Imtiaz Sooliman – Imitiaz Sooliman Active Citizenry
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of serving others and finding people who are doing so. They also talk about various topics, including the loss of farmers due to drought, the decline of agricultural supplies, and the need for more government support and policies to improve farmers and sustain them. They emphasize the importance of holding hands together and helping each other to make a difference for the country, and emphasize the need for people to be transformational leaders and address issues related to COVID-19. The speakers also mention the importance of addressing issues related to COVID-19 and the need for people to make a difference for their lives.
AI: Summary ©
Thank you, Sean, thank you for the invite to this event, and thank
you for the video.
Wherever I go, people always ask me, where did it start? I
didn't get up one morning and said, I think today I'll form an
organization. Give it a name, find some founder members, write a
constitution, write some founding principles and say what we're
going to do.
It never started like that.
Gift of the givers is very spiritual. It has a spiritual
basis, and everything about it is guided to a spiritual master,
if I reflect that spirituality actually started in 1985
not in 1992
and let me explain.
I was doing internship in King Edward Hospital in Durban, and I
wanted to study further. I wanted to be a specialist in medicine,
internal medicine, but at that time, there was not much
opportunity, so I couldn't go forward. I was forced to go into
private practice. It's something I didn't want to do, but I had no
choice. I had to do it now. Just as an aside, in life, lots of
things don't work out. You want to do something, what you don't get
what you want. A lot of people get depressed and upset. You shouldn't
look at life that way. You see when we pray, we don't pray for
what we want. We pray for what is good for us, because what you want
may not necessarily be good for you. So it's important to
understand that when you see something that looks bad, look
into the bed, and you may actually find the good in what appears to
be bad. So this is very, very critical. So I had no choice. I
moved into Peter Mazak in january 1986
at that point, an Afrikaner man from Pretoria also moved to Peter
marsburg, and he came to teach French at the University of Natal
my neighbor came to me and said, I've got this guy from Pretoria.
He bought me from me. He's got a medical condition, and he needs a
doctor. So Mullah and I met.
We were having dialog and discussions every time I treated
him, and one day he opened up. He tells me, You know, I was very
down and out whilst walking through the streets of New York,
and down the road, I saw a big Turkish man. He looked at me from
the distance at a time that my soul was in its worst possible
stakes.
I don't understand what my soul told me to follow this man.
So he followed this man to Saint John the Divine, a huge Church in
New York.
When he got there,
this man, this text, man who was a Muslim of a Sufi Master
then made a zikr in the church,
a zikr is a celebration of God's names in Arabic and the different
cultures or languages or scriptures will say, God the
living, eternal, kind, compassionate, merciful, cherish
her, the Sustainer,
all of a kind, all all different editors.
And he did it, the Jewish rabbis, the Hindu pandits, the Christian
priests, and even those who don't believe and all their followers
joined him.
Here was a Muslim man doing a Muslim religious practice in a
church in New York joined by people from all religion.
So that goes back to the question.
People say religions are the cause of friction all over the world.
Religions are not the cause of friction all over the world. It's
adherence of the religion that don't follow the religion that
cause friction all over the world. Religion does not cause friction
because in the same way, I can say the corporates that do different
kinds of malpractice are caused of disorder in the world. I can say
the same thing about lawyers to do mal their own accident funds. I
can say the same thing about doctors who do malpractice. So do
we shut down all these different aspects of life, but we don't the
individual behavior of people is not indicative of a nation, a
religion, a culture or an entity. It is a moving away that causes
the problem here. The Christian elders showed the unity of
religion and allowed a Muslim man what other people who believe and
don't believe in a church to do the program together.
In 2010
on my way to Haiti,
I went to the church. I flew to New York, especially just to spare
respect, because our tradition, you respect what comes from the
past. In 1985 that same teacher, that Miller met, passed away. Mala
I saw in 86 the teacher passed in 85 but he told me about the
teacher
at some point, he then spoke a little more.
He said, You need to go to Turkey, to Istanbul. So I said, Mullah,
it's 1986 i.
Still haven't seen Cape Town. When am I going to see new Istanbul?
You said something very significant. You said, what God
wants happens? There's a time and a place. And the time of place was
August 21
and I said, Why am I supposed to go to Turkey? He said, the
spiritual teacher that took over from the one that passed on is
there is the new head. The one that came to America came from
Turkey. Also they come and visit. So you need to go there. So my
wife and I, we go. We take it's a long story, but we've got another
mission, pre gift of the givers,
we get there. It's not a very good time in the history of the world.
This is eight months post war. Seven months post God's war.
We've seen the fiction in the world. At that time, Samuel
Huntington spoke of the clash of civilizations east, east and west.
Was Christian? What sort of seeded log ads, Christians and Jews on
one side, Muslims on the other side, coming from an apartheid
past didn't help at
all. Walking into a Sufi Muslim place, I see the words of Miller
coming through in front of my eyes. I see Christians, Jews,
Hindus, Muslims, Americans, Austrians, people from Germany,
Europe, Australia, South America, all in the Muslim holy place.
But the irony of this was, post Gulf War, there was no friction,
no conflict, no disorder. Everybody respected everybody as
an individual.
