Imtiaz Sooliman – Powerful & inspiring ‘There is hope for South Africa’ .
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of serving people in a meaningful and rewarding way, emphasizing the need for a positive mindset and a positive attitude. They also touch on various projects and projects related to the pandemic, including road construction, planting, and fodder supplies. The speakers emphasize the need for a general emergency team to handle the crisis and create a recovery agency. The conversation also touches on the devastating impact of COVID-19 on agricultural and safety communities, as well as the need for people to invest in infrastructure and have a culture of safety. The segment ends with a call to the Dream Team and a promotion for the Dream Team.
AI: Summary ©
Thank you, Denise, can you guys hear the back
thank you Sandile, thank you everybody for being here. A
special thanks to the people of the city. They've been really,
really wonderful. We've come here many times. It's been so friendly.
People have been so warm. It's really been a great experience
coming to your city so many times in the last five weeks, I
want to speak a little bit about our origin, speak about
spirituality, speak about my experience in different projects
in the country over a period of time, and in that bringing the
concept of hope for the last few well, from last year, people have
been talking, you know, people have lost hope. People are afraid,
people are worried, people are depressed, and all kinds of
attitudes explaining that when they want to leave the country,
they're not sure they're safe here or there's any future in this
country. At the outset, let me make it clear that's the best
country in the
world, no matter what the situation is. I You
guys haven't been to war zones. You haven't seen people tear up
each other apart. You haven't seen people being bombed. You haven't
seen people have hatred after being neighbors for years. We
haven't seen a hardship that's felt by children, women and all
elderly people. I've seen great difficulty. I've been to many
countries. I'm doing this for 32 years, and I've led every mission
to every disaster myself, so I know the hardship and the
difficulty people go through, we're nowhere near that. And I'll
explain that as you go along, how we can change things and why we
are changing things. And in fact, some of the disasters have come,
in actual fact, have been a blessing in disguise, because it
has helped us change our mindset, change the narrative, and change
the way we operate. So let's go. The story starts, gift of the
givers is not my organization. I didn't get up one morning and say,
Okay, that's from an organization. Get a name, get a founding
constitution, write down some principles, get some members and
write out what we going to do. No. Gift of the gift is not my
organization. I never thought of forming an organization. It's a
very spiritual thing that happened. And that happened from
1985
I was an internship in caregiver Hospital in Durban. I wanted to
study internal medicine, to specialize as a physician, but at
that time, there were not much opportunities. So I couldn't get a
post to do internal medicine or to become a register or a medical
officer. So I went to marysburg because my family was from there.
My wife was from there. My mother had passed on in 1984 and she was
in Durban. And my father in law said, Come to marysburg. And
former startup practice there. So January, 86 I went to marysburg. I
didn't want to start a practice, but I have no choice. We have lots
of difficulties in business. There's lots of things that you
don't want to do, but you have to do that, and sometimes, if you
look at it spiritually, it works already in the long run that you
did it. So those are the kind of messages you need to understand.
As I speak, it's subliminal messages. So I get to marisburg in
January, in 1986 and a week later, my butcher neighbor tells me I got
a guy here from an Africana guy from Pretoria. He came to teach
French, Afrikaner guy teaching French, and then the University of
Natal. So he said, but he needs a doctor. So he said, My neighbor is
a doctor, and I met Miller, and we spoke over a period of time. And
one day, mother tells me, You need to go to Turkey.
I said, Mother, it's 1986 I haven't seen Cape
Town yet Turkey.
He said, something very, very profound. He said, what God wants
happens? There's a time and a place. The time and a place was
five years later, I landed up in Turkey. Look at the story short,
but I met a spiritual teacher. I saw people of all races, all
religions, all colors, all classes, all countries, even
people said they don't believe welcome what love in the Muslim
Sufi place to something new to me. We come from an apartheid past. We
have prejudice. The Gulf War doesn't have it polarized nations
and civilizations and cultures and religions. And you're going with a
stereotype mindset to this place, and you suddenly see no no
friction, no discord, no fighting. And you think, is this really
possible in the real world? Can it really happen?
