bill, plane
tickets, everything else is paid by for by us and a lot of them
quietly come back and put in the money at the total cost of what we
spend on it, back into our accounts. We set them lives. The
experience is life altering. So we will never get experiences like
this anyway in the world. So they come back quietly and put the
money back into account, and they don't tell us, and we know they do
that. But my principle is that we'll pay for all the costs.
Whether the guy got five cars, where you got six houses, anybody
earns a million in a day. It doesn't make a difference. The
principle is the same. You came to work with us. We'll pay your cost.
We have on standby before covid, 220
search and rescue and medical personnel of all disciplines.
After covid, I think we got a problem. 1000s radio on standby
from all hospitals in the country that want to work with us in terms
of staff. The hospital that we run in Syria, we've got 200 and study
staff running the hospital, all paid for by us. And we get we got
all together worldwide, 550 staff. But the hospital, when I say paid
by us, we got organizations from Europe and America also, and they
came forward. A lot of them have paid all the salaries for all that
staff in those hospitals. And then a lot of organizations want to
send goods in kind. So somebody will say, Okay, I got family in
Syria. I'll send dialysis machines. Some people say, I'll
send oxygen machines. Some people say, Well, I'll send medical
supplies. Some will say, Okay, I'll pay for the CT scan. So like
that, because the projects have been known worldwide, people from
other countries start to bring stuff in, and then what happened
is, like the cyclone, he died. That is another challenge to us.
We responded to three countries at the same time. We've never done
that before. We were in Malawi, Zimbabwe and in Mozambique at the
same time, and dealing with the floods in Dublin. And people who
came from other countries saw what we did, and those countries were
so impressed that an African organization can do this, those
country organizations are now sending us stuff for the other
offices in other parts of the world. So we found that through
the connections and meeting other organizations who have much more
resources in terms of dollars, euros, pounds, are starting to
send stuff so we don't actually have to look for anything. And the
teacher said, You will not look. And the thing that makes you know
this is not a boasting kind of stuff. Initially, the corporates,
and I tell them this, quite frankly, when I speak to them, I
said, In the beginning, you guys only take the register. You got a
CSI manager. You give them money, you get your be certificate, you
get your tax benefit, and you do that. You got no interest in CSI.
You just do it as a routine
mechanical that changed what covid 19 and the case that under that
change, the CEOs themselves started getting involved in
wanting to see what's going on. And when that happened, the
funding model changed. People came forward before you would phone the
CSI people. I tell them straight, I'm a blunt guy. I said, your CSI
guys, look bugger all of what's going on in the country. They know
nothing about projects. They don't understand disasters. You're just
wasting my time. And then the corporates would come. And now we
tell them, normally, you, they tell you, we'll talk to you in two
weeks, four weeks, six weeks, we tell them, now we can't see you
today. We'll see you in three weeks time. That's the list of
corporates. We have people want to talk to us, and we say quite
bluntly, and frankly, you can't teach us our job if you don't like
it, I say it. Like it, just take your money and go. And they all
come back, because we know what we're doing. We know exactly what
we're doing, just like government departments want to talk to us,
media wants to talk to us, and people on the ground want to talk
to us, but we know exactly what we're doing, and I don't take any
credit for that. The teacher said, You will know, and believe me, I
do know. I.
Well, it sounds to me like the solution for South Africa's
problems, like right here, are you standing for in the next election?
I've been asked that many times. The spiritual teacher told me from
the beginning, you will not get involved inside government. You
won't be government, and you won't work for government, but you will
work with government, and we have a very close relationship with
government. But people say, You know what? You're so outspoken
against them. I said yes. In the morning, we punch each other in
the eye, we pull each other's teeth out. We can kick it out in
the face, and by the evening, we're having a Jack Daniels
together. That's the kind of relation. And it goes on every
other day like that. And you know, you see the corruption, you see
the complication. But there's a lot of good people in government.
There's a lot of good people in government. They'd want to see
things changed. And they tell you straight, we caught up our own
party. We caught about difficulty, we caught up in our own
bureaucracy. We need to change that. There's and a lot of people
say, Look, we don't know what to do. We don't have the skills. We
have the heart we want to work with you. I'm meeting this week.
I'm meeting the Deputy Minister of Police on Friday. I mean, on
Thursday in East London, I'm meeting half of Oscar mabuyas
Cabot on cabinet on Thursday, I'm meeting the national water
sanitation minister, or sense of Juno on Friday, and I'm meeting
the chief of parliament on Friday. And as many others who want to
meet and CEOs of hospitals, they all want to work because they know
it as a system to fix things in this country. And they all want to
work with us last week, Thursday, well last week, Wednesday, a lot
of farmers have been coming to us. They didn't come to us last week
Wednesday, but they've been calling us from Aberdeen, and that
part of you know of Eastern Cape around and they've been crying.
