Imtiaz Sooliman – Talk Gift Of The Givers
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of giving love and compassion to people in return for success and the need for people to be open-minded to their interests. They also touch on the devastating consequences of a earthquake in Pakistan and the importance of learning to be grateful and appreciate things in life. The conversation ends with a brief advertisement for a program to save the city and reduce the spread of COVID-19. The speakers emphasize the need for people to save their lives and serve their community.
AI: Summary ©
Alright, good morning school. You
see this. I just want to welcome this morning a very special guest,
sulaman,
the head of the gift of the givers. And I'm not going to take
much more of his time, because I want him to address you. He has
two supporting staff members, one who's a parent. Of us very proud
to have him on the stage as well.
I hope that you've read up a bit since I spoke to him Monday about
gift to the givers. Dr Suleman will talk a little bit about it,
but we're turning outside that he's going to really pick up on
the projects that they're involved in around the world, 46 countries.
If you hadn't picked that up, that's amazing. I was reading last
night about that, and I think in my introduction this morning, I
want to just remind us that we sit in a very perverse position to be
spoken to by a man who's taken the bull by the horns, who has looked
at so many different situations around the world and in our
country, and has done something about it. And then, I think, is
the motivation this morning. And if you at the end of this morning,
in a sense, say what happened, and wake up and say, I missed
something, it's your loss this morning. Listen with your head,
listen with your heart. And let's say that in 10 years time, you
look back to this morning and say something motivated me to get out
and work with an organization like this, or to start your own
organization, or to just do something. Our country is in need.
Our world is in need, and here we'll talk about that light at the
end of the tunnel. Here we have a source of the light at the end of
the tunnel in so many ways. So let's give a warm welcome to Dr
Sullivan this morning. We're looking forward to
the Thank you, Mrs. Smith, for that introduction. Morning, boys
and girls. Long Council, I spoke at a school, school hall.
How would you know
I will talk about different aspects of what I do, the basis,
somehow, international projects, type of teams that we have, and
then bring it to some of the local projects. And in the end, we can
have some questions and answers about specific projects or
anything else you want to ask about.
Gift of the givers is not my organization. I
didn't get up one morning and said, Okay, I think I should solve
organization today. I'll write down some founding principles. Get
a constitution. Write down some points, get some members, like how
you normally form an organization? And say, Okay, now I'm forming
gift of the givers. It never was my intention ever to form an
organization.
It's very, very different. And this is some concept you will have
to learn as you go along. It's got a spiritual basis. Spiritual
basis, meaning it comes through the universe. It comes to special
instruction by inspiration. It's not something you plan. It happens
for you, and you see it as I go along. It starts off in 1985
I was doing internship, if you have a hospital in Durban, and I
wanted to study medicine. When I was studying medicine, I mean
internal medicine. I was already a doctor. I want to do internal
medicine, to be a physician, to be a specialist. There was no post in
hospital, so I couldn't study further. I couldn't become a
specialist physician. Now let's stop there. In life, lot of things
don't work out, and you get upset and you think it's not working
out, but always apply your mind and look deeply into what didn't
work out in your understanding. And sometimes what didn't work out
may actually be in your interest. So should always keep an open mind
for that. We all
come from different religions, different backgrounds. When we
pray, one of the ways to pray is not to pray for what you want,
but to pray for what is good for you. Because what you want may not
necessarily be good for you. As you get older and you learn, it a
price to teachers, principles management, you want a certain
thing and you don't get it. It's very important. These are
important principles in life. You have to do a certain course in
varsity, but it doesn't work out due to something else. You wanted
to go to one school, it didn't work out you went to another
school. So always, everything that you do, you must always keep the
mind open to question what you are doing. So I didn't get the post. I
was forced to do private practice. I went to Peter management in
1980s I moved from Durban to Peter manisburg In January, 1986
and I did something that I didn't want to do, but I made the best of
it. I was adopted in private practice. I had a lot of patients,
and I started three practices and I went along. But there was a
reason why do to specialize in internal medicine. Knowing what I
do today, I would have never used it. I.
At the same time that I moved to beresburg in January, 1986
an Afghan guy from Pretoria also moved to berylsburg. They came to
teach French at the University of KwaZulu Natal My name was a
butcher. Came to me one morning, and he said, I've got this
Afrikaner guy from Pretoria. He came to buy meat from me, but he
needs a doctor. And I told him about you. So me and Malak, we
meet and we start speaking. Remember, I'm telling you, this is
very spiritual. How it started, 1985 I was moved to marysburg,
which I was not supposed to do. I meet a guy that comes from
Victoria. He was based in America, in France, and he comes to
mattersburg, and as he's speaking, one day, malar tells me, You need
to go to Istanbul in Turkey to meet a spiritual teacher. So I
joked with you. I said, Mala, it's 1986
I still haven't seen Cape Town. When am I going to say Istanbul?
I'm telling in Turkey.