I'm kept an open mind, and that day, stereotypes left me. And my
first lesson, even before gift from the givers. Version, you
don't put people in boxes, white, black, colored, Christian, Jew,
atheist, no, you don't do that. You treat people on their merits.
As a human being, you don't run people down for one or two faults.
You look at the fault, not the person, and don't run the person
down. And maybe a person may one or two bad qualities does not
necessarily make the person bad. Intrinsically, we have some people
who are really bad, but overall, we have other people.
Not like that. So we can't write a person off because of one or two,
because you all got bad thoughts. That's good. There's no sayings
here.
So I got for pilgrimage the following year, and I say, I want
to go back to this place if it's right, because even in Islam, we
have lot of different parts, different parts that we took out,
and I wasn't sure if this was the right path, because I was never
taught that. And your teaching is different. Processes are
different. And I said, if this is the right part, I want to go back
there, Thursday, sixth, August, 1992 30 years ago, in 18 days
time, I landed up there in 10pm after a spiritual session called a
zikr. A zikr, in Sufi tradition, is a recitation of God's names in
Arabic. So I will say the one and only kind, compassionate,
merciful, chedisha, yadisha, sustainer, loving, eternal in
Arabic. And when they finished, the spiritual teacher made eye
contact with me, and he looked heavenwards at the same time,
and he spoke in FLUENT Turkish. And I don't understand a word of
Turkish, but I understood every single word that he said in
Turkish on that night,
he said, My son,
I'm not asking you, I'm instructing you to form an
organization. The name in Arabic will be wagful Walking 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
what love, kindness, compassion and mercy, and remember, the
dignity of man is foremost. That's the operative word to save this
country.
The dignity of man is foremost. And I'll come back to that. So if
someone is down in the ground, don't push them down further. Hold
them, elevate them, wipe the tear of a grieving child, care caress
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 you're dealing with human life, human emotion, human dignity
and human suffering. It goes on to say, this is an instruction for
you for the rest of your life. And remember my son. The most
important in what I've told you is remember this, then whatever you
do is done through you and not by you.
I'm a living witness to them for 30 years that are kind of things
that you guys think, that I do is not humanly possible. I know
exactly what to do, and it is shown to me. And that takes me to
the next point. I told you, I don't, I don't speak Turkish at
some point, not that same night, at some point, I asked him. I
said, How is it that when you speak Turkish, I understand, and
somebody else has fixed Turkish, I don't understand.
You said, My son, when the hearts connect and the souls connect, the
words become understandable.
Asked him, you told me all these things, what am I supposed to do?
What do you exactly want me to do? I'm a doctor in private practice
in a place called primas book, and I have three surgeries, so it's
just after hours,
weekends, long weekends, public holidays, school holidays, when
and what you told me. One line
you will know
for 30 years, I don't know what to do, how to do, what not to do,
what to touch, what not to touch, every single aspect I do know. I
don't know how I know it, but I do know it.
And the moment I walked out of that place, the inspiration came
respond to the civil war in Bosnia. And the same month, I took
in 32 containers of aid into Bosnia, into a war zone. In
November, another eight containers of winter stuff, and in February,
93 we started designing the world's first containerized mobile
hospital, a product of South African technology. We don't
believe in ourselves. Africa doesn't believe in ourselves,
ourselves. This was not built in Europe and northern countries. It
was built in Africa, a world first made in our country and taken to
Europe. We took it to Bosnia, and when the CNN commentator watched
the hospital on February 1, 1994 the CNN commentator.
Said the South African containerized mobile hospital is
equal to any of the best hospitals in Europe, and that was in 1994
but what did these three missions Tell me?
They told me, in essence, that gift of the givers was going to be
a disaster response agency, and that whatever we do will be built
around it. We have 21 categories of projects today, not 21
projects, 21 categories of projects, and each one has
subcategories, and we run them all consecutively or simultaneously.
So we needed to evolve as an organization. I'll come to the
other parts. Just now,
it was up to 2004
usual story 10s, blankets, medicines, food, bottled water.