I see the spiritual teacher in the room.
He makes eye contact with me, and immediately I fall in love with a
man I've never seen in my life before,
and he read my soul. The next part of spirituality. You see when you
go to a new place, your guest will tell you, how is your journey?
Where do you come from? Did you have a nice sleep last night? Did
you have something to eat? How's your trip here? His first word to
me was, what do you see?
Because I was seeing this confused, confused group of
people. This people, group of people that confused me. And sing,
what is this going on here? This is what mother said. But is this
possible? Postgirl four,
and I said, I'm confused. I see people of all religion, all
countries, but who we met wars in many areas and the Muslim holy
place.
He said, My son, you see right? And
then he goes to explain exactly what those preachers and those
teachers lived in, Saint John the Divine. He said, My son, mankind
is one single nation.
The God of all mankind is one. We just call him by different names,
any Imam, Sheik, Sufi, pundit, Rabbi or priest who preaches
extremism, violence, terrorism, conflict, confrontation or
disorder, is not a man of God. Don't follow him.
Anyone who preaches love, kindness and compassion is a man of God,
follow him.
I left my heart yearned for that place, six August, 1992
exactly 30 years ago, last week, Saturday, I was there on a
Thursday night, at 10pm for the Muslim one, you know, Thursday is
Friday for us, it was our day started sunset the day before we
followed the learning calendar. So at 10pm on Thursday night, the
teachers and those other adherents, the disciples, told me
what he did was not normal. We haven't seen this in the tradition
before he sat in the corner of the room, made eye contact with me and
said in FLUENT Turkish, but I don't understand the word of
Turkish, but I understood every single word that he said in 35
he said, My son, I am not asking you, I am instructing you to form
an organization. The name in Arabic will be wackful wakifi,
translated it means gift of the givers. We 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 to what love, kindness, compassion and mercy,
and remember the dignity of men is for most so if someone is down in
the ground, don't push them down further, hold them, elevate them,
wipe the cheer of a grieving child, care * the head of an
orphan, say words of good counsel to a widow. These things are free.
They don't cost anything. Grow the naked, feed the hungry, provide
water to the thirsty, and in every.
Think that you do be the best at what you do, not because of ego.
Ego is destructive. Ego is arrogance. Ego causes conflict,
not because of ego, but because we're dealing with human life,
human emotion, human suffering and human dignity. You repeat it. This
is an instruction for you for the rest of your life. I was 30 years
old at that time.
He then said a spiritual message. Again. He said, My son, whatever
you do is done through you. I'm not by you 30 years I'm a living
witness. The kind of things that you would think that I do is not
humanly possible. Everything is put up in front for you in a very
special way. Everything is organized. Everything is arranged.
I told you he spoke in FLUENT Turkish, and I don't speak Turkish
and I don't understand Turkish, but I understood Turkish that
night. And asked him, I said, How come it is when you speak Turkish,
I understand, and when other people speak Turkish, I don't
understand. He said, My son, when the hearts connect and the souls
connect, the words become understandable.
I told him, now we got about problem. So he said, What's the
problem? I said, I'm a doctor. I have three practices a place
called Peter, Melbourne in South Africa. You've given me this
instruction. When exactly am I supposed to do this? After hours,
public holidays, long weekends, school holidays. He
gave me one message, one line.
You will know
what 30 years I do know what to do, how to do, what to touch, what
not to touch. The moment I walked out of the came to my inspiration
on the sixth of August, the same night, it came to me respond to
the civil war in Bosnia. The same month, I took in 32 containers of
eight into water in Bosnia. Three months later, in November, we took
another eight containers of winter items. In 93 we designed the
world's first containerized mobile hospital, a product of South
African technology, built in South Africa. What South African
engineers and taken from Africa into Europe. When the CNN
commentator filled the hospital on first February in 1994 you said
the South African containerized mobile hospital is equal to any of
the best hospitals in Europe. How many South Africans believe in
themselves? How many of us believe in our continents and in our
country? We always look into northern countries. This was
something built in Africa, and take it to Europe.
Those three missions then made it clear to me where we already said,
You will know.
I then knew the gift of the givers was going to be a disaster
response agency. We are the biggest disaster response agency
in Africa and one of the fastest in the world. That was the gift.
And everything else that we do is well, around disasters, we have 21
categories of projects, 21 projects, 21 categories of
projects, and each one has a subcategories, which we all run
simultaneously.
Fast forward to 2004
after that point, it was tents, blankets, medicines, food, bottle,
water. There were no teams as such, and organization now needed
to evolve. So 26 December, 2004 a 13 countries were affected,
Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, other countries,
Maldives and along the line, on the north east of Africa, a place
called hafun in Somalia was also affected. The Sri Lankan President
came on TV, chandri kakumaru Tuga, and said, We don't know what to
do. I had two team members, not medical, ordinary team members in
Dubai, all the way to India. I told them, we're diverting. We're
going to Sri Lanka. We were the first team in the world that
responded to the tsunami in Sri Lanka. We're the first team in the
world that met with Sri Lanka president. Within five days, we
delivered 7 million Rand out of eight. We flew in planes from
India, from Dubai and from Colombo in Sri Lanka to the paths affected
had a cut off by the tsunami. We were the first team in the world
given land by the Sri Lanka president, and we were the first
team in the world that built houses for Sri Lanka in the
tsunami and at that point,
but at the same time, there was a place called hafun on the north
east of Somalia. Again, our survival, as you've learned in the
last three years, is dependent on us helping ourselves. If Africa
does not interact with Africa, if our trade does not increase
significantly, we are doomed. And in every case, we help each other,
we have to bring that philosophy that Africa stands back and helps
each other. So we went into Somalia. I'm not going to the
details. It's too complicated.
