Imtiaz Sooliman – Why I started GIFT OF THE GIVERS
AI: Summary ©
The speakers emphasize the importance of community and sharing stories to create a healthy society, serving people in a spirit of love and compassion, and finding a way to make money and get money by incorporating the company in their team. The success of healthcare workers during the pandemic, including high costs of homes, expensive cars, and expensive houses, is also discussed. The challenges faced by the healthcare system in South Africa, including the loss of jobs, expensive cars, and expensive houses, are also discussed. The success of the pandemic is attributed to their belief in their values and actions, and the importance of finding a way to make money and getting money, incorporating the company in their team, and following the system to find a way to get money. The leaders of the war take on the role of a war and survey the train, and they decide to go ahead with the plan.
AI: Summary ©
My teams delivered food parcels when people want top of them,
because of lockdown, food parcels and soup kitchens and going to 210
hospitals with speed, delivering PPEs to and going to the cupboard.
Watch fearless. Monday to Sunday. Nobody got sick. They work. They
butt off. And when the the beta, the strain came. Mm, in November,
2020
and people in Transkei and KZN were dropping dead in the car park
and in the casualty and in the ambulance and in the taxi and in
the house when there was no oxygen machines, my teams delivered in 48
hours, 900 oxygen machines to every single hospital in Transkei.
God says clearly that if you don't help your neighbor. Please don't
waste your time coming to pray. I don't need your prayer, because
the essence of prayer is to bring build a sense of community, and
then sane in Islam has floods. She says, Dr sulaman, I'm the Minister
of this department. I'm so embarrassed to call you. I can't
release money to help those own peoples. Because of our systems,
we can't release money. Can you please help? Can you go there? I
said, Madam, we already there? Yeah, you're a minute too late.
Yeah, it doesn't matter. King, King David studio podcast. Once in
a while we get royalty in the studio, and I know he'll say he's
not, but to us and to rest of South Africans and to probably
most parts of the world, they regard him very highly. We managed
to get hold of founder of gift of the givers cheese, even saying
that he was like, I, I've achieved something really big in my life.
Doctor, MTS, Suleiman, in this in the in our studio. How are you
fine? David, nice being in your studio. This is pleasantly a
surprise to see this just beautiful rooms, this beautiful
building. Thank you so so much, because we always talk on the
radio. You and I, yes, it's such a such an honor. You are probably
one of the most accessible, and I say this accessible, but it
shouldn't be accessible person out there. Why is that? Why do you? Do
you become so available to to so many media platforms and so forth.
Media have built gift of the givers. Yeah, you don't forget
people who started off in this from, from your humble origins.
They stood with you, they supported you, they carried you.
And now if everybody knows you to walk away, it's, you know, it's
just unethical, yeah? And of course, take the media part out.
They're also human beings. They would further their careers. They
ought to make progress. They would have the right story. They want to
make the editor happy. It's part of their growth. And when they
can't get that, they get upset. They get disillusioned, you know,
and especially when people look we, everybody in the country wants
to follow us. And as as part of that, journalists were up and
coming, you know, community radio, community newspapers, we don't
turn anybody down. You don't. Most seasoned international jealous are
the most upcoming Junior journalists get the same
treatment, yeah? Because tomorrow you don't know that junior guy,
how senior is going to become later on in life. And it's so
true, eh? And you've seen people grow from junior to become editors
and so forth, yes. And also, the journalists are not, you know,
like business, the journalists have become our family. Mm, we
have events for them. You know, they travel with us. They stay
with us. They call us. They say, We need a story. They are
sometimes they ask for personal advice. They ask for guidance. So
it's the journalist fraternity in South Africa has become one big
family that's so so true and international media. Is there just
as much appreciation of your efforts as it is in South Africa,
I would say there's no appreciation. But you know, the
international media hasn't focused when you go to the actual disaster
in South because you're in South Africa and your own media, you
need your own media to cover you. I'm not interested in
international media covering me. Yes, they cover me if I go to a
disaster site. But in the last three years, we haven't gone to a
disaster site because our teams are required in the country for
covid, but almost 1800 doctors dying. You can't take people out
of the health system. It's just criminal to to forget your own
country and go somewhere else. That's so we supported people in
other countries for their own disasters, you know, as sending
financial support, but we didn't send teams now with covid settle
and, you know, trying to get the health system back into place, and
the country we may consider the next disaster, depending how big
it is. You know your story is, you find a lot of it, of you know
where you've been and the things you've done, but something that
stands out for me and interesting. Just before you walked in, we were
talking about where all of this started, not necessarily the big
message that you got. It's the family the background. I have a
feeling as humans that even from early on, our calling rings in our
heads. When we're very young, we're not even aware what it is
until a moment like the one you've had, which you'll tell us about.