That's all that we did. And over the years, of course, we ended on
grocery services, primary healthcare clinics, counseling
services, support groups, food parcels, feeding schemes and whole
range of things. 20 wonderful projects over a period of time.
But 2004 26, December, I was on my way to Cape Town,
and the tsunami struck, and at that time, we said, we're going to
respond.
And how we all respond is the president or the head of state,
was making announcement, I need help. And the President of of Sri
Lanka, Chandrika kumata Tuga, at that time, stood up and said, We
don't know what to do.
So I send my teams. That's where we're going to we did have medical
teams then at that day, but we were the first people in the world
that responded to the crisis in tsunami in Sri Lanka within 2448
hours. We were the first team that met the president within five
days. We partnered corporate companies and I come to the roads
we have to play. We delivered 7,000,001 of eight in five days. I
flew in planes from India, from Dubai and from Colombo across the
broken bridges to deliver medicines and supplies inside Sri
Lanka. And I did it from here, and everything was sent across. But we
had another country to respond to. In Somalia, North East is is a
place called half full and that place is in Africa. They were also
affected by the effect of the tsunami. If Africa doesn't hurt
Africa, nobody else is going to hurt Africa. Another message, this
is our continent, and we need to fix it ourselves, right? So we
landed there, and for the first time, I took a primary health care
team, a medical team. Eight months later, family in Nigeria, and we
take a medical team, but not primary health care, only primary
health care, trauma post property have general surgeons,
neurosurgeons, orthopedic surgeons, NSF, state assessors,
witnesses, ICU nurses. And we take a team. When we get there, the
Pakistani general comes to us and says, Do you mind not going to the
earthquake?
So I said, which hospital you going to give me? So he says, you
understand? I said, Yes, I understand. He said, I'll give you
the cantonment hospital of Rawalpindi. So my teams asked me,
Why did you come if you can't go to the earthquake? I said that you
don't understand what the guy is saying. Everything is destroyed on
the top, the hospitals, the buildings, the people, they're
just too much of death there. You can't do anything there. You have
to. People have to come down. And that's why I asked for hospital so
but I asked, Have you got helicopters to go and stabilize
those that are alive and we can bring them down? So I said, my
friend, all the helicopters are gone on emergency missions. This
is a huge earthquake. It hit us from Rawalpindi right to the
Kashmir border, an entire region, we don't have those helicopters.
Now, in my business, that's why I don't want to be president. We
don't follow rules.
So I looked around and I said, American Air Force. Now, pre Gulf
War, I would have never gone to them. Post Golf is a different
thing. After I went to Turkey in disaster, you work with everybody
to get the job done. So I see the American Air Force. There, I go to
them, I said, I told my the first secretary was from South African
Embassy was with me. I said, we stay out of this. You guys just
complicate everything.
Let me go there. I said, a big black guy. I said, my brother,
where you from? He says, I'm from America. I said, you black? You're
not from America.
I said, You're from Africa. You said, Yes, I'm from Africa, but I
live in America. Now I knew what I was saying. They said, You I said,
I'm from South Africa, too, from Africa. What can I do for you? I
said, Brother, I need your help. I need a helicopter. You need a
helicopter. My brother take three,
two Black Hawks and another help in two minutes. Now, imagine if
the two governments spoke to each other. I'll still be waiting
for anyways, the helicopters go to the mountain. We walk into the
Kentucky Hospital of Rawalpindi. We get the smell of gangrene, the
stench of death. Not enough medical personnel, no
disinfectant, no nursing teams, no Ivy lines, no food. General, lying
on the stretcher. Need amputation. Nobody there for them. We call it
general. We said, What is this? Is this an organized killing field?
What's happening here? I said, Do you put Will you put?
To Mother India. He looks at me shocked. The CEO comes and said,
Don't you know, we decommissioning the hospital journal. So I said,
You guys are mad. There's nothing wrong with the hospital. So what
can we do whilst we speaking to them? Northern country
organizations come across a little confused when they see us. White
guy with English accent, white guy with African accent, Hindu guy
kind of Hashem.