We land. We for the first time, we took in a primary health care
team. This was an evolution of gift of the givers. 12 years
later, for the first time, we had a medical team.
In August of 2005 we went to Africa again. We persisted 22
countries in Africa. We went into Niger, affected by family drought,
killed all the plants, those that survived the local escape and eat
everything up. There was malnutrition, there was hunger,
there was disease, there was death. 1000s of children were
dying a day, we landed in Nami and moved to a place called telaberry
inside Niger when
we got there and the announcement was made, medical team has come
from South Africa, 1000s of people came, but there was something very
strange about the population profile that came. No adult male
came, no teenagers came, no children over the age of five. And
every mother that brought a child at the age of five then asked for
treatment for herself. I couldn't understand this. This is a crisis.
There's a medical team. Why did you not come? And then, when we
realized we can't see all the 1000s of people, we started
walking through the crowds. We have to triage. We specialize in
the glasses. So I look at the child, and I point to the mother,
and I say,
they understood the language of the heart on the spot.
They gave me a broad smile and they walked out. Didn't say, Why
you not seeing my child, my digital number two and number five
and my team started doing that. The population caught on from the
distance. The mother would say, and we would say, big smile and
walk out. I'm trying to see what has going on here that evening
when we set Toluse simulani, a CBC reporter at that time is now at a
NCA, said, I'd like to talk first. And he says, when I went into the
villages of kila Berry, they told me that five to 10 children a day
were dying from malnutrition and hunger and disease in this area. I
said, I got my answer. They said, what you mean?
I said Africa showed its spirituality. It showed its
Ubuntu, it showed its quality of sacrifice that the world doesn't
know about. And adult males didn't come. Teenagers didn't come.
Mother didn't ask for treatment. No children of the age of five
came and children walked. Mothers were walked out of the queue
because they knew we were less. They knew our resources were less.
So let's save that child. Who can save now my child may die in five
days time or in seven days time or in 10 days time. I'm prepared to
take that risk. I'm prepared to take that risk of my child for
five days or seven days or 10 days, but my neighbor, my brother,
my relative, down the road, that child needs to be seen now, so
they sacrifice their own children and walk out so that you could
save another child. We saved every single child in the days that you
live in Niger. Thank you to the people of Niger who made the
supreme sacrifice. We talk about fakes. We
talk about spirituality with any of us prepared to make that kind
of sacrifice,
to let something else be seen before your child is in Think
about it carefully.
This was DJ. Two months later, we landed in Pakistan, massive
earthquake, a much earthquake hits one city, not an entire region he
took out from our Pindi right to the Kashmir border, the entire
North West region was gone. What a massive earthquake.
We upgraded now with primary healthcare, trauma teams,
orthopedic surgeons, general surgeons, masculine surgeons,
neurosurgeons, gynecologists, theater nurses, ICU nurses,
paramedics and post op rehab specialists. The team was now
upgraded. Just few months later, we walk into Pakistan. The general
comes to us and says, Do you mind not going to the earthquake?
So I asked him, then, which hospital you giving me?
He says, you understand? I say, I understand, clearly. He says, I'll
give you the cantonal hospital of Rawalpindi. My kids look at me and
said, Why did you come here? If you're not going to that week?
I said, you click between the lines. The man is telling you that
everything is gone. The hospitals are gone. The doctors are gone,
the coconut gone. There's just massive deaths in the area.
There's nothing to do on the mountains. So I said, Have you got
helicopters? And need to send my team to stabilize those that are
alive?
He looks at me, he said, My Friend, you can see our situation.
All helicopters are gone. It's a crisis
again, the disasters because the teacher taught you, you don't look
at race, you don't look at geography, you don't look
religion. You look at as human being, as a human being. And you
approach humans and you don't judge anybody. You always think
positive. You always think good. So I took walk around on the Air
Force Base in Rawalpindi, and I see the American Air Force. So I
walk for American Air Force, and I see a big black guy.
Okay. I said, my brother, where you from? I know where he's from.
Where you from? He says, I'm from America. I see you black. You from
Africa? He looks at me, he says, brother, yes, I'm from Africa. I
said, Me too. I'm from Africa.