Happens, let's go back to purchased room. Let's go back to
the family. Let's go back home. What type of setup was it? What
were you born into when you when you opened your eyes and there was
this family around you? Who are these people? In the old days, we
all lived communal living. Yeah, all the sisters, the brothers, the
Mother, the Father, the uncles, the aunties, all lived in one big
yard business in the front house in.
Back, everybody was one big family. And just as an aside, as a
country, we need to go back to that model. Our kids are getting
lost. Children are left untened, attended. Teenagers are losing
direction. In the old days, if somebody was losing direction, the
neighbor or the friend down the road would say, You know what, I
don't think your child is doing the right thing. And the mother
would say, give me one shot. You know, not to be for corporate
punishment, but I mean, it was meant in a way, put in right, you
know, true and and there was so much of love and acceptance,
because everyone said, we're all one big family. Your child is my
child. Today, you tell somebody your child is out of line, they'll
say, man, your own business got nothing to do with you, and then
the child gets lost. And we need to go back to those values. And
those are the values that we really enjoyed in potterstrom,
everybody was in the same house. We ate together, and it was beyond
the house. The whole town was one family. So if there's a wedding,
you can't invite everybody to the wedding, but the whole town comes
to help in the wedding. That's true. The funeral, everybody gets
involved in the funeral, and people leave and they don't feel
offended if they're not invited, because I understand it's it's an
expensive business. You can't invite the whole town all the
time. Costs a lot of money, but the friendship never breaks. They
play sports together. The kids go to school together. They do
business things together. They go to functions together. That's the
kind of life in which, you know, you learn values about each other.
And then, of course, we had a business where black people, our
customers, and my grandfather would say, You know what? They've
always supported us. And somebody would come and say, Look, I can't
pay my account, but I'm hungry. My children need some food, and my
kids need school uniforms. And my grandfather will say, give it to
them. And it says, We won't get paid. And
then the same people come back and say, somebody died in the family.
We need money for funeral. And he would say, give it to them, we
won't get paid. But he says, over the last so many years, all that
family have been supporting our business. That's true. So it's
time to put back so that was their way of charity, to write off debt,
and sometimes above that. Then when my mother came, you know when
this room, of course, she and my father were divorced early. She
went back to Durban, and she was also very charitable. She didn't
have much means, but she started an employment Bureau, and she
said, the best thing you can do is find people jobs. It gives them
dignity, empowers them, gives them self sufficiency, and this the
best thing you can do. So she created an employment Bureau, and
she found a lot of people jobs, and a lot of people prayed for her
amazing then she told me, you know, the people that really need
help don't come out to ask. We need to go and find them. So if
you can afford only one food puzzle, let's just do one food
parcel. We make a difference to one person's life. So on a regular
basis, we used to do that. So those conversations were always
around you. It's always an Ultras part of the religion, you know,
it's a very integral part of the religion that you got to give
charity. Charity doesn't mean money. Yeah, it means good words,
removing something from the road, helping people, assisting, giving
good advice. And of course, the highest form is then if you give
the money and you give of yourself. And so it's God says
clearly that if you don't help your neighbor, please don't waste
your time coming to pray. I don't need your prayer, because the
essence of prayer is to bring build a sense of community that
you need to know what's going on in the next man's house, but is a
nosy neighbor. It doesn't nosy neighbor, but to see if they have
difficulty, if they don't ask in a very quiet, dignified way, look
into the and have them and or build them, because that's what
neighboring neighborliness is all about, and those are the values we
need to go back as a country. In your observation, you've been
around a while. You're not a you're not a 30 year old. You've
seen all these changes. What do you what do you think has happened
to our that communal setup that that you speak of? How did we lose
it? In your observation, the new generation has lost it. Yeah, the
old generation still tries to maintain it. When I see disrespect
for the young, from the young generation to the old generation,
it really upsets me, because the old generation gave their pension
money. They gave their last blood. They worked hard to see the new
generation go to the schools, go to university. They sacrificed
everything. And a lot of the young kids forget where they come from.