All mixed guys sitting there. Where are you guys from? We said,
from Africa. Africa all like this, mixed up like this. They look
stunned. Oh, what did you come for? You guys are always looking
for three things. You guys always covered a begging bowl. What did
you come for? I said, my friend, you will eat your words,
yes. So I gave the Pakistani general the list in 24 hours the
cantonal hospital, Rawalpindi, that was shutting down, we
converted it into a 400 bed emergency hospital, 75 operations
a day, and we saved many lives and those same northern teams, you
allow them to work with us in hospital. For that, the Pakistan
President parvasharraf gave us the Presidential Award in 2006 for
saving the people of Pakistan in the disaster.
We had everything when I talked to you about the development of our
organization, I need you to understand how business should
develop. Also, I should apply your mind laterally. We were doing
everything, and we had we had trauma counselors after that,
there was one aspect that was missing. You analyze your business
all the time. What's wrong when? How would a company of 40 years
fall apart in three weeks when the covid hit? There's something wrong
with the way you guys are budgeting. There's something wrong
with the way you spend there's something wrong the way you keep
this up. How can a company of 40 years fall down in three weeks? It
doesn't make any sense to me either. It is a good way to get
rid of everybody. Directors take the money and you put 1000
families on the road. That's something that's seriously
missing, the spirituality in our lives. And I'll talk about that
also. So any case, we look at the stuff, and I said our weakness as
a gift of the givers. We don't have a search and rescue team. The
medical team is second, the search and rescue team is first. So we
designed that a 2010
we had opportunity to apply it 12, January. 2010
earthquake hits 80 massive earthquake kills 250,000 people in
40 seconds.
We put a team together, and we fly out via France.
But I speak to the French Embassy. I'm a French Consulate. They give
us the visas, and then to Air France, we go via shrinking, via
Europe. So I tell Air France, will you get my teams into Haiti? They
said, Yes, we will. I said, you won't? They said, Yes, we will. I
said, the airport will close. They said, the airport is open. I said,
you open. I said it will close. They said, Give it to me. I said,
Give it to me in writing. So they give it to me in writing.
Whichever gives you in writing, they'll get you to a destination
anyway. That was my guarantee. So I parked it off. And I thought,
This guy's made a very big mistake. So in any case, I fought
the Catholic Society of South Africa. I mean, Peter marisberg. I
called the guy in Joburg. I said, my friend, I don't know who you
are. I need the Pope. So that guy gets done. He can't talk for 10
seconds.
Why does the Muslim guy want the
Pope? Why you want the Pope? I said, Are you consider the guy not
connected? You know, we Muslims, we connected all
over the world. Embarrassing for the guy. So he says, we can make
arrangements. So he said, why? I said, I want a Catholic team to
meet my teams in the Dominican Republic, to take them across into
80 because they never going to land in 86 o'clock in the morning,
the guys land. We've got a problem. I said, I know there's no
flight. Isn't the airport is closed. He said, Yes. I said,
don't worry. You want a two hour in 12 hours, you on another flight
to Dominican Republic. Here's the number. Meet you on the other
side. Catholic religious services, CRS and Caritas were the Catholic
agencies that deceived my team in Dominican Republic, South African
team. Welcome, accommodation, water, transport, Visa, everything
you require. And we take you across into the other side, and
you will stay in our compound inside Haiti.
They go across day eight
on 12/20, January, 2010
we make world history. My teams call and say, we can hear sounds
in the rubble, in the collapse Catholic Church. And they're going
three hours later, and they pull out alive, 64 year old and Azizi
fractured heat, no oxygen, no water, no food, no support,
completely covered by the and they pull out alive, eight days later.
And she says, I love God when still hope in somebody several
1000 kilometers away. And then she tells, my team, I love you.
But never before in the history of the world have any team from
Africa taken anybody out of the rubber alive in an earthquake
outside the African continent. We were the first to do
that. Is there hope for us as a continent?
Now. So I said, grant to get the sugar just now. So he says, it's
not for me. So I said, fool for your neighbor. No, it's not for
him either. Then who is the sugar for? He says, For the bees. I'm
thinking this guy is a good sugar.