We hug each other. I said, my brother, you know, we brothers. I
got a bit of a problem. He said, What's your problem? I said, I
need to send my team to the mountain. I need a helicopter. He
said, You my brother, take three in two minutes, two Black Hawks
and another helicopter in three minutes. Two minutes, three
helicopters in two minutes. He understood the language of the
hearts. We understood that politics have got no play in human
life and human saving. And he made a decision without worrying about
his colonel and his general and his lieutenant above him. He took
the helicopters and said, Take them Three helicopters in two
minutes to save life. This is the approach that we need as human
beings, not be blocked by red tape, by bureaucracy, by laws that
do not benefit mankind in any way. And so my teams go to the
mountain, and the other team goes to the Catalan hospital of
ramapini. And as we walk inside, we get the stench of deaths, of
gangrene, not enough doctors, not enough gossip, staff, no
disinfectant, no beds, no Ivy, lions. Kids are lying on the
stretcher. No parents are out there. They did. There's nobody.
No food, no medical, medical supplies, and the kids are just
lying there, helpless again. Think if it was your child, what would
that be like? So we walk in, and I call the general. I say, what is
this? Is this a kidding field? What's happening here? The CEO
hospital comes and he says, Don't you know, Sir General, I'm sorry,
but this hospital is decommissioned. We're shutting it
down. I said, You guys are crazy. All you have facilities are
destroyed in the mountain, and you're shutting up hospital
networks. It makes no sense to me what you're saying. So the general
ask, What can we
do? I gave a shopping list. I said, do bring this and I'll show
you what we can do
in less than 24 hours, a hospital that was shutting down in Rama
bindi, the South African medical team converted into a 400 bed
emergency hospital during 75 operations a day,
for which the Pakistan president the following year, in 2006 gave
us a Presidential Award.
Something additional happened in 2005 December. And these stories
are very important, because we are suffering from race issues in this
country. We need to kill it.
So a lady calls me from Pretoria University. Her name is Karina,
extern, spinal rehab specialist, and she says, Doctor Solomon, I
like to go and help the people of Pakistan.
I said when Karina, she says, December, Christmas, a Christian
lady sacrifices Christmas to go to a Muslim country. Go, take this
put abutu to have people there. She made people walk or never walk
again. Spinal rehab special. She even brought a child to South
Africa to carry on treatment of this child, and when she finished
off there, after three weeks, the patients, their families, their
doctors and even the military, cried, we took across our greatest
export, obudu and love for people. Now we can do it the other side.
Why can't we do it here? We need to change our mindsets and our
stereotypes and our approach to each other, we have to change.
There's no other way of saving this country.
We said there's only one thing missing. What gift of the givers
now. We've got trauma counselors. We got primary healthcare, trauma
medicine, post op, rehab, everything. There's only one thing
that's weak in the system, search and rescue teams and dogs.
So we work towards it, 12, January, 2010
a massive earthquake hits Haiti in 40 seconds, 250,000
people are killed.
We got our certificate, we got
them ready, and we're sending them via Palace to Haiti.
So I speak to durko. I said, we need a shank a visa immediately
for transit. The French government says, come to the consulate. They
go immediately. Within 10 minutes, we get the shaker visa for
everybody approved. I give Air France the business, and I tell
Air France, will you get my team support apprentice? They said, We
will. I said, you won't. They said, Therefore, it's open, open.
I said, it will close. I said, Give me a guarantee in writing.
They gave me a guarantee in writing. Make mistake
in the meantime. I said, you have to have Plan B. This is not going
to work in disasters. You always got to think forward of your
teams. I make no bones about it, my teams come first. Other people
are second, the victims and the those affected are second. My
teams come first. We're not alive. We can't help anybody. So whilst
they are on the plane, I phoned the Catholic Society of
Johannesburg. The guy answers on the other side. I said, I don't
know you, but I need the Pope. The
guy couldn't speak for 10 seconds. Why? The.
The Muslim guy want the Pope. I said, you know me, Muslim is
reconnected all over the world. What about your question guys? So
he tells me, why do you want a pope? So I said, I want the
Catholic organization to meet my teams in Dominican Republic and
take them across into 80 he calls me back in three hours. He said,
arranged Caritas and Catholic Relief Services will meet your
team in Dominican Republic, make all the arrangements and take them
across into port operands, into Haiti, and they've got their own
compound while your teams can stay with them. So I said, thanks. The
teams land in Paris. They said, we've got a problem. I said, I
know port operands is closed, airport is closed. You've got an
alternative flight to Dominican Republic in two hours. He has the
contact. They get to Dominican Republic, big bot, South Africa.