He says something very profound, and it applies to all aspects of
living. He said, what God wants happens. There's a time and a
place and a time and place happened in August, 91 I
landed up in Turkey. I met a spiritual teacher. I saw people
from all races, all religions, all countries, in a Muslim holy place.
What was really amazing was the harmony, the love, no affliction,
no conflict, no judgmental. Nobody judging each other. People said
they don't believe you're most welcome. Nobody judges anybody. It
was an understanding of the human spirit I fell in love with that
I came back in August 92 six. August. 1992 was the night gift of
the givers. Was born in two weeks time, three weeks time with 30
years old,
Thursday evening, 10pm sixth, August, 1992 the spiritual teacher
is sitting in the corner of the room. I am sitting beside. He
makes eye contact and he looks heavenwards at the same time in
FLUENT Turkish. And I don't speak a word of Turkish, but I
understood every single word of Turkish that he said that night.
He said, My son,
I'm not asking you, I'm instructing you to form an
organization. The naming Arabic will be walkful 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 with love, kindness, compassion and mercy,
and remember the dignity of man is almost this operative word.
Dignity is what you need to save this country. A lot of people have
lost hope. They've lost dignity, and we have a role to play, as
students, as parents, as adults, to bring dignity back. And I'll
come to that and give examples as we go along, grow the naked, feed
the hungry, provide water to the thirsty, and in everything that
you do applies to you guys, be the best at what you do,
not because of evil. That's the worst thing you can have, not
because of ego, because part of you, because of human suffering,
human emotion, human life and human dignity. Never do anything
because of ego. That is, destroys the world, destroys people. He
went on to say, again, this is an instruction for you for the rest
of your life. And then he gave the most powerful spiritual message.
He said, My son, remember that whatever you do is done through
you and not by you,
that everything done in 30 years, I know very clearly it's not
humanly possible. Things are done for you. You will have you
examples as you go along. When I come to the projects, everything
is done by you. I told you, I don't speak the word of Turkish,
and I understood every word that he said in Turkish. At some point,
I asked him, Teacher, how is it that when you speak Turkish, I
understand and when other people speak Turkish, I don't understand
you said, My son, when the hearts connect and the souls connect, the
words become understandable.
So I said, Now the matter of, what am I supposed to do? You take me
all these instructions. I'm a doctor in private practice. I have
three centuries in a place called Peter Mart in South Africa. I.
What am I supposed to do and when am I supposed to do it? After
hours, weekends, public holidays, long weekends, school holidays.
When do I do what I'm supposed to do? He told me one line
you will know
what caravan says, that
you you will know for 30 years. I do know what to do, what not to
do, how to do, how not to do. In fact, the moment I walked out of
that place on the sixth of August, it came my inspiration respond to
the civil war in Bosnia in the same month, I took in 32
containers of eight into a war zone in Bosnia. In November of the
same year, we took eight containers of warm items in the
war and February 93 we designed the world's first containerized
mobile hospital, the first world's first a product of South African
technology, a product of South African engineering, a product of
Africa and taken into Europe, into Bosnia. Now, how many of you
believe in yourselves? How many of you believe in our country, in our
skills, in our capability? The country has its problems, but it
doesn't take away our talent, our skills, our capabilities. We need
to believe in ourselves. That hospital was birthed in South
Africa and taken a Bosnia when CNN film hospital, the CNN commentator
said on the first of February 1994
that the South African mobile hospital is equivalent to any of
the best hospitals in Europe. This is what our country and our skill
and our personal are capable of. We need to believe in ourselves.
But what those three missions? August, November, February, 93
burnt Bosnia,
the message came clear to me. I now understood what we had to do.
Gift of the givers, in essence, was going to be a disaster
response agency, we are the largest disaster response agency
of African origin on the African continent. And as time went on, we
added to the growth of the organization. We put on several
projects, V chairs, food parcel, feeding schemes, counseling, water
products, a whole lot of things, but we never had medical teams to
see where many skills in 2004
for the first time in the tsunami, we took medical teams, a primary
health care team, into Somalia on the north east of Somalia in a
place called afun.
Eight months later, we took a primary health care team, again to
a place from this year. And this is a very interesting story to
understand how fortunate we are. We got to our country where 1000s
of children were dying daily because of famine and what was
left of the cross the locusts destroyed. Many
medical teams went in, and we made an announcement, there's a team
here from South Africa. Hundreds of patients came. But there was
something unique about the makeup of the patients.
There were no adult males, no teenagers, no children over the
years, age of five, and no mother who brought a baby asked for
medical treatment. I couldn't understand that, and sadly, when
we realized there's so many patients here, how you going to
show the children and only a limited amount of doctors. So I
went into the queues. I mean, what free art when you've been
disastrous, you gotta think on your feet. You're gonna be very
practical, and you gotta be very effective. So I walked through the
crowds. I looked at the baby. I tell the Mother, what's your
goodness with the language? So I point to the child, we tell the
mother, and he said, the mother understood immediately, my child
is okay. I don't have to worry. I can leave the queue. And she gives
a mixed bag and she walks out. So I said, let me try this again.