I don't know about that one. This guy's trying to catch me. So I
said, you know, just give this guy sugar. I don't know why that.
And that evening, I said, No, the story doesn't sound finished. I
gotta speak to this guy again. You better come back tomorrow. I need
to know about the story in the sugar and the bees. It comes back
to me, and it tells me amazing story.
He says, you know, the fire was there because of the drought and
all the fame boss, and everything washed away. And bees could not
eat the fame boss, it was gone. And we had 300 beehives there, and
each beehive holds 75,000 to 80,000 bees. We lost 22 million
bees.
And he said, the cape honeybee is the most versatile bee in the
world. It can take. We need to learn from that it can survive any
type of difficulty. It's very resistant. And when the queen bee
dies, the other bees, worker bees, are haploid and diploid, they can
make a new queen bee. That's the type of we be that we have here.
So I said, Okay, I understand that part. How does a Sugar Fat in all
this? So he said, When they got no rainbows for other things to eat,
we give them a nectar, pollen substitute, but that thing is too
expensive. And the last solution, generic method, we put some sugar
in the water and we give them
that. So I said, Okay, I will give you money to regrow the plants,
but obviously that's not going to happen today. You're going to give
you nectar, pollen substitute. I'll give you 300 beehives and
I'll give you sugar right now, that place has become a research
center. Up till today, they're grooming young people, teaching
them about bees becoming a research center. And it's still
running in Isa, and it's expanding.
And then while it's working there, somebody
calls me and says, Do you know Sutherland is collapsing. The
farmers in southern are collapsing. The most important
Marina sheep in the world. The sheep count was 440,000 it was
dropping. 400,003
50,000 300,000 the animals were dying. The economy was dying. And
they said, Can we get involved? And I said, What do you guys want
fodder? So we started supplying fodder to the sheep to try to save
them. Now this is another problem I have. When we said to corporate
companies, let's get involved in supporting the farmers with
fodder, they told me, it's not politically correct. That has to
stop.
It's not politically correct. So what? Who are the white farmers
employing white people or black people. We need to change the
thinking in this country. Or everybody is a human being in this
country. And we all need to work together. We don't have to have
this fault, this barriers between us. It's killing the country. We
need to work together and break that. So we supported it. And in
june 2018
not only with the father gone all the balls right out. I sent in my
teams led by Martin London, and we drilled 238
balls to save those farms in Sutherland, because that economy
contributes 18.2% as part of all agriculture to the GDP of our
country. It creates jobs, it brings in foreign currency. It
brings in exchange. What happens before? What happened in Ukraine?
You can't export stuff there anymore. Now, because of the war,
what happens? Everything collapses, the pears, the plums,
everything can't go similar effect. Yeah, we could produce but
we just didn't give you the support. Because of our issues. We
need to change that. The mindset has to change. And we drilled the
238 balls. And in January this year, for the first time, the
sheep come from 31,000 is starting to go upwards again. We put in 45
pallets nutrition food made with Lucerne, molasses, maize and other
items, so the sheep can eat undercover, so the animals can go
and scavenge on them so they can survive. Three days ago, the farm
couple that's doing this, sub and young call me, and they were
crying. They set the fuel price, the cost of maize and everything
has gone up. The farmers can't support themselves. We can't put
it up. One more cent on that bag, they won't survive. 65% of
farmers, black and white, are going to collapse because they
can't afford the bag. I put in another 300,000 and I said, this
is my side. Give to the people. If you need more, call Megan. I'll
give you another 300,000 man, we have to save the farmer. We have
to save the sheep. We have to save agriculture, because that
contributes to all of us together, to benefit in this country. And so
we went on to that project, and they 2018 we have Day Zero in Cape
Town, brought in containers and all these things, I'm telling you,
it shows the generosity of our society, the goodness of our
people to work together, which by ship containers came from Durban,
and by road transport, we brought 300 containers of water to Cape
Town. We drilled bohots Inside and outside Cape Town. The people in
Cape Town Think Western Cape is Cape Town. Western Cape is not
Cape Town. There's areas outside Cape where there's a lot of people
in the rural areas. There was not.
