Imtiaz Sooliman – The Directors Event 2022 , founder and chairman, Gift of the Givers

It's wonderful to be speaking to directors of companies and people

interested in the well being of South Africa. Thank you very much

for this invite. Before I go any further, I need those, the

audience, to understand the ethos of gift of the givers. I didn't

get up one morning and say, let me form an organization. See what the

needs are, draw a list of founding principles, get a group of people.

No, it never happened like that. Gift of the givers has a spiritual

basis, a spiritual teacher who commanded the formation of the

organization.

This happened in in Turkey on the sixth of August, 1992

I met a spiritual teacher the year before in Turkey, I was back

taking 92 at 10pm on a Thursday night, the sixth of August, the

spiritual teacher was sitting in the corner of the room. I was the

other corner. He makes eye contact with me, and eye contact

heavenwards and then in FLUENT Turkish. I don't understand a word

of Turkish, but I understood every single word that he said, he tells

me, my son, I'm not asking you, I'm instructing you to form an

organization in Arabic. The name will be walkful wakifi, 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. This is an instruction for you for the rest

of your life. And remember, my son, that whatever you do is done

through you and not by you. This was a spiritual connection. I told

you. I don't speak a word of English or Turkish, but I

understood every word of Turkish, he said. At some point I asked

him. I said, 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.

I told him, You gave me this instruction. What does it mean?

What am I supposed to do? I'm a general practitioner in private

practice. I have three surgeries in a place called Peter marisberg

in South Africa. Am I supposed to do? What you want me to do in

weekends, public holidays, after holidays, school holidays, well

and what you told me one line you will know

for 30 years, I do know what to do, how to do, when to do, what

not to do.

The moment I walked out of the place that same night, my

inspiration, it came to me respond to the civil war in Bosnia. We

were talking 32 containers of aid in August, 92 another eight

containers in November, 92 and in 93 we designed and delivered the

world's first containerized mobile hospital, a product of South

Africa's technology. Worked in tutorial, the first of its kind in

the world, and took it from Africa into Europe. Those three events

guided me that gift of the givers, in essence, was going to be a

disaster response and intervention agency. Everything that we do

after that will be around disasters. Disasters being the key

focus, we have 21 different types of projects. Got 21 projects, 21

different categories of projects, and each category has

subcategories. We started off with intellectual disaster. We then

built from tents, blankets, food and medicines. We took in primary

health care teams, trauma teams, post op, rehab teams, trauma

counselors, search and rescue teams. Took in stuff for dogs,

specialized equipment for medical and surgery and rescue. World

hospitals supported agriculture world homes provide provide 10s

blankets and medicines. And by that point, we were the most

complete disaster agency in the world. No other agency in the

world does all the above at the same time, we the only guys in the

world that as the years passed on, you know, we in November, 2016

I cut international marketing, not the projects, only the marketing,

because the media locally were focusing too much on international

projects and didn't know what was happening locally, and the country

needed to.

Know what was happening locally. In 2017

came the first big local intervention that was nice enough

fire at that point the country then understood the capability of

gift of the givers. We send in two lady managers who control the

distribution and packaging of 20,000 food parcels like a

ShopRite gave us a car park in Arizona to do that. The local

people came with Bucky as at forklift to help offload the big

trucks that were coming in. The local people got together and

assisted our teams and managed all of the local people to do those

food parcels, hygiene packs, distributed blankets, sanitary

pads and diapers. We then sent support for the firefighters.

We've provided meals for the firefighters twice a day for the

entire period. We brought in specialized medical personnel and

advanced life support ambulances and advanced life support

paramedic teams to move patients from nice hospital to the other

hospitals. We then people then asked and said, look, the animals,

our pets are hungry. So we brought in pet food for cats and for dogs.

And then somebody came and said, the elephant in elephant Park is

hungry. The wild elephants in a bush are hungry. The cows and the

sheep are hungry, because there was a drought here before this big

fire came. And the drought is still on right now, provided for

the for all those categories. And then a man walked in and said, I

need sugar. And I said, don't you get sugar? He said, No, I didn't

get but it's not for me. So I said, Who's it for? He said, it's

for the bees. And I was stunned. I was shocked about bees eating

sugar. For further explanation, he said, because of the drought, the

plants that bees eat on saliva were destroyed. A fire destroyed

300 beehives. Each beehive holds 75,000 to 80,000 bees, which means

that 22 million of the cape honeybee was destroyed. He needed

sugar because there was no plants, and the pollen, nectar substitute

was far too expensive. We funded the new 300 new hives, money to

regrow the plants, money for sugar, or we provided the sugar

and money for a nectar substitute. That project is now fully

functional. It has been a source of research, and many, many school

and university students have gone there to understand bees. The Cape

honey bee is the most versatile in the world. It is deployed and

deployed, which means that if the honey bee dies, the queen bee

dies, the other bees can remanufacture a new queen bee.