Number seven, number 10, number 15, number 20. And all the medical
guys started doing that, and they all left that evening, when we had
a meeting, one of the guys picked up and says, Doctor Suleiman, I
went to the village Shakti aberry. In every village, five to 10
children were dying a day, and I now understood why no adult milk
came, why no mother took treatment, why no teenager took
treatment, why the mother walked out of the tube? Because there was
no guarantee another medical team was coming. There was no guarantee
more food was coming. There was no guarantee, no medicine was coming,
but they sacrificed the child that was not so sick because they knew
we had less resources and less medical teams, so they allowed us
to see the very sick children and took another children not so sick
away who could die in the next five or seven or 10 days. It was a
supreme sacrifice to save somebody, to give up my child so
somebody else's child can live, can live. We saved every single
child in that mission because of the Ubud spirit, the generosity,
the selflessness of those people so that somebody else's child can
live in.
Two months later, we got involved in earthquake in Pakistan. Eight,
October 2005
a massive earthquake hits the mountain from rawa puny right up
to Kashmir, Norte city, an entire province, an entire region, was
affected.
We upgraded normal primary health care only, primary health care,
trauma, automatic surgeons, General, surgeons, gynecologists,
ICU nurses, nurses, post op, reactives, we all went together.
When we get there, they will land in the airport. The Pakistani
general says,
Do you mind not going to the earthquake?
So asked him, which hospital will you give us? And he said, I'll
give you the cantonment hospital of Rawalpindi. So he says, you
understand? I said, Yes. So my teams ask, what's going on? I
said, this earthquake is so bad that in the mountains, everything
is destroyed. Most people have died. There's nobody to save, but
we need to stabilize those who are alive. When asked and doing
helicopters, and he says, Sorry, all our helicopters are emergency
missions. Again, in disasters, you think on your feet, you must
always make a plan. So I look around the airport and I see the
American Air Force.
So I go to them, I see a big black guy.
I said, my brother,
where are you from? I know where that is from. He says, it's from
America. I say, No, you're black. You're from Africa.
He says, Yes, I'm originally from Africa. I said, Me too. I'm from
Africa. We have brothers and young each other.
I'm making a plan now. So I says, I need a helicopter. Can you have
me? You my brother, take three in two minutes. You give me three
helicopters, and you put a
teams in your helicopters, and you send them to the mountain. The
other team goes to start preparing the hospital, the cattlemen
Hospital. As we walk in, we get a stench of death, the stench of
gangrene, children on the throne with no parents, no Ivy, lives, no
medication, no nursing staff, no disinfectant, no linen. And I call
a Pakistani General, I said, What's going on here? Is this an
organized killing field? What can we do here? The superintendent
comes running and says, very sorry, this hospital is shutting
down. I said, You guys are mad. It's an earthquake. It's an
emergency you need every hospital you can use. So they asked, What
can we do? So I said, if I give you the shopping list, will you
bring this and we'll show you what we can do. It brings a shopping
list a hospital that was shutting down a South African medical team
converted it into a 400 bed emergency hospital in 24 hours. We
did 75 operations a day, and we saved hundreds of lives for that
intervention. We got a Presidential Award from the
Pakistan president in 2006
but it showed the dedication and commitment of our personnel,
studied in schools like your school, studied in universities in
this country, trained in hospitals in this country because of the
skill that we had.
We always have race issues and religious issues. Something very
unique happened in December that year, a lady called Karina extern
Africana, Christian, white lady from Pretoria falls. We from the
University of Pretoria and says, Doctor Solomon, I want to have the
people of Pakistan.
I'm a spinal rehab specialist.
So I told her, Karina, when would you like to go? She tells you at
Christmas. I said, you can't be feeling well.
You're a Christian lady, and Pakistan, no Muslim country, no,
you can't be feeling well. She says, that's the only time I have
relieved.
And Karina goes to Pakistan
kids who couldn't walk. She made them walk, and also will never
walk again. They will walk. She carried the spirit of Ubuntu from
South Africa into Pakistan, so much so that when she finished off
the patients, the doctors, the nurses, the families and even the
military cried. Here was a lady who gave a heart and soul to help
some in another country. What great skill and expertise. There
was no issue about religion, about race, about color, about geography
or location. She went and did a supreme job in
2000 Why did we finish it off? I said you always got to think
forward.
There was something missing in Israel to give us in disaster
response, we didn't have search and rescue teams. We didn't have a
search door. We
went to the medical team. But it's seconds. You first want to take
the people out of the rubble before you do the second part. So
we plan for it. 2010
12, January, the earthquake hit 80 port of France. Some massive
earthquake killed 250
1000 people in 40 seconds,
such as 15. Got ready. We had them now. We flew them to France and
but we'll make arrangements from there to go to Haiti. I knew they
will not get into Haiti.
I spoke to Air France, and I said, Can you give me a guarantee in
writing said, you'll get my turns into my team to the border Prince.