They said, We got no food for our farm workers and we got no food
for our families. So we said, we'll make the range are
available. We send the trucks my son, send the trucks from
marysburg, from Joburg and from Cape Town, they said, We so sorry.
We can't even collect. We don't have the fuel to come and collect
the stuff from crafting net. So our super links went and we
delivered it to to Aberdeen, and 475
farmers and the farm workers got the stuff the same week, we got a
calls from CEOs of hospitals. They were crying, and these are
government people, and they were crying, and that's why I say
there's a lot of good people. They were crying because their patients
had no food. They didn't have adult diapers, no pediatric
diapers, no London, savers, something a little. Savers, no
hygiene stuff, nothing. No PPS for the doctors. Again, we made the
arrangements, and on Thursday, 34 hospitals and 19 clinics came to
fetch the stuff from us. Often the premier called us to say, thank
you. The MSC of health called to say, thank you. The head of
department hodlphone, to say, thank you. And you all want to
meet this week. And they said, Look, we have to acknowledge we
don't have the money we but we can't let our people suffer. And
I'm saying we need to change our thinking a little bit, because
together, we have to pick this country up together. It can't be
done any other way. The problem is the ones who got at the top are
too far away from ones they don't have. And we need to fix that gap
up others. We could have serious problems, and we're working
towards that. And government also work. When I say government, I
mean the good guys in government. You have the good, the bad and the
ugly, you know? Yeah. So you have to work with the good guys, and it
can be done. There's a lot of honest people in government, and
I've come across a lot of them. I'll give you one example. Two
weeks ago, I was on a program at Gibbs garden Institute of business
sciences. They set up a meeting, and on that program, they were
discussing Nhi, and the guy that came on was Doctor Nicholas crisp.
I never met him before. I don't know of him, but I know he's in
government for the last few weeks, we spoke, and two days later, he
got appointed by Joe pashla As a new acting DG, that that man is
absolutely straight. You can't bend him. He's so honest. When a
minister puts somebody so straight in a department, you gotta know
that changes are coming. You guys have seen what SIU has been done
doing in the last few weeks. You guys have see what the Hawks are
doing in the last few weeks. You guys see what NP is doing the last
few weeks. Those are the things that issue on the top we know a
lot of things behind the scenes that's happening. There's a lot of
positive things happening in the country. And I must tell you
something, when did that case at several undersea wasn't riots.
Nobody's killing anybody. It was unrest. I can explain that
situation also differently. When it happened for the first time,
and I'm saying bluntly, white people in Naisa in George said
we're not leaving the country.
They said we need to stay here, and we need to fix the country.
And I can tell you. Now, I've spoken to a lot of corporates,
Deloitte, then the Saika belongs, got 53,000 accountants on that
group and so many other people, and they all saying, What can we
do as professionals, as corporate companies, what can we be speaking
to Oppenheimer, to Anglo American, you know, to all mutual to Ford,
to Isuzu.
To my cities, Ben's. I mean, there's just a lucky is so long
Rupert. Everybody is talking and saying, you know, what? What can
we do to fix this country when we have that kind of attitude to say,
what can we do to fix the country? And we have to stay here. We can
change it. You know, I call it, let's breathe. Do charity in
altruistic way. In other words, don't give a guy donation. But
when a car guard comes Juno hasn't earned for one and a half year,
instead of giving one Rand, give him five and you can afford it.
When the restaurant is open and the waiter hasn't had money for so
many months, instead of giving 20 Rand, give him 50 Rand, if you can
afford it. When I went to the hotel in in waterfront in Cape
Town,
half the staff was gone. They all know me. There was, I say, all the
time, because I have all my things the waterfront in southern sun in
Cape Town, we took money and we gave every single staff there,
every single person we got, we gave them, you know, a nice sized
step too. You could see the gratitude they had, they were
forced into the situation for no reason, because of lockdown and no
economy. Which, let's be honest, which Afrikaner farmer will
stretch his hand out
proud people, not out of arrogance, but they won't take
things from anybody. And they said, our families are hungry.
Please. Can you help us? And it means trust. We gave them the food
pastors, and they said, take the picture and put it in social
media. We want other people to know there is help. There's no
need. A lot of people shot themselves. They said, We don't
want this to happen. Help each other. Let's do this. It's not
about rich and poor, and as rich people, rich people have taken a
big knock last point
while the lockdown, an airline manager man and a hotel manager
lady calls, both of them say the same thing, we got big house, big
car, four kids in private school.