That's how the versatile and resilient dead bees it had to be

saved at any cost. In the same year, we intervened in Sutherland,

the drought there was killing the sheep. Count 440,000

the ship count eventually dropped to 31,000

you couldn't afford to lose those merino sheep, one of the best

sheep in the world. You couldn't bring any other ship that would

survive. The merino sheep had developed an environmental

intelligence, knowing which plants to eat and which ones are not to

eat to survive, we took in millions of rands of fodder and

truckloads of support, and eventually, January this year, we

supported our team members, yanisaki, who put up a special

palette producing machine it has fortified with nutrition at very

low cost, the cheapest in The country that can be provided to

the farmers so they could feed the sheep, not in the open field, but

in an underground in undercover, controlled warehouse, where

animals will not attack the sheep. For the first time since 2017

ship count is starting to rise. Farmers having more ship to sell,

more wool to sell, and upper numbers are multiplying and is

starting to take on more labor as part of our responsibility. We try

to expand the reach and benefit the country in many ways. In the

same year, 2017

the disaster management called us in Beaufort, West Water at the

water system will collapse. There was no water. Nobody could find

water. We sent in our geologist, doctor, and we found water to

drill seven boreholes to push the water through the hamka Dam, down

with gravity, into the city, into the reservoirs and support the

city. We got involved in Day Zero in Cape Town in 2018

brought in 300 containers of water, in 300 containers of water

from Joburg at Durban, by ship and by road, we drill bore holes in

Cape Town. And people need to understand, Cape Town is not

Western Cape. It's part of the Western Cape. It's not the only

part of Western Cape. The lots of suburbs on the outside, a lot of

rural areas required support in terms of water and drilling of

balls. We did that. 2019

came our intervention in Makanda, and we're still there, and we did

again to this month. As we know, the dam levels have dropped

substantially, and it's in a serious problem right now in the

Eastern Cape. We got involved in Makanda for.

15 boreholes, including three in the university, seven in y net,

where the water plant is in saps at the settlers monument, where

they have all the conferences. And also what the SPCA. We put in

those balls, we put in filtration plants, over a million Rand worth

of filtration plants. Put in pipelines to send in water to the

different areas and use our boards to load water tankers to support

support different areas in Makanda. We've been doing that

since 2019

and in other parts of recent Cape came 2020

covid hit in a big way, and to get into government hospitals to

provide services. It's very, very difficult, too much of bucharocy,

too much of red tape, but we broke through no paperwork, nothing in

writing, no request. We delivered essential items for covid to 210

hospitals nationwide, PPEs, pulse oximeters, target non contact

thermometers, scrubs, high flow nasal oxygen machines, CPAP

machines, video, adequate scopes, medical supplies. We upgraded

hospitals, put in beds, put in mattresses and blankets and linen.

We supported the payment of paramedic staff to assisted

hospitals because the healthcare workers thumbs were dropping, they

were dying, and hospitals needed support. They were flooded and

could not manage a patient count. We put in 10 teams of testing, and

we had mobile teams throughout the country, even testing sports

teams, rugby teams, soccer teams, cricket teams, and doing mobile

testing for for schools, universities all over we had teams

dedicated to that. And as we were busy with that, when the lockdown

came, the first year, challenge of hunger became visible in the

Eastern Cape in june 2020

we were in a place called pedi and we saw the people who came for the

first food parcels in that area. And my mother came and said, thank

you very much for the food parcel. Please speak to my children. They

are. They will tell you the taste of every plant in this area. For

the last three months for survival, they've been eating

plants. That is a story throughout the Eastern Cape. The hunger

expands throughout the country. Children and Adults have been

eating tortoises, visits, even cats, to survive. Our teams

witnessed at the dump sites. When the drum trucks came, children ran

to the dump site to scavenge and find whatever they could find to

eat. Then malnourished, hungry.

They would, she would, we would see them putting their fingers in

a peanut butter bottle, turning it around, put their fingers inside,

scooping up and eating whatever little grams they were in there,

we saw them eating from a jamtin serrated jam 10, which carries

infection and danger of getting cut. But they were desperate. We

then supported 100 soup kitchens, besides delivering 1.2 million

food parcels and at the soup kitchens itself, children will

come to the front of the queue, and some of them would say,

please, I won't take too much. Can you give me some for my father, my

mother, my brother and my sister? They are hungry at home. I will

eat too much. Children became martyrs. They sacrificed so the

family, family members could eat. These are the qualities that South

Africans need, the quality of selfless service of children,

leading the example, not looting, not corrupt, not greedy, sharing,

having golden heart so that others can survive. Our country needs

four essential principles, spirituality, morality, values and

ethics. We say government is corrupt, but corruption starts

from the corporates. We need to own that fact and understand that

we have people within our systems that are part of the corruption

that that 10 people with higher money and kickbacks that inflate

prices. In the end, we all suffer, our families, our children, our

extended families, grandchildren and the future generation. If the

country is totally destroyed, none of us going to benefit. It's time

we take this seriously and change circumstances around at the same

in the same breath. I must keep all credit to corporates. For the

first time in 2020

when the pandemic came, corporate CEOs started overriding the CSI.