They said, Yes, and he gave me a guarantee of writing. I said,
you're going to neglect it. They said, the airport is open. I said
it's going to close. They said it's open. I said it's going to
close. And then you gave me the guarantee my teams go to the
airport. I knew they never going to get the border Prince. So in
the meantime, I make alternative arrangements. I make with a
management I phone the Catholic Society of Johannesburg. I tell
the guy answer the phone. I need the pope until
I get a little confused. What does the Muslim guy have the pope for?
Can
I say to him, Are you Christian guys not connected? We Muslims are
connected all over the world. I feel a little embarrassed. So he
says, What do you want to Pope for? I said, I want the Catholic
organization to meet my teams in the Dominican Republic, not bother
plants in Haiti, in the Dominican Republic, and take them across the
road into Haiti. Three hours later, it says Caritas and
Catholic Relief Services will meet your teams inside Dominica
Republic. My team's led in Paris. Send a message, there's a problem.
I said, I know there's a problem. The airport is closed, hasn't it?
They said, Yes, airport is closed in Portugal. I said, Don't worry,
arrangements are made. Your guys are flagged. Next two hours to
Dominican Republic, and here's a contact number. They get the
Dominican Republic. Remember, this is a cross race, across country,
across religion. This is about humanity working hand in hand
together in the interest of the people of this world. So they get
to Dominican Republic. There's a board South African team, welcome,
accommodation, water, food, visa and the chief joined together, and
the Mexican team, Mexican team joins us, and we go inside Haiti.
There's looting, there's shooting the streets, there's difficulty,
there's way and there's death and smell everywhere. The team's going
eight days into the earthquake, the South African team makes world
history
in the Catholic Church that collapsed, the yes sounds in the
rubble eight days after that week, no oxygen, no food, no water,
fractured heat and fully enclosed rubber. 64 year old anazizi is
pulled out alive from the Catholic Church that collapsed by the son
of a gift of the Jewish team. And the first word she says to my
team, I love God. You instill hope in a person several 1000
kilometers away. And the second thing she says, I love you, it was
the world first. Never before in the history of the world has any
African team taken anybody out of the rubber alive in an earthquake
outside the African continent. Our team was the first in the world to
do that, and they warned the support and blessings everyone the
American team now starts in behind the certain rescue teams,
countries from 10, from northern countries from Europe, America
said, we can't do this. Everything is destroyed. The South Africans
team stepped forward and they said, We can do this.
So that orthopedic surgeon asked for a drill to do orthopedic
surgery, and they gave him a black and black that used for carpentry.
The doctor stepped forward, and he said, we can use it the bull
market plan.
And they went inside and the patient, the patients again, and
all the people from a northern country said, if you want healing
and you want help and you want assistance, then go to the Dream
Team. And the Dream Team is from South Africa. Train in schools
like yours, trained in universities like ours, train in
our country like ours. There's a great future in this country.
There's great steals. We just need to believe in the system
2011 and this is the last international story I'll give you.
We went into Somalia. Your school collected money for Somalia in
2011 you guys are probably not here, that right. In 2011
kids walked 400 kilometers
in search of water and in food, and in the process, while they
were walking, they got tired, or the mother got tired, or the
father got tired, and they left them on the way, the children who
had to leave their brothers and sisters and walk on if they stay,
they all died. They had to make a very difficult decision. So some
open marriage walked and carried on, and others left behind. So
when they got our camp, I was for the facility in Mogadishu, we
asked them, How many were you all? My brothers left behind. My
sisters left behind. My brothers left behind. What happened to
them? They probably died. I.
They have to make that kind of sacrifice to go forward. We don't
understand what suffering is all about. We don't understand what
hardship is all about. We need to learn to be grateful, to
appreciate what we have, what our parents are doing for us, what our
teachers are doing for us, what family is doing for us. People are
in great, great difficulty. Let's fast forward to 2017
we got involved in the fire in laissez
we sent in two ladies who are project managers. Together with
the people of the city, we delivered 20,000 food parcels,
blankets, hygiene packs, sanity, breads and diapers. Whilst doing
that, we sent in firefighters. We supported 12, 500 firefighters
twice a day with water, liquids, energy, biscuits and meals. We
said, in advanced life support, ambulance, advanced life support
paramedics, specialized medical teams to help the dog move
patients from NASA to the hospitals. And why should we want
that? Somebody came and said, but you know, the cat and the dog is
also Hungary.
So we arrange cat food and dog food,
then somebody else can sit. But what about the cow and what about
the sheep? And what about the pig? And what about the horse? And what
about elephants in elephant Park? And what about the animals in the
wild? I said, anything else?
We arrange all that stuff for all those animals as part of humanity.
It's an essential part to look after creation. But the animals
can't talk, and we set assistance for them. Then we had a classic. A
guy walks into the checkers give us the car park where we had the
whole facility our Wales. A guy walks to the checkers facility and
he says, I didn't get sugar. So I said, Emily, why does men didn't
get sugar? Emily says the sugar was finished, but it's coming. So
I said, grant, the sugar is coming. You said, it's not for me.
So I said, Who's it for? He said, for the bees.
I said, Is this man drunk?