Be forgotten, you know, and that's what happened. So we supported
that. 2019
came the call from Makanda. There's no water, and we got
involved in Makanda, and they said, municipality to us will be
there for four days. We there for three years already.
But we, we knew we going to have that problem with grand 15 balls.
We went to the crafting net. I'm I'm fast forwarding him 2020 and
2019 and this is where we coming up to the important things. Now,
2019 and 2018 I'm telling my medical teams, we world class.
When we all over the world, people can understand our skill at which
we operate and how we work. We need to get involved in the
hospitals locally. They said, Oh, never going to happen it's the
bureaucracy and the red tape will kill us. It's a crime to come to
help in government, public hospitals. You can't even do
anything for free, because people can't make a back end. You can't
do things like that. It's not going to work. So I said, We gotta
find a way. I told you I specialize in breaking rules. So
2020
the covid came, right? Yes, it came with this crisis, but I
forgot the opportunity. All the hospitals started calling
baradwanas, Charlotte mckeike, Helen, Joseph Ray, mamosa, George
bukari, Shawna, general and all over the country, 210 hospitals
were in trouble because some was having fun with our PPE money, 14
point 7 billion rand. So we said, we going to get involved, and we
started delivering. After two weeks, I get a call from somebody
in gauteng health. Some guy got too clever, and he said, you know,
you need an MOU and you want to give a letter, and you got to do
this. I said, my friend, I don't know such thing. This is a
disaster. You wanted, yes or no, you want 10 seconds.
He said, My Friend, just do what you have to do.
210 hospitals is relevant up till today, no letter, no request,
nothing writing, no MOU It's about saving South African lives. I'm
just being to the point everybody was scared, and I'm quite blunt
about it. The government is to understand this country does not
belong to them. This country belongs to me and to 65 million
individuals. And when we take ownership of the country, then we
need to fix it ourselves. We can't sit back and say, Oh, we pay rates
and we pay this and that, because to be fair to government, 7
million people's taxes. Can't look after 65 million people. It's
impossible. If you put the German government here, or the American
government here, or the Australian on the Canadians, they have the
same problem. You can't change the fact that 7 million people taxes
can't look after 65 million people. Yes, they must take
responsibility for state capture, for wasting money, for pp, money
disappearing, for having a friend, giving the cat the contract,
giving the dog, the contract, giving the grandfather the
contract. They must take responsibility for that and giving
context to people who don't know what the * they're doing, that
can't happen. They take responsibility for that. But while
saying that everybody in government is not bad, there's a
lot of good people in government lie. There's a lot good of people
in *. There's bad people in the corporates too. There's good bad
people in religious services too. There's bad people in the law
effect system. There's bad people in the medical system. There's bad
people in NGOs. We have bad people everywhere. But we have people
well, intrinsically, very bad. We have people with bad habits, as
explained to you before. So we need to hold the hands of the good
people in government and take them forward, because a lot of them do
want the help. And they tell you, quietly, I don't know what to do.
They tell you on the side, please, can you help? They have the heart
of the country in the you know they care for the country, and
that's why it gives me so much of hope today at the ball. Elizabeth
Duncan, it wasn't an official Mandela day board what you already
put it a few weeks ago, but to the credit of the Minister of Water
and Sanitation, senso mchunu, Oscar M Abu yada, the premier the
Embassy of finance, came and the DG of water and sanitation, the
mayor of the city, the deputy mayor, and other people came to
acknowledge and to thank for putting the borehole not only
Elizabeth Duncan, but everything that we've done for the city. Now
that takes some kind of humility and the fact that you can do that.
And look, I'm very happy with government. They said, Tell me,
I'm brutal with them. That's the reality. But in the day, we fight,
and in the night, we friends, because there's a lot of good
people. They can do a lot of good things, and we need to understand
that, but they need to understand also that they can't do it alone.