Team, welcome, accommodation, transport, water, food,
everything, and visas, and you move across into Haiti to stay on
the other side. 20th, January, 2010 our teams make world history
in the captive church that collapsed eight days after the
earthquake. No water, no food, no oxygen, fractured heat. My teams
pull out alive. 64 year old, and Azizi from the Catholic Church,
her first words to the team was, I love God. You instilled hope in
somebody several 1000 kilometers away. And then she says, I love
you. The medical teams came from the back and they said, Leave this
to us. Orga teams from big first world countries said, we can't do
this. Everything destroyed. And the South African team said, Leave
this to us. Those same South African team goes to our schools,
our universities and our hospitals. How much weight do you
have in your own country? We need to look at that very, very
seriously. And the guys go up, and when they start delivering the
people of Haiti and from other countries. Say, if you want help
and you want healing, then go to the Dream Team. And the Dream Team
is from South Africa. The whole world knows our capability only we
don't know our capability. Fast forward 2016 November, and make a
conscious decision to cut all international marketing. No
international marketing. Media focuses too much on international
stuff. They don't, don't know what we're doing locally. Then kill the
project. I just kill the marketing. June, 2017
South African society then saw our local capability. Messa fire. It's
nizana. I'm sending two lady project managers. Checkers gives
me the car park and said, use this as a warehouse. So they move in
and with the people of naiska. Arranged 20,004 parcels. The Naza
people come with their buckets, because a super link can't go into
a car park. It's great on the outside the forecast arranged. The
buckets come the people get involved. It's one united South
Africa working together to help across race and religion and
color, to get help to everybody. So the markets go up, the whole
parcels are made. It comes back down, and it's distributed to
people, including blankets, hydrogen packs, sanitary pads and
detergents. And then we sent in our own firefighters. We supported
1200 firefighters twice a day. What? Water, liquids, nutrition
products, energy, biscuits, we are uneven, provided hot meals. Then
we brought in our own advanced life support paramedics, advanced
life support ambulance. We've got the specialist medical teams that
even delivered babies in hospitals and moved the patients from Nice
guy into George. And when we did all that, Swami comes and says,
What about the cat and the dog? So I said, What about the cat and the
dog? They said, the cat and the dog is hungry. There's no food for
them. I said, Okay, we'll arrange food for the cat and the dog.
And then they say, you know, there was a drought here. What about the
cattle
and the sheep and the horse and the pigs? I said, anything else?
They said, yes, the animals in the wild and elephant in the
park. So we arranged and food for all these categories. Man has to
take care of the environment. He has to take care of creation. So
we send this and then the classic one came. The guy walks into the
warehouse in the checkers for a building, and he says, I didn't
get sugar. So I said,
Emily, why does grant and get sugar? They said, No, it's not for
me. But Emily said the sugar is coming just now. So I said, Grant,
your sugar is coming just now. Says, not for me. So I said, is it
your friend, your neighbor, your uncle? He says, No, it's not for
them either. Then I said, Who is this for? It says for the bees. I
thought this guy too much of shots before he came to me,
what the * you want sugars for the bees for I said, Grant, I
don't understand what you're saying, but you can have the sugar
for the bees that evening, I said, No, the story is incomplete. So
the next morning I called him. I said, You better come and explain
the story. Doesn't sound very good to me. So he comes and he says,
You see, we told you there's a drought here. The drought kill all
the plants, the bees that have plants to feed off. Then the fire
came. The fire wiped out 300 beehives. Each beehive holds
75,000
to 80,000 bees, which means we lost 22 million bees. The Cape
honeybee is the most versatile, most resilient bee in the world.
It is haploid and.
Deployed, meaning it can make its own queen bee. If the queen bee
dies, we wipe 22. Million got wiped out.
I said it still doesn't explain the sugars. So he says the absence
of a plant. You could do Neptune, collar substitute, but that is too
expensive. So the only other option is sugar. You make a
solution. Why should I sort the other things out? So I gained 30
tons of sugar, and I said, in addition to that, I'll give you
money to regrow the plants over a period of time. I'll give you 300
beehives. I'll give you nectar, pollen substitute. And as
Institute was set up in Nazareth to say, before we got to the fire,
it became a research institute, academics, professors, students,
all go there learning and the the honeybee population is growing.
Again, in that area, it's spreading in that area, they're
taking care of the honeybee.
I'm just coming towards the end. That gives us this questions to
ask
whilst we're doing this, we're going to call this related, not
your farming, but to farming. We get a call from Sutherland to say
the Marino sheep count is dropping. The sheep count in
southern and the dollar Cape was 440,000
it was dropping 403
50, 302 5200,
the sheep pound is dropping because there is no fodder for the
animals. So we started selling millions of grains of order, the
truckloads of the incredible cost, we arrange 160 train holds coaches
to take it further from different parts of the country. And I must
say, South Africa stood out. Farmers from other parts of South
Africa gave this product for free. Some places we had to buy
expensive stuff, but a transport we had to pay for, and they took
it in June, 2018 a desperate cry from the people of Sutherland and
Northern Cape. Now, besides the fodder, all our bowls are dry.
There's no more water. So even you give us the fodder struggle app,
there's no water for the ship to drink. I sent my teams in and we
drilled 238 balls at our costs
in January, 2022
this year, one of the people that we work with put up this machine,
3045 pallets. We put nutrition into the pallets, and we started
funding that project for the first time since June, August, June,
2017
the sheep count started climbing. It dropped to 31,000
from 440,000
to 31,000
some farmers shot themselves depression. Others took the kids
out of school. They took the kids out of university. And ultimately
they told us, when you bring food parcels for the farmers, farm
workers, can you bring food parcels for us? We can't feed our
families anymore. When we said we're taking in foreign they said
we don't have the fuel to put in the bucket, to drive to fetch the
foreign the bank accounts are maximum. The loans are maximum.
The cooperatives are not giving us any more things on accounts. The
banks are holding back funding. They're not doing anything. We
need to put humanity into our business transactions. Did a
farmer go and gamble? Did he burn the money? Did have a big party?