Says, very busy sugar. I said, Well, just give me sugar. I know
what he's talking about. I go away that night, and I said, No, the
story is incomplete. The next morning, I come to a phone grant.
I said, Please come back. Grant comes back and gives me a very
interesting story. He says, Doctor Sullivan, you see why the fire was
so big. There's drought here, and nice now, so all the plants that
the bees feed on are gone
when the fire came, 300 beehives burnt.
Each beehive holds 75,000 to 80,000 bees. We lost 22 million
bees.
We said that cape bee, honey bee, is the most versatile bee in the
world. It can take any difficulty, any infection. It's very
resilient, but a fire destroyed it very Bree is haploid and diploid,
meaning that if the queen bee dies, it can make a new queen bee.
So I said, How does the sugar? What is the explanation about the
sugar?
You said, when there is no plant, you use a nectar, pollen
substitute, but it's very expensive, so the only other way
to save the bee is to make a sugar solution, and the bees feeds on
the sugar solution. And then I understood why. He asked me for
sugar.
We gave you money to grow plants. But then thought, what happened in
one day's time? It's a long term thing, cleaning beehives, cleaning
nectar, bottle substitute, and gained 30 tons of sugar for the
bees.
From there, we got involved in Sutherland. Lot of you like sheep.
Sutherland got merino sheep. The sheep count, because of the
drought, fell from 440,000
to 31,000
we sent in further into, into southern we drilled 208 balls to
save the farmers to bring in water. And from January this year,
for the first time, after we give them 45 pellets, nutrified,
fortified nutrition, parents to shift to eat. For the first time
this year since 2017
the sheep town is starting to rise. Indeed, in 2008 we got
involved in your city for day zero, we drilled boreholes,
brought in 300 containers of bottled water on ship and on road
to Cape Town. In 2019
the drought hit Eastern Cape in a big way. It was day before which
is more pronounced, Ma, you know, is Grange town. The university was
in trouble. The Bed and Breakfast was in trouble. The town was in
trouble. We drilled first in boreholes, putting water packets,
and we still busy. And 2020 came. The great challenge. When covid
came, we got involved in 210 hospitals in the country,
supporting medical staff, putting PPEs upbeat in hospitals, putting
oxygen facilities, putting covid dedicated facilities, putting
beds, mattresses, blankets, linen, curtains, walls and schools,
installing hospitals scrubs to help upgrade the system in
hospital systems, because people were dying in the car parks. They
were dying in the cars. They were dying in the casualty they were
dying the beds. They were dying at home. They were dying the
ambulance.
Us. They needed oxygen. We put in 1000s of oxygen machines to have
safe and kids and everybody was affected. 2021 where the civil
unrest in devil
kids went to loot the shops. They were not violent. They were not
aggressive. There were children who had no shoes. I'm not
condoning looting, but it is an indication to us the difficulty
that children have and people have in a place called pedi in June
2020,
when our teams went to give a food parcel to a mother. The mother
said, Talk.
They said,
Talk to my children, my three children, they will tell you the
taste of every plant in this area. This is South Africa, a country of
gold and diamonds and big cities and big shops and big walks. But
kids were eating plants to survive. When
you went to the dump, when the dump trucks came, their children
were running. They should be a school, but, of course, schools
are closed, but when even the schools were open, they were
running in the towns behind the trucks to search what they can
eat.
A child took a figure in a peanut butter bottle, you know, we always
leave something, and we never finished the whole thing, and put
a figure eating.
Found a GMT, which is serrated, and cut your lips and put the
figure inside, and started eating jam, one small.of jam, because the
child was starving when
we started supporting hundreds of soup kitchens,
10 kids came, and the kid too became bigger and bigger and
bigger. And then adults also started coming. A small, frail kid
came. No shoes, winter, no torture, no jersey, shaking like
this, came to the front of the queue.
Look at the dignity. Look at the thoughtfulness of that child
that's hungry and then and said, Don't give me too much of food.
I won't eat too much, but can you give me something for my mother
and my father and my brother and sister at home, they haven't eaten
for days,
and you said, Take whatever you want, eat whatever you want, and
take it home. The child was prepared to sacrifice for the sake
of that mother and father. Right now, every day there's children
dying of malnutrition in the Eastern Cape. They are so used to
hunger that they don't know the danger signs of hunger in the
rural areas. It's too late. We've partnered the Department of Health
to educate, to send in dietitians, to send in nutrition. Food. God is
great. We used to buy what is called an easy to that place. You
open the packet, you squeeze it in your mouth. It's it's 45 it's
nutrition. It first. We've got a good taste. So we were buying it,
and we put it on our social media pages. The product that we were
using, the company, from nowhere, saw the post on our social media
pages,
and they called us and we said, we like to help. We said, We'll
appreciate it. They sent us 15 containers of cleaner paste valued
at 25 million Rand, which you can send into all those kids and not
adult starving in Eastern Cape,
yeah, in March, in April, after the first lockdown gonzamo,
instead
the old people were waiting in the queue by social distancing. So
instead of walking 10 people in one line, you got one person every
meter away. Everything takes longer. Starts at eight o'clock.