That's hard handed to it. It's changing. A lot of that is
changing, where the President and ministers are saying, we need the
help of private society, we need the help of private sector, but
they need to open those channels. It's opening slowly, but it will
happen. We have no choice. We have to make it work, and that's why it
gives me so much of hope. So we delivered
CPF machines, and this is the government thing. And then I go to
the last part
in November of 2020
I get a message from Professor Justin join us from Rhodes
University. He says, Doctor Sullivan, we need your help. So I
said, Professor, what's the problem? You said? Ibrahim Patel,
Minister of Trade and Industry, asked civil society and the
engineers from the SK telescope and other engineers to design the
machine for oxygen delivery, because all the machines from
ventilators of China were taken up by China or Europe or America. And
we go.
Compete with our brands, the dollars and euros, euros were too
strong, so we couldn't get the ventilators. I wasn't interested
in ventilators because I know they don't save lives. You know, very
few ventilators actually work save lives, but you know, The Mentalist
later stage, you're out 5% or 6% most cases, 0% ladies, it didn't
work. So I said, Professor, I'm not really interested. And then I
get to tigerbak Hospital in the first week of December, and the
doctors are telling me we got a shortage of oxygen delivery
devices. People are dropping dead in the car park. They're dropping
dead in the cars. They're dropping dead in the casualty. They're
dropping dead at home. Eastern Cape, the court started coming
from all hospitals. Same message, they're dropping dead. We need
oxygen delivery devices. So I go back to email, oops, not
ventilator. Secret machine. Something different. So I called
Professor Jonas. I said, Where's the machine? He said, It's Yes. So
I said, What's the problem? He said, Ibrahim Patel asked us to do
it. We formed the National later group. We've designed the model,
because that's government agency CSI, a government agency
manufactured it. Sapra, a government agency authorized it
for use for covid in South Africa. Saw the directory fund out of
government, paid two 50 million Rand for it, for 20,000 machines,
good price. So I said, where's the problem? The problem is that you
can't deliver it to the government hospitals. I said, something the
government made can't get into government hospital does not make
any sense to me. They said, We being blocked. I said, Where's the
machines? They said they kept on Acacia medical I said, Send him. I
first gave the first law to Tiger book hospital. What in one hour,
they said saving lives. Gave it to Kyle issue. I said, let me get
another perspective. Kylie Cha said, we just save four patients
now lives now under the CEO, also Eastern Cape hospitals. Do you
want it? Please bring it. My teams, Corinne Ali and the teams
in Eastern Cape, we delivered all the trucks to Eastern Cape in 48
hours, we delivered 900 machines to 40 hospitals. Again, wife got
hope, not the nurse or the junior staff, the CEO of the hospitals
waiting 11 o'clock at night to receive the machine to put it on
the patient, to save lives. That Monday, the first CEO called us to
some kala hospital. He said, My Friend, every weekend, we get
together on a Monday and we stop and we cry because we it's more,
but for us, we count on the number of people that died for the first
time in covid. Nobody died this weekend. That machine saved
everybody's life.
It shows government cannot be allowed to do what is not correct.
So we put that in, and we fought it, and let me get to the unrest.
And when the unrest came, we were leaderless. Nobody stood up,
nobody said anything. The police service was ineffective. The state
is currently ineffective. And people were scared. But it was not
an insurrection. This was not an insurrection. Get it right. In
fact, if anything gave me hope was that event. It showed that South
Africa will not allow this thing to happen. In our country, eight
provinces said we're not going to allow this to happen. The taxi
drivers got up and said, We're not going to allow this to happen. And
civil society got up and said, We will defend our country. All races
stood together. But look at the people who went took to the malls.
The real people who did this are the traitors, the anti patriots,
who mobilized people to go and do things which people were not keen
to do. Told them, go to a mall. A two year old child. What threat is
he to the country? Takes a pair of shoes, an old lady in a walking
stick. Nobody at stones, nobody had guns, nobody had knives. They
were just taken to the malls and instigated to go and take the
malls students were organized in biriya on busses came and go to
West Street and take the expensive stuff from the shops. What kind of
mortality are we teaching them? What kind of ethics are we giving
the nation? Is it okay to do the wrong thing and there was remorse?