Did he go on first class business? He's been working for the country
for 50, 6080, 100 years. With his family, he was affected by natural
conditions of bad weather and drought, and his life came to a
standstill. We need to be more compassionate in the kind of
things that we do, and support them, and we have to stop this.
I'm a blunt guy, so I call white corporates, and I tell them, white
farmers are in trouble. And they tell me, it's not politically
correct, there are white farmers. And I said, What kind of answer is
that?
I said, the white farmers employ white farm laborers. They look at
me like I'm talking a foreign language. I said employ black
people and colored people, so the farmers go down. The houses of
black and colored people are destroyed. That's what happens
last week, or two weeks ago, I got a call from the same people with
the machine. They said, We are in serious trouble. We are about to
lose 65% of the farmers in the Northern Cape region. And I said,
why? They said, We can't subsidize the thing anymore. Stage six has
destroyed our machinery. Cost us. 178,000 ran to repair. The Ukraine
war has put a fuel price up, the transport cost, the maize price is
all gone up. We can't give the farmers at the same price, and we
put it up by five Rand more. 65% of farmers black, white and color
are going to collapse in the entire region and everything. And
everything goes with
them. I said, I will fund it. Keep it at the same price. We will fund
it, and
we will subsidize it. And I sent them the first 300,000 I said, You
want another one and another one and another one? Just ask. We will
send it in. Because all these farmers are our farms. All these
people are our faith people. We are one nation, one country, and
we stand together and help each other. The time is almost up. I'm
coming to a crucial part on issue. You see, South Africans, lack of
green there's a court hold here. Electricity went to state six. You
can't get there's no water. There's no problem.
Year, government is falling apart. There's corruption. Yes, there's
everything. It's true. It's everything.
This country does not belong to the government. It belongs to the
people of South Africa. This is my country. It's your country, and
the country of 65 million people. Now you can sit there and mourn
and groan, or you can get up and do something about it, because 7
million people's taxes can't look after 65 million people. It's
impossible. So even our friend from Australia was running this
country, or from America or from Canada or from Germany, they will
never be able to run this country with 7 million people's taxes. We
need more taxes. We need more income income. We need more
agriculture. We need growth in every department. Yes, we have to
cut the subsidies. We have to make sure the farm, the import duties
come in other countries have their own farmers. We have to change
that. In our country, we have to have our own farmers to make
productivity. Yes, it is a little more expensive. It doesn't matter,
because you are creating jobs, you're putting livelihood, you're
helping people sustain themselves, you're giving them dignity. It
doesn't matter if it costs a little more in your own country,
support your own country. We need to go back to cotton farming. The
big corporates killed the cotton farming because they started
importing from China. You know, you make lots of money at one
point, but what did covid Show? Unemployment, lockdown, all your
profits are gone because there's nobody to buy when you don't have
a buying market, what happens? Your own economy collapses. So
yes, two people on the top may make some money, but eventually,
your grandfather, your cousin, your auntie, who can't go anywhere
else and destroy it. Let's all put back in the country together,
corporate South Africa, farmers, let's get back together,
everybody, and rebuild this country ourselves. It's not
impossible. And while saying that about the country, everybody in
government is not corrupt. Everybody in government is not a
crook. You get groups in the groups in the corporate world, you
get them in the farming world, you get them in a religious sector,
you get them with lawyers. What accountants, what doctors, and
even in the NGO sector, you got crooks everywhere. It doesn't make
the institution bad. It has people got bad qualities and bad
characteristics, which we need to change, but they are good people
everywhere who want to do the right things. So we need to hold
hands together and go forward, government, corporates, private
sector, and rebuild this country in a place called potas, where I
was born, and I left till 1974 one man fixed 2500
potholes himself. I said,
I'm not waiting for anybody. Yeah, down the road, the floods we had
here in KZN, where we supported, we put in 17 boreholes in Tonga.
We supported food parcels, bulk food, sanitary plants, mattresses,
blankets. We have people with homes. Upgrade homes. We put in
appliances, equipment and even bedding sets for people in that
area. And of course, all of KZN not going to the details of that,
just too much. But in that area itself, the M 41 breach in a that
collapsed. People from shorty, white people and from bolito,
white people said we going to do something. Indians from Tonga said
we'll do something colored people said they'll do something black
people, poor people from Linda Lani and polani informal
settlement, who lost their houses, who lost their possessions, who
lost their children, who lost everything. Said, we are a part of
this community. We have no deserves. We have no banking
accounts, we have no money, but we are part of this community. We
will take and we will contribute towards this bridge, because we
are one South African nation
in Elliott Dale in the Eastern Cape. Children get washed away
everyday crossing the water to go to school.
So one white man got up and said, This is enough. They got holes.
Make the bridge the way you do bridges in Africa, and put it
across the river. And the black people of 80% unemployment said,
this is for us. We're going to be part of this process. We're not
unemployed. We don't have money, we will take out money and we'll
contribute. And they took out money and they contribute. And the
British is built. It was put on ANC last week some point. This is
South Africans standing together. And the final point, everybody
say, Oh, how safe is this country. You know, we had the insurrection.