Can you deliver us a food parcel? Big House, big car, four kids in
private school. Can you deliver us a food parcel? We got no food in
the house. We can't pay the bond. We need to sell the house. We have
can't keep the car anymore. We need to sell the car. And we
can't. We took the kids out of private school because we can't
afford it, and we're not sending them to another school because
it's very embarrassing to drop down the the social ladder. So
we're going to do homeschooling. What happens to the mental state
of those children at
home when we make our emphasis materialism, and we say, that's
only thing in life, and when you take a knock, what happens in that
NHI program? There are people who say, You know what, we have to
take care of everyone and in hospitals, but these same people
who got the expensive car in private schools don't have medical
aid anymore. Are you going to go from an expensive hospital to the
hospitals that are collapsing in the public service? What are you
going to
do so a fair system that takes care of the very poor child? I
mean, all of us here go to any of these hospitals here, swipe the
cart and your kid is in 1015, 20 minutes Eastern Cape in the rural
area, the child gets sick. Mother and father don't know what to do.
There's no ambulance, there's no taxi. You pay the money. The roads
are not working. By the time you get to hospital, the doctors
overworked. They're not on duty. They're gone for break. They can't
see the patient. Child could be something serious and critical.
Nobody see the child. By the time they see the child, the pharmacy
is closed. Medicine tomorrow, you go back, or you stay the whole
night. There's no footage. All night, it's cold, there's no
blankets. You go, do these things, real things happen in this
country, and the same child suffers enormously. Think of the
Mad state of the child, and we kind of say, oh, no, we have to
protect the medical aid and protect the rich people. It can't
be done. We need to change our systems, and that's why we're
working with government. And the last, I keep saying the last
point, but I spoke to icon. Icon is the biggest cancer facility in
South Africa. Jordan Oppenheimer got 60% share in icon. He bought
it off from and a whole lot of guys and I spoke, they approached
me some of the doctors there, and I said, we have the guys who got
medical aid, they can go to the cancer facilities. The cancer
numbers are coming in this country. People don't know that.
It's a huge crisis. So since lockdown, then you got the public
hospital. They don't have the machines, they don't have the
oncologist. The machines are not working, and you have hundreds of
patients like this, two year to three year backlog on certain type
of cancers. They're going to die, or they would have severe disease,
and they'll have so much debilitation. What you going to do
with these people? So I said, we need to change the system. So I
said, Look, and in between all this, there are people who are not
in medical aid, but they got 25 or 30,000 then in the bank, and they
got a brother and uncle and a sister who can help. So if you
have a reduced fee, a discounted fee, then maybe all these people
can come for therapy. They don't have to wait to go to the public
sector. They will take the burden of the public sector and they will
help very much, like how you have people doing cataracts, pellet,
kidney dialysis. People are doing that at the reduced price or even
for free. So they came back to me and said, we offer you a 45%
discount. Now, 45%
And discount on cancer therapy means people who couldn't afford
big money before, just less money. And you can take an entire
population of the public health system, not as many other things
like this that you can do corporates. I want to upgrade
hospitals, want to provide water, want to provide PPEs. And we have
this kind of attitude where we take CSI seriously, how to fix the
country. Believe me, this is the greatest country in the world, and
you guys got money. Don't travel overseas. Go take a PC. I swap
other times. Spend the money locally. Let's support the local
economy. Support the Bnbs. Go local. See your own country. And
let's spend the money locally. Because I see money, it's going to
come back to you, it's going to spend locally. It's just going to
come back to us. So let's support local Thank you.
Doctor sudeman, wow, thank you. Thank you so much, and thank you
for just bringing us so much positivity. And really, I concur
with you 100%
and I think on that note, I just want to thank this community,
firstly, my staff, for working so hard to keep this mothership
afloat during this pandemic, and then this community that have come
out like you have now, and your support and your ongoing support
for the past 16 years, stepped up to another level during this
pandemic for coming out supporting us. Thank you very much.
Then yeah to again the community and that, that whole recent round
of looting just bought home another thing of
galvanizing the communities into the communities and all of the all
of you that stood around the center and Athlone circle mall and
guided it and prevented the census from getting looted. Thank you so
so much. And then, just again to my team Amazing. I really
appreciate it. A big team goes into running this restaurant. So
thank you for your efforts. And then this live stream and this
sound and everything you see going up is done by sound mechanics. And
I'd like to thank Sean and Richard for a sterling job in Boyden.
Remember you can also pick up on this live feed. It will be there
on YouTube. So thanks very much Sean, and then from sound
mechanics,
and then the poster, and then the poster, the AHA, there's the
poster has been up. But our next True Story Tuesday is on Tuesday
the 19th, and it's going to be well worth it. Please just
remember that [email protected]
very easy. Thank you all for coming. The bar is still open. You
can grab yourself a coffee or something that you'd like. Thank
you very much. We'll see you at the next one you.