Yes, afterwards and nobody was a threat. The voice mail messages,
the social media posts were making people scared. There was no
substance in that, because in an insurrection, you attacked the
army, the military, the parliament and the Union Buildings, not a
shopping mall, makes no sense.
So it was all misunderstood. Three days later, all the people who are
tents were standing the line together in KZN, and you would
swear that nothing happened. Everybody was giving each other
bread and water and goods and selling together as one nation.
When I saw that, I saw great hope for this country and the floods,
the last point when the floods came on, 11th April, the first
guys who called us were not people that we are sinking and we're
drowning and we need help. The first guys that called right up
the midnight was corporate South Africa.
What can we do? How can we help? What do you need? And that change
has come from the time of the covid. South African corporates
are becoming more human oriented. That getting more interested in
the lives of the people, because before you guys had the CSI
division, they don't know what the * is going on. Okay, you would
just say 90% be black, CP or black text certificate, get an article
in Excel paper, get something original. Go up, you know, VW and
FnB and all.
Cup is a very good people and it is some good thing for our
country. We get some good points there gotta stop. You have to know
what they are you doing? And when the CEOs got involved, they
started changing things around. What do you need? This country
needs infrastructure, needs humanity and needs a dignity.
People are not standing up because they're hungry, because if that's
the case, those problems have burned long time ago. Eastern
Cape, the children are dying of malnutrition every single day in
this province. In 2003
2002 when we had the World Summit on Sustainable Development in
South Africa in Nazareth, 163 kids died in Eastern Cape during that
summit. So that hunger is here for a long time. Oh, as a nation, we
need to invest in the lives of our people, and once we do that,
everything will grow together. We have to hold the hand of
government, but we have to become human in our approach fixed. Why
was a child die falling down a toilet? They have no proper
classrooms in tomorrow. We starting in pretty matters work in
a school called TPA. 173 kids got learning disorders. How can a
teacher in a class with 40 kids samples for others? Where's the
opportunity? Where's the chance for them to do something we invest
in we're taking over the whole center. We're putting in teachers
at our cost Learning Center. And this is what we need from
corporate South Africa, fixed hospitals, fix the schools, fix
the toilets, and let's take people who got skills, put in more OTS in
hospital, and tell government, you got three years. Got three years.
Get your taxes right, get your finances right. We're going to run
the system for three years. After three years to take over, we'll
put the teachers, we'll put the doctors, we'll put the nurses,
we'll put the OT we'll put the dieticians. We'll put the skill
people. And let's put people in hospital in way they require. This
country needs skills, and you need experience, and a lot of that is
gone. People don't know what to do. 267
municipalities. We need 10 good people, an auditor, an engineer, a
technical guy, a PR person, and people who can do the job. We do
that. We fixed the service delivery, we fixed the country. We
fixed everything else. We got the skills. We can go into war zone.
We can go into resources. We can fix it. We got the people,
doctors, already tired. We ask you to come back and have law schools,
teachers already tired. Kids give them an opportunity. Engineers, we
want you back. Water. Guys, we want you back. Business guys, we
want you back. The country does not belong to the government. It
belongs to you and me, and it belongs to you and me. We take
responsibility of saving our country ourselves. I've seen war
zones. I've seen the people who drove the recovery in war zones
were business people. Business carried on when the war was taking
place and people were dying. The guys that saved the country were
business people. Thank you very much for all the support you guys
have given for change your mindset. We need to build this
country black, white, Indian and color together, everybody in a
human compassion way. And we can do it. It's not impossible. We can
save the country discipline time. Yes, load sharing happens, but it
hasn't collapsed. There are countries far worse than us where
they have only 7% electricity. You don't got serious problems now
with the war in Ukraine, their their health systems are
collapsing, their water systems are collapsing, the energy systems
are collapsing. Everybody come back to South Africa. This is a
great country.
Thank you. That was very, very inspiring. I think it moved
everybody that just had a gift to the givers certainly are the Dream
Team. And you'll see on my left here, there's some books that the
give to the givers has brought with them. I.