What insurrection you talking about
an insurrection if you attack the government, the parliament, the
defense force and the police force. Please tell me which
instruction in the world you attack a shopping mall,
a shopping mall with a two year old child, unanimous people, a
lady in a walking stick young, younger than teenagers. Please get
it right. There was no insurrection in this country.
People were used as fodder. Ordinary people were how orderly
students from Durban, but yeah, was sent to West Street to take
expensive clothes from the shop. Because the real problem are the
traitors and the anti patriots, people like that. We can't allow
them to rule this country. We will stop them. They cannot come in and
change they use those people and use them and abuse them. And they
say, we're doing this in interest of black people. Please tell me
which black person benefited from this. Black people lost their
jobs, black people lost their income. Black people better pay
more money to go on taxes. Black people died in hospitals because
medical people couldn't go there. Please tell which black people
benefited you.
Is done by use by politicians and troublemakers and traitors and
antipatist We will stop them. And we did stop them. And you know,
stop them, the people we all hate the most, the taxi drivers. The
taxi drivers stood up and said, We will not allow this to happen. And
they stopped it. And every community got up and said, This is
our country. Nobody's going to take it. Black, white, Indian and
colored, and even foreign nationals stood together. The
ordinary people were no danger. They were no threat. They were
harmless. The people behind came to burn the shops. The masterminds
did this, not the ordinary people don't have judgment against
ordinary poor people. They had nothing to do this. They were just
use their swaddle. Keep your minds open. We are one country. We stand
together in everything that we do. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a
country to build. This is our country. This is the greatest
country in the world right now. There's a drought issue in Europe.
There's a energy issue in Europe. Countries that have health issues
in Europe, there are problems everywhere. Invite them to South
Africa. This is a great country. We can fix everything ourselves,
holding hands together, drink together, one brotherhood, one
nation, one country, one community. Thank you very much.
You
Yeah.
Dr Suleman, thank you very much for that gift.
Did you feel that passion?
Yeah, I hope that passion actually ignites more passion in you
as we look to understand the heart,
as Dr Suleman has taught us today and be transformational leaders
for our industry, starting off, of course, first with our 85 direct
reportees to the sugar industry,
and then the 380,000
indirect reporters before we head off to the 65 million people of
South Africa, and not to mention the 22 million Bees. Of course,
Dr slayman has kindly offered to field a couple of questions. I'm
sure you're looking to
ask him for further inspiration. So if you can get some mics across
to the audience,
we're happy to take at least one or two questions.
If, if I can ask the technical support to please unmute the
audience.
This question up front.
Thank you, doctor, for the very inspiring talk or address. It is a
very profound speech from you. I'm trying to establish a South
Africans. How do we really fight the issue of inequality in the
country? Because in South Africa, our society is one of those very
inequal ones in the world. How do we really fight that sketch? How
do we
ameliorate the situation of those who are in need?
You know, corporate South Africa. So your name?
Oh, we spoke the other day. Cedric mboisa, we spoke. Oh, you're the
boss. Okay. Hi, Cedric. Are you
up? Till recently, corporate South Africa did CSI for the sake of
doing CSI because it's good for the points. So we take the
register at 90% be very good. Get a tax certificate. Very good. Get
some communist people to write something about it. Very good. And
you get something to make yourself happy, and you satisfy yourself.
You've done something. Actually, without nothing. Your CSI had no
meaning in it. The type of people that in your CSI portfolios also
had no meaning in it. When covid came, things changed. The heart of
corporate South Africa changed, and for the first time, I could
see real compassion in corporate world. I'm not that everybody does
have compassion. It's not a generalization, but you know, it's
it. You saw people changing their attitude. And they would call and
say, How can we save our people? How can we save our country? How
can we make a difference? The same day came from the unrest. The
companies whose shops got burned first, whose industries got burned
first, should have been the most angry. They were the ones who
called first and said, How can we make a difference to our people in
this country? And people said, it's hunger that caused a problem.
It's not hunger that caused the problem. Hunger hasn't caused a
problem. The crisis in this country for 10s of years. If
hunger caused the problem, Eastern Cape would have been 15 times
already by now, since 2000
1022 children have been dying of malnutrition at Hungary in Easter
cake, and they're dying right now as I talk to you. Why
this? The parents are so used to hunger, they don't understand what
malnutrition is all about. So the child is hungry in a rural areas,
they just keep the child at home. When it's too late, it comes to
the clinic, which is not well equipped or goes to the the major
hospital, but by that time, the child just dies. So we
got together with the health department is in Cape. What did
dieticians? And we were fortunate. Three years ago, a Norwegian
company called me. They wanted some advice about a product called
Easy peanut paste, which they wanted to use in disaster zones.