To be blunt, most of the corporate CSI don't have a clue what's going

on in the country. Then appointed to do some small projects, take

the register, get the bebe certificate, get a tax

certificate, do some PR get some publicity and some coverage, but

you don't address the real needs of the country. So when the CEO

started calling and said.

It. What can we do? How can we save the country? That's true

leadership. And from that day up to today, the CEOs from all the

top corporate companies in the country have been talking to us

and making the interventions and speeding up processes so there's

no bureaucracy. And getting things done. We needed to upgrade

hospitals. We needed to get food parcels to the people. We needed

to drill more balls to provide water. And in that way, the

response has been phenomenal. Then came to July unrest in KZN in 2021

there was an even bigger awareness, bigger need, a bigger

haste from corporate companies, all of them said came to the same

question, is there hope for the country? Can South Africa be

saved? What can we do? But I need to run away. I need to leave the

country. I need to take my money and I need to pull out. No, they

came with a different mindset. Yes, some people want to leave,

but others mostly said, We want to stay here. How do we fix the

situation? And the support came even bigger, that wasn't a

political address, that wasn't rioting, that wasn't about hunger.

If it was about hunger, Eastern Cape would have burned first,

because hunger in Eastern Cape is endemic right now, as we speak, in

the hospitals in Eastern Cape, children are dying of

malnutrition. We're part of the government to support their

support for malnutrition to provide 45 items of food of a

peanut butter paste and a product called Genesis, a Norwegian

company has just sponsored us 15 containers of the enriched

nutritional peanut paste, which is valued just over 21 million Rand.

And a special thank you to all locals for the cash funding and

items and kind of food items coming in so that we can make a

difference to the lives of the people. And that brings us to the

main point. Why is there unrest? Is it because of hunger? Is it

because of the political chaos within the ruling parties? Is it

because there's a huge gap between the rich and the poor is the

people. Is it because the poor people want to have the things

that rich people have no yes, this a part of it. But the most

important part of all this is that when people have no dignity, when

everything is lost, when they are totally humiliated, when they see

no hope, then there's no moment to what a person can do in that

situation when the child cannot get a transport to the hospital,

cannot get medical care, dies from a condition that's treatable,

should have never have happened is hungry, falls out of latter

Indiana School does not have proper teaching, and education

does not have proper incentive or support from teachers or from any

other part of the country, people lose hope. If corporates want to

make a difference, if South Africans want to make a

difference, this is the time. It is time to give hope. It is time

to be spiritual. Their spirituality, morality, values and

ethics. It's not only about investing through NGOs. It is

about changing our own personality and whole character. Let's help in

every way, and this is where the most important intervention needs

to take place. Unfortunately, we can see that all the corporates

have been asking that question. People have been asking that

question, how to help and how do we save the country we had can

create jobs in the construction industry textiles need to be

brought back to South Africa. We need to cut out, you know,

importing from China, tfg, Mr. Price and world was are now

looking at an expanded textile program in South Africa. We need

to bring back the leather industry. And jobs can be created

in a huge way. The building construction industry jobs can be

created in an important way. And how do we make all this happen? We

need to, and people are scared to say, how to intervene, how to

engage government. We lose the tenders, we lose the contracts.

It's important for us to make the statement, and we make that

statement boldly, repeatedly, at quite some time. Now, the country

does not belong to the government. The country belongs to me, you and

60 million South Africans. And it is our responsibility to fix the

country ourselves. We need to understand government itself. 7.2

million people's taxes cannot serve 60 million people whilst

there is government corruption, this only once there's corruption

government? Everyone in government is not corrupt. Everyone is not a

bad person. There are lots of good people in government wanting to do

things a good way. We are brought we obstructed. A lot of them don't

have the skills how to do that, and we can hold hands collectively

as a country, and do it right. There is a problem. Fix the

potholes ourselves, as many people are starting to do to South

Africa, fix the voyages ourselves. Fix pipes ourselves. People are

providing they're opening their balls and providing water to come

places inside Durban, where there's a water crisis. Right now,

South Africans are coming to the party, and we each keep coming to

the party. People teachers are saying, I'm retired, I'll offer

free.

Tuition. That's the kind of Ubuntu that we require in our country,

where people can make things happen at a low cost, or for free,

or to share. And if we do that collectively, we will change our

country. Because there is a mindset, there is a narrative

change where people want to do something to save the country.

Yes, make money. Nobody is stopping you from making money,

but do it the right way, the honest way. Give better salaries.

And if we can provide medical aid programs for all our staff, as far

as possible, we are engaging the medical aids to see if we can

provide packages at a cheaper price so that more people can fall

into the system of medical aids and private health care, and those

who can't

be part of that system, collectively as the country, as

corporates, as government, as ordinary people, as those who are

earning high salaries. Let's let us upgrade the healthcare system.

Spend on more personnel, provide salaries for nurses, for

registrars, for interns, for a few years, until our final situation

within government corrects itself. We lost too much of money with

state capture. What currency fluctuation or covid 19, loss of

trade and economic collapse over over the last two or three years,

it can get fixed up. It just needs our support for the next two or

three years, I think I've covered all these central aspects

important for us to rebuild our country. Thank you very much. You.