It was a freezing cold night, and then all people are waiting in the
queue. Wanted to get their full passes because there was no more
money, no jobs. The pension team was delayed.
And at eight o'clock after the police comes to Ali and says,
Kirsty, thank you, sir.
There's hundreds of all people standing in the queue. He falls
me. I told the police can stand on it, lock us up, do what they want.
We're not stopping. We can't send all people home hungry. They came
in the stew because they are hungry, and they probably got
children and grandchildren out to feed. To the credit of the police,
every policeman is not a crook. Every policeman is not corrupt.
Police will take bullets in the day. When they come home, they
did. The child comes, fathers comes and comes home after school.
The father is dead. The mother is dead. He gave His life, or she
gave his life in itself, in the line of duty, every policeman is
not a bad man in
heavenly damn when the floods happen, the police diver lady dies
in the dam
to find the body of a child and the body of an adult. The lady
downed in the dam. She got two kids, small ones, their mother is
not coming back home.
Don't write everybody off. The policeman, to his credit, says,
You are right. I will bring in reinforcements to hug this old
people.
To give them the food parcel, to put it in the van and to deliver
it to his house. The last old lady gets a food parcel at half past 12
at night in a freezing cold and she gives a big smile to Ali, and
she says, I'm going home now and I'm going to wake my grandchildren
up.
So he says, why? He said, she said, I promised them I'm coming
home with something for them tonight. They haven't eaten for
three days.
Have people stay put out for for three days?
There's people going through great difficulty in this country. And
she goes and takes a food pass out for them.
Appreciate everything that you have.
Don't be wasteful. Be grateful. Use your talent to have somebody
else. When my teams asked me when the offices I don't take them
anymore, I used to lead the teams, but I'm getting old now. Man got a
beard. Now he's getting great. I'm going to die sometime. I have to
teach the new generation. And when they get across, they ask me, What
must we do? I tell them one, one point only. If it's your daughter,
your mother or your grandparent, what would you do for them?
If you know what to do for them, do you know what to do for anybody
in any difficulty, in any crisis in any way in the world, what you
want something to do to you? You do to do that for other people.
And finally, we got called to the province of far from Nelson
Mandela Bay.
The dams were drying out. The municipality called us. We went
in, and in 15 minutes, we made a program how to save the city. We
can't say the city totally, but you have to work together. What
government? What corporates? What are people to say water and our
engineering teams are the ball teams. In one month, we've drilled
13 boreholes, opened up another seven, brought in water tankers,
getting water from a desalination plant, putting up Georgia tanks
everywhere. And right now, as we stand, we've added 7 million
liters of water a day to the city,
but the success of the of the intervention is dependent on
people saving water. Cape Town is a fantastic example of how
citizens are disciplined. All of you stood to your 50 liters a day.
All of you had your one minute showers. Stop washing the cars,
stop for putting water in the garden. And because there was a
collective effort from everybody, because people were disciplined,
because we the community, because we want humanity, because we want
nation, you save this city from collapsing, and now it's a
pleasure. I hated traffic, but today I'm happy to see traffic,
because it means somebody is working. It means somebody's got
jobs. It means the economy is turning around. You can see the
tour is coming back. If you got the means, give the car a little
more. If you go to the shop and you buy something from the
restaurant, give the weight a little more wherever you can give
something. And you got the means, give a little more, because these
people got a child like you to feed. They were much stationary
for a child like you. They're going to buy a jersey for a child
like you. They're going to buy medicine for a child like you. So
if you have the means and your parents have the means, help each
other. Thank you very much. You
all right, thank you. Dr Sweetman, we are now going to enter into
your time questions and answers so we have a few roving mics, and if
Mike doesn't get to you, then please just be sure to ask your
question very loudly. All
right, don't be shy.
Okay, we have a question
right on this side. So perhaps ask your question. Anyway, it's going
to take a while. Let's start with this one without the mic, and then
we'll go to that one with the mic.
You're listening very carefully.
His name is Muhammad Safi a as somebody who's been like involved
in hostage cases such as the London Corky case. How do you go
about when you find out that, for example, a South African citizen
has been kidnapped by a terrorist group. How do you go about
starting negotiations and making contact to them to save somebody
like that?
The teacher said, you all know, we've got no experience in office,
negotiations
your land.
Koki was taken in 2012 may 27
sorry, may 13. 2013
that's wrong. Yeah,
I just come back from Syria in April. 2013
my project manager from Yemen, I brought him to Syria as an Arab.
He's a journalist, and he speaks a language he gets back from Syria,
and it has been on that date, as a South African taken hostage, a
South African couple taken hostage inside
Yemen. And it tells me, what do we do? So I said our water says best
among people are those who benefit mankind. So I say this first, in
that category, the government is not going to negotiate. Government
said they don't talk to the others, so if nobody's going to do
anything, they're going to study about the rest of their lives. So
I said, let's start. We had an advantage in
Yemen, because I because I have an office there, we were doing aid
into the country, so we had leverage. The President knew us,
the military knew us, the police knew us, the public knew us, the
tribal leaders knew us, the media knew us. So what we did, I started
increasing the amount of aid as one of the poorest countries in
the world, starting eight, and it started distributing it all over.