And what they proposed to me, I told them, that's not going to
work. I never heard from them again, and suddenly, but we were
using the product in March this year. They said we were following
your social media posts, and we saw that you give our product to
help it. It's a fortified peanut production, micronutrients and
peanut with proteins. We give it out in Eastern Cape and other
parts of the country. We want to help South Africa, knowing what
has happened with the floods, covid, civil unrest, we want to do
something different for the country. We want to make a
conscientious support for the country. In Norwegian, they sent
in 15 containers of the product valued at 25 million rare
and these are the Australian Embassy came to us. The Canadian
embassy came to us. The US council general called me for a meeting,
explained to us, the Swedish have come to us. I spoke to the head of
Daimler Trucks last week, Michael, did I have to say the Germans are
going to get involved? Every country sees the importance of
changing things in South Africa, coming back to your issue, we need
buying from corporate South Africa, not for food. We need to
look after the dignity of people. You see when you have no dignity
and when you are ruminated, you have no hope, and when there is no
hope, there is no limit to what you can do. So we gotta fix a few
things. Number one, infrastructure and hospitals, the worst thing
possible is a child is sick in a rural transguide. There's no
ambulance, there's no bus, there's no proper road gets to the clinic
late at night. There's not enough staff, the staff exhausted,
there's no equipment, there's no supplies, or there's too many
people, and the child dies for a reason that they should not die.
What's
going to do? It's going to break their parents. We can't allow this
to happen. We have to fix the hospitals in this country. We have
to put in more medical personnel and hospitality. The government's
got no money. They cut the registrar program. It makes no
sense to me. Registrars is academic training. It's academic
teaching. You train the new doctors. They cut it behalf
Professor Lova head of the dean of the dean of the medical school in
Natal Mandela school has called me and said, We need to look at a
program to fund registrar training. Professor tobekasi, the
head of medicine in in UCT called me. I was told him last week. He
said, I got the same problem and we got the same problem
nationwide. We need to fund registrars. We need to fund
doctors. We need to fund nurses, psychologists, OTs, whole lot of
specialists. My wife is a counseling psychologist. She went
to a school called TPA. In one school, there's 173 kids with
learning disorders. How can a teacher deal with 40 kids in a
class and kids who were learning disorders? It's not possible. So
to answer your question, we need corporate bind from South Africa
to fix these things. We've taken over that school. We're putting
special education needs teachers in the school. We're putting first
years. We're putting its we're putting ot people brought a
hospital, which was the great hospital in marisburg collapsed.
We're upgrading that hospital Charlotte mckecket, the one
advantage. We're starting in two weeks time, 41 million in
upgrades. And this is where corpus come in, and all of us, we don't
need to be caucus. Every individual can do it himself. You
know how many people in your family are battling? You know your
neighbor that's battling? You know what was? What's happening down
the next street? Don't look for the big things. We have a
teaching. Whoever does an atom's widowhood shall see it. So look in
your farming world, how can you increase more staff? How can you
bring more laborers into the farming make take them off the
grid, make them socially independent. How can you have
beneficiation? Can you use ethanol? And I spoke this morning
to Sumita, no, can you how can make our own fuel, aviation fuel?
But you guys had something. The problem is government and the red
tape and bureaucracy. We need to change that. We have to force that
and change that. It's not their country. They produced a machine.
I'll give you the last example
in 2020
December, when Peter wave was here and the people were just dropping
that boom, come to the car park. Drop dead in the car park, drop
dead in the car, drop dead in ambulance, drop dead in the taxi,
drop dead in the house, drop dead in all the water. Patient, nurse
is about to give four turns around, and the patient is gone,
dead in front of the eyes. And they thought what they were doing
wrong. Covid hit everybody up. We had a massive shortage of oxygen
machines. We didn't have it. Ventilators don't look so well.
Most people died on the ventilator. And ventilator, you
need ICU. You can only put 810, 50 people in ICU maximum, but you
need an oxygen device.
This. So to the credit of the government, Ibrahim Patel said, We
need to get people to make a new oxygen delivery device. So the SKA
telescope people and the energy engineers got together and they
designed the CPAP machine, brilliant machine, low cost, does
its job, 10 liters of oxygen per minute, compared to 60 to 100
liters per minute used by high flow nasal oxygen machines. So
they made the machine. And they got other engineers and they made
this machine. CSIR, a government entity, produced the machine.
20,000 of them. Sapra, the government registration body,
endorsed it for use in South Africa for covid Solidarity fund
paid for it. Two 50 million Rand. There was one catch. The
government ordered the machine. They got the people designed it,
they produced it, they approved it, they paid for it, but they
couldn't put it into the government.
And I said, How possible. They were obstructed by somebody who
didn't want this machines to go into hospital to save lives. I
told the people, send me this machine. I don't ask for anybody's
permission. And I delivered 3000 machines to all hospitals in South
Africa. They needed it. On Monday morning, the first call came from
kala hospital, poor Hospital in recent cape, and the CEO was
laughing on the phone. Nobody laughed during covid. Was laughing
on the phone. And he said, for the first time, normally, on a Monday
morning, we have the Marvel job of counting all the dead people in
our wards over the weekend. For the first time this weekend,
nobody died. Everybody lived because of these machines. And the
same message came from every other hospital that we gave this
machines to start the government's country, that's our country. To
break the laws, put the solar panels, do whatever is necessary
we need to save this country. Thank you.
Dr Salem, and I think your message is very clear, as corporates, as
leaders, as individuals, I think the onus is on us. Thank you.