It's about, how do I get extensive, expensive car, get the
most new phone, the branded clothesy
cars have girlfriends. You know, everybody needs to get married,
but don't forget where you came from. You are there, because those
old people any better. For so many years with apartheid, they went
through all that hardship and difficulty, the least you can do
as part of spirituality and humanity is go back to your old
your grandfather, your parents, and say, Thank you. What you've
done. They're not asking for much. They just want you to visit them.
Bring an occasional gift, sometimes food parcels. Even in
difficult situation, like a lot of people are in Transkei send some
money off. Yes, the older people do send money home, you know, but
the younger generation, they need to come back to that. It's not
everybody, true? Yeah, it's not every a lot of people are very
caring, you know, but we need to bring that kind of values back to
all and it's across all religions and all races and all communities.
It's not specific to one group of people. Do you feel the ship has
sailed? Is there still time? There's always hope? Yeah, there's
always hope. Because people, well.
Okay, we got, you know, we had the remainder. Covid was the best
reminder, sure where people's people who were affluent, who had
the money, suddenly realized, Hey, I'm going through this difficulty.
My shop is not busy. People are not coming. My family members
died. I can't get oxygen. Hospitals are not available.
What's happening to poor people all these years? If it's like
this, what's happened? And I actually had people coming to me
for donations and saying, you know, we we gave you money last
year and the year before this year, we haven't earned one cent
in three months, but we're going to give you four times the money
we gave you last year. Amazing from our savings, because we now
appreciate what other people are going through. And from here
onwards, we will always bear in mind the difficulty of people who
have heart shrimps and and it's the last three years has been the
best years in our history. What covid, what lockdown, what unrest,
what floods, what affected the economy? People have been South
Africans have been generous, so the boat has not sailed. The fact
that we are generous, we've got good hearts, we want to learn. We
are willing. And there's a new pattern that a report has just
come up, young people are starting to donate. Mm, across all groups,
really? Yes, young people are. And the other interesting thing is a
large number of black females are becoming major donors in the
country, which is just August, so well for our society? Yes, that's
amazing. What's happening to the black guys now that we're here
this moment. Gens, you're not donating. Something is wrong with
you? What was Daddy selling in the shop? General dealer, clothes and
groceries. Those are the common items. You know that? School
uniforms, fancy clothes, winter stuff, summer stuff,
some, some material. And gross is the big items, maize, rice, oil,
sugar, and then tea and all the other stuff and, well, just a
range of the stable stuff that people bought. Do we call it a
typical Indian merchant? Yes, yes. We wish to be called general
dealers. Yes, and were you an active participant in Yes? In the
family business? We all learned, and I think a lot of my skills
came from there, when I think of it now, I learned management. I
learned financial planning. At one point, my father gave me my own
shop once I was at school. Yes. He said, on a Saturday, you can run
that shop alone. And that shop used to sell stationary during
opening of school. Yeah, I could make my own prices. I could order
my own Oh, and I could serve the people. And I learned a lot of
skills. And people would come, and you would talk and engage with
them and learn about their school and life. And you try to beat the
best, best prices possible, competition everybody's competing
against. So the prices come down and and then after hours, we used
to pack the shops, you know, organize the stuff, stock, control
when the stuff come, make sure you take everything and you did that,
all those skills are using gift of the givers amazing. Well, now
you're talking much bigger budgets, but yes, it's the same.
Skills are the same, yes, and of course, committed to your family
because they're earning and they're paying for all your stuff.
So you have to play your part. That's and and you engage with
people from different race groups, you understand that their
difficulties, where they come from, and even our customers, like
I said, the journalists, our family, the customers became our
family. We knew them by their first name. We knew who married,
who, how many children they had, where the child went to, who
passed away, who lost their job. It was like one big and they also
had nicknames. We all knew the nicknames of everybody. That's how
we build a relationship. Interesting. Hey, purchase through
when you look back at it, back in those days, and now it was most
parts of South Africa, I've almost decayed when you when you go back
home, what do you find now, a lot of my old people have passed on.
Yeah, a lot of my family have passed on. A lot of people have
left it well, they passed on from all over. Things have changed. The
new generation has gone God studies and went away to the
cities like Joburg, other parts of the country. It's just not the
same. You know, you don't have that spirit of togetherness when
you used to do things, the weddings, the funerals and all
together. Yes, it's there to some extent, but not to the extent as
before. There's no children going to the sports fields. Mm, like we
used to go. The parents used to play tennis, soccer and cricket.
The kids used to come and participate in it. Took part in
school sports. Took part in all activities, always part of
community. The new generation doesn't do any of that stuff. It's
about phones, cars, outing, and you don't see much sports. The
only sport you see is those kids who play sports in the school,
which is not so much, go to the township, almost nothing. We used
to go to the grounds. We should take the bus. We should take the
taxi. We go far. We have competitions, you know, all the
different divisions and under eight and under 10 and under 12
and calls and juniors and seniors and all that kind of stuff. In
terms of, I did ballroom dancing,
because we used to participate in all these things. Wasn't that big
in toweto? No, I'm a Pretoria boy. So it was, it was, it was big. It
was big in most townships, actually, like all sport
participation was big everywhere. Yes, because as a child, I did, I
did martial arts for a week. They beat me up, and I realized it
wasn't for me. I tried soccer. It wasn't very good. I ended up doing
ballroom dancing. Can't believe I revealed that.
Yes, you don't trap anybody.
That's what it was. And the size of your of your family, you
describe it as very, very big. So there are quite a lot of people in
your setup, siblings. What are we talking when I said big family, I
meant like the grandfather, his brothers, yeah, sisters, they were
quite big, many. And then my father and his brother and
sisters, and then me and my two sisters were only three. Okay? We
were the smaller part of the family, yeah. And then my father
remarried when my mother left, and so I had three siblings from
there, and my mother remarried and had one brother from there, yeah.
So we were seven of us, right? And then, of course, in our kids, I
got six children and nine grandchildren. So no and all and
all the other disciplines set up is still intact. So the setup is
in tech, and the grandchildren are all are coming. So more and more
you seem to be celebrating this, this nice growth in the family as
well. Yes, you know. And to me, of course, when people worry about
the country, and people say, Now, must we leave? Must we go and we
see the children coming, and we say we're not going anywhere, you
know, we need to stay here, and we need to fix this thing together.
And it's a call upon all our groups in the country. This is our
country. Let's stand together. Let's fix things together. Let's
work in the interest of each other, because there's more joy
and more progress in doing things together than fighting each other.
The idea of, you know, within Indian communities, is always a
conversation about being a doctor and all of that. It's a it's quite
a big calling, and which you answered quite well. Who inspired
that within the family? And another doctor? Okay, he passed on
last year, and he he had a double role. He was a very good GP,
always smiling after hours, weekends, anytime he came with a
smile, he did house calls. Treated the whole family knew your
history, knew everything about you. He actually even delivered
me. I was delivered by his hands, wow. And I was his, his patient
from from day one, from day zero, you know. And the other thing he
did is everything here in Ramadan, when we have the fasting month, we
have extra prayers at night, and the person who reads the prayers
has to know the Holy Quran, my memory, you know. So a lot of kids
got that gift. So this guy had that gift. He was a doctor, and he
knew the Holy Quran, my memory. So every year the community lawyer
used to look at him to do the prayer. So he was a spiritual guy
and the physical guy for the town. One year, he said he's tied he
can't do it. So the town said, Okay, they'll get subject from
outside. The night of prayer came the first of Ramadan, and nobody
came from outside. Oh, he just stepped up to the plate. I'll do
it. And it was a example of, you know, of what humility, service,
professionalism is. Then left Potsdam. He came to Durban. He
studied. He became a pediatrician, okay? He became a professor. Oh,
and he passed on no and last year, and actually met his daughter two
months ago, you know, so and he was a great example, a really
committed, dedicated doctor. Did he inspire you in words or just
what he was doing and you saw him as just the example? You don't
have to speak. Yeah, his body language is good enough. Just his,
his, we call it character, you know, behavior approach, you know,
just the way it comes away, smiles, the way it looks at you,
his bedside manner. And you look at this guy, you see you. And also
he's, he's skilled. No need that. He was a good doctor, yeah, and I
looked at it, I say, you I want to be like this guy, except the
religious part, I think I manage that
too much, too much. But other parties I can do, you know,
talking about role models, I guess it says a lot about the society we
live in now. Because, you know, you go to the townships and where
I grew up, people we used to look up to, where people who were
driving fancy cars, and we didn't know what jobs they did, and half
the time they were thugs. Yeah, so there's something to be said about
where you ended up in your life, particularly your career as a
doctor, it's largely because there was someone around you to emulate.
And I sit now and wonder, and something that you spoke about as
well, how we lost so much as a society. Surely, we've lost that
as well, this role modeling that's so important, we're pursuing a
false kind of agenda. You know, to look at role models, expensive
cars, is that life, materialism is not life. The best form of life
is, is dedication and helping people. And I can see it now, how
people appreciate, you know, the kind of because, let's put it
another way. You could have been in the situation of the very poor
people. And what would you want? You would want somebody to come
and see you and help you and assist you and pick you up and
give you an opportunity. That's it. And I find it a bit insane
outrageous that people market expensive cars, the lifestyle
where they've traveled, the type of house they have when there's so
much poverty around them. People look at that and think my
situation is so bad, my heart is so so I can't be like that, but
they've pushed you in the wrong interest. A very important
teaching, what you don't spend is not yours. So I can have 5
billion. I can give you 5 billion today. How many lifetimes are you
going to need to spend that money? Yeah, lots.
You can have five houses, but you can only sleep in one. Yeah? Gonna
five cars you use one. Other four batteries are gonna die you need
you're gonna eat too much food, you're gonna get sick, you'll end
up in hospital. So we always say, Earth in moderation, no harm,
nothing wrong in earning. But always remember, a share for the
poor in that earning of yours. Help pick somebody up the joy of
that you can't understand unless you do it. It's like me, it's time
to explain to somebody how beautiful something is they won't
understand until the experience itself. And I've had that
experience on my medical teams. Yeah, I said, Let's go out
journalists, journalists have traveled me, and they say this
thing is life changing, not the story, not the story, the fact
that what they've seen and what they've experienced and how they
encountered people outside the story was life changing. It. It's
people tell you, we found God when we traveled. We found
spirituality. And it's so much, so much so that every mission they
want to come and they don't do the story now, they want to distribute
the stuff themselves. They want to be doctors who want to be the
story? Yeah, they will be depart from the story and young
generation message to everybody, we mustn't look at wealth as a
source of success. We must look at values, ethics, spirituality and
morality. We've seen what happened in government circus. You got big
money. Do you want to emulate that steal from the poor, steal from
the coffers, and see poor people go. Is that your concept of life,
or would you like to have an honest job earn for your family?
And if God blesses you, what more good luck? Yeah. But if you got,
we have a teaching that if you safe in your house for the night,
for the night, mm hmm, have something to eat, and you got good
health for the day. You've got everything, just for the day, for
the day, for the day, like the bird, yes, another bird goes for
the food for the day, shelter, yes. And you got health for the
day, food for the day, a secure house. You got everything. So God
is showing you how you have to be grateful with little things, yeah,
because there are people that's like paradise for other people,
those three simple things, because there are people who live for
years and years and years without a house, without food, without
opportunity. What debilitation right now, people waiting seven
years for an operation in this country? So we have that kind of
stuff. Always be grateful, and always think of somebody else you
talk about something that South Africans would struggle to
identify with,
a simple life, relatively cheap life of having breath is good
enough. The fact that you're able to wake up and there's a loving
family around you should be good enough. You're talking about a
South Africa and a South African who is very materialistic in their
in their state of mind. We've become that type of person. We
glorify those who drive bigger cars than everybody else, who have
bigger houses, and that's why we fake that life as well. Yes, and
we've become that person. I've had many people sit on that very
chair, and I would ask them this question, what happened to us? And
they say, poverty will make you do crazy things. Our history is such
that we had a system that deliberately held you back? Yes,
and once you get a chance to run, you're going to run faster than
everybody else. At least try. I don't. I don't have a problem with
that. Yeah, I have a problem. You forget where you came from. I'm
saying run, fly, also jump. Yeah, you get the opportunity to grab
your three hands, take it and run. But don't forget where you came
from. Don't forget the families. Don't forget your friends and your
neighbors. You want an opportunity, create an opportunity
for somebody else to do the running and the flying and the
jumping. No problem with that. There's no harm in any money. But
do it honestly, do it the right way, and always remember, pick
somebody else up with you.
Yeah. Well, there's a lot to be done in South Africa, a country of
such poverty now, so many problems. What preoccupies you?
What