But every time, and every time you gave eight out, he made a media
announcement. You know, there's some in this country that just we
didn't know who to get it was in Al Qaeda. Was it a grunge with
just some small type kidneys? There's different categories. So
we said, let's assume the worst case scenario and say it's al
Qaeda. We have to prepare for the worst situation. So he made an
announcement. Somebody suddenly has taken across two South
Africans. Please call me. And he put his number in the media every
day
may up to December. Nothing happened. Six, January, 2014
you get support. Are you the guy that's in the media every time,
telling us there's two scientifics taken hostage? We have him
come tomorrow to Aiden, 10am come alone.
She comes to Aiden the next day, 10 o'clock in the morning, waits a
while in the car, and then he gets called to come to a certain place
the moment he walks. Remember, he doesn't know who they are. We
don't know took the people the moment they walk in his welcome
message to us, we are al Qaeda, and you know what we capable of.
But we had a plan.
We took all the pictures of everything that we did. You're
talking to terrorists, and you're showing them feeding schemes,
hospital, whatever, nothing to negotiate with, and I was not
going to bring it to ransom. So he sits down there, and they allowed
him to communicate with me once he was talking to them, and he said,
I said, Watch the body in
body moves. Watch the face, watch the emotions. He said, Look, it
sounds friendly at the moment. Okay, what do you want? We want
this. You got a man in the moment. You want to be more woman. She's a
mother. She's got children. She needs to go. They said, Okay, you
can have a $3 million so
he said, we don't get ransom. Show them the pictures we we said,
we've done more than $3 million a worth of work in this country.
This is benefit your family and your children and your
grandfather, so they just look at him like that. They said, Okay, we
have to talk to the elders. We'll get back to you. Come back
tomorrow.
Come back tomorrow. Nobody meets him. He sits in the car the whole
day. Come back Thursday. Give us $10,000 I said, No, not even $1
phone back a little later. Maybe we'll give you free. Maybe we
won't give you free. Maybe we'll release her. Maybe we won't
release her, maybe we'll ask for money. Maybe we won't ask for
money. So anyway, talking about
suddenly, they tend to come 10 o'clock at night on a Thursday,
they blindfolded eight guys from guns, put him in a car, and they
go into the middle of the desert.
And one, just before 12 o'clock, he sends me a message. He says
they release in johandi, I said, But yonder doesn't know who you
are. How she going to know how safe she is? Because what happens
quite often, a tenant group takes you and sells you to something
else, and they put a markup, and then that person sends you to
somebody else, and they put a mark up so you never know where you're
going. So I said, I need to talk to Yolandi. She doesn't know me
either, but I can talk as a son of an Accenture, hear me, my voice.
So he tells them, I need to talk to Yolandi. They read at 10 to 12,
6789, on on July, on January 10, I get a call, and the man just says,
Pardon. And he gets rely on the phone, and she has been afikas
VSD.
So I told her, I'm Doctor suriman vastly kernels. I said, in free
state, when they took the mother and the father, the children were
at home. So after that day, she didn't know whether children were
taken captive or not. So I told her, No, your children are safe.
They were the house. The government took them, they put
them in a flat, and these are your family members in broken thing.
They kept the car. They
kept on the point they released when they took our town, she was
heartbroken. Does she come home? Does she stay to.
For Pierre,
they passed your land on to Anas, and they tell him, when they tell
her, you have eight days, $3 million otherwise we give you
peers added a box.
It's a long story, but this is the beginning we got we will be on the
sixth of December. 2014
we secured pier release, no money. He was coming home. I used all the
tribal leaders to put pressure on al Qaeda to say that you're
crossing our territory. You can't cross our territory if you don't
release pure pokey. They agreed that same morning, the American
labor forces went in
and in the Shut up, bought pier, cocky and looks under the American
hostage. Both died. He was coming home. We had
secured his hostage. We would have to get Stephen McGowan out. We
would have to get the guy from Sweden. They will come back to me.
He shot it out. I mean, we were involved in someone's hostage
situations in Somalia also.
Thank you.
If you elected the president of South Africa, what would you do in
your first 100 days? Thank
you. I was an
elected president of South Africa, I've set about putting up a budget
for infrastructure great in this country. Bring about social
cohesion. Make sure there's better management systems in all
government facilities, many hospitals, schools, and making
sure I invest money in personnel, because a country can't run
without personnel and skilled personnel. I invite all the
Souther veterans who left the country to come back safely, to
come back and work great opportunities. I need skills. I
need experience. Hospitals are falling apart five reasons. They
don't have management, they don't have maintenance, they don't have
enough healthcare workers. They don't have enough medical
equipment and medicines and supplies and infrastructure is
falling apart. Those are five things you have to fix up in our
hospitals, schools, part of some of the problem all over. Increase
the security in the country over the market for for for tourism,
for but make it safe. Put more people in the police force, and
are shut down departments in the university, across several
departments in the university, that are not productive. I can't
have children studying for four or five years and six years, their
parents will do a lot of debt bonding the houses, paying for the
cars, bonding money from the from the company, and they can't pay
back because kids are taking a dead end course. When they come
out after five or six years, there's no job, they get
frustrated. They get disillusioned. I would say the
country need these jobs, doctors, nurses, dietitians, pediatricians,
paramedics, urban petitions, preference, other doctors,
paramedics, OT, physiotherapy, special learning skills. We need
accountants. We need managers. We need people's electricians,
plumbers, woodworkers and put people in that kind of field and
teachers. 2000 teachers died during the covid more than the
medical workers. There's more children in school, but there's
less teachers. So we'll do infrastructure upgrade, put in
more schools, more classes, more teachers, more specialized
teachers to teach the kids. I train hundreds of psychologists.
Universities have a policy. Most of them take 21 psychologists, 21
students to do masters in psychology, seven, educational
seven, counseling and seven clinical psychologists. You can't
have seven clinical psychologists or counseling psychologists, with
an entire country is suffering from some kind of mental disorder,
from covid, from loss of loved ones, the police, the healthcare
workers, the teachers, the kids, the parents of lost the children
and children of lost parents. We need to train psychologists. We
need socially
impacting jobs. So you put in 20,000 policemen, you're fighting
security, and it's a job. You put in teachers, you're teaching. It's
a job. And classes teaching kids. You're putting healthcare workers.
It's saving lives, and it's a job. I direct it towards that kind of
stuff, and then I reignite textile industry. We kill the textile
industry by body from China. We support the cotton farmers and get
the cotton farmers going again. We'll have 1000s of jobs in the
cotton farmers. We have textiles locally. We'll support the local
economy. I reactivate the leather industry. The lender industry got
killed if it takes 1000s of jobs, hundreds of 1000s of jobs.
Thirdly, I support farming in a big way. The more people learn
farming, it's labor intensive, it's job creation. It supports
18.2% of agriculture in the GDP in the country. And I do massive
infrastructure projects to put people in the construction
industry. When all this happens, the tax base will increase. More
people will pay taxes, less people will be on the social grant
system. I'm already speaking to medical aid societies and private
hospitals to reduce their prices so more people can get onto
medical aid. We can put in another 10 million people on the medical
aids, and at every level, which means 10 million people more are
not dependent on public health. It takes the pressure of the health
system and as.
The other things that you can do, eventually, the taxpayers will
increase. More people have jobs, more money will come in. We fix up
more things. And number one, of course, we're going to the police
services. Now we could be going to, we're going to find 60 dogs.
The dogs are trained in search and rescue. They train in final
criminals, in drugs, exposures, animation, and whole lot of
different things. And I was joking the Police Services. I said, the
number one thing we gotta fight is corruption, and I need to trade a
dog that can smell corruption.
That dog I prefer to find any amount of money. So those are the
most important things we need to do to save the country. As part of
the plan, wait
till the guy, Where's the guy asking the question?
You? More question.
Thank you
so sir, I wanted to ask during times when you get sponsors and
that the government gives you things that you need to hand out
to the communities. How do you ensure that corruption doesn't
take place? How do you ensure that everyone gets what they deserve?
Everyone gets what they're supposed to be getting during
times like the kids are in floods and covid Because that's where
corruption was happening, like a lot. So how does the organization
make sure that everyone gets what they deserve? We're 30 years in
the business, we have networks on the ground. We work with councils,
we work with community leaders, we work with religious leaders. We go
to every site ourselves. We meet the people ourselves. We identify
them ourselves as the people themselves. Choose the recipients,
and they will say, this one, not that one. They all have vouchers.
They all get the same item exactly. So there's no
discrimination. So everybody is selected by the community
themselves. So when the day that we come, there is no unrest, no
friction, no discord, because they chose the people. And it's
verified by the Councils themselves and the community
leaders and the religious leaders. So in that way, we've never had
one friction in 30 years old delivery, and nobody complained
when it took the pass up, because we did it to ourselves. There's no
corruption. We don't give stuff. And by the way, government doesn't
give us anything. We give government things. It's the other
way around, right? We deliver the things ourselves, and that's why
there's no issue.
So I have to go. There was this game, provisional Commissioner,
Provincial Police Commissioner, is waiting for us. We got a meeting
with them in a management now at nine o'clock and I moved into a
positive light. Thank you.
And we have a question that I would really just like to thank
you. Dr, Simon, I think you are truly an inspiration to all of us,
and not just thanking you for taking time out of your day to be
here, but also all your human humanitarian work across the
world. And I think I can also speak from the pupils that I think
you've shown us that we can really serve unconditionally with what we
have and do what we can with that you really are.
Thank you. Make sure you guys two years of covid time. Catch
yourself an extra work. Do your best. Learn well and some others.
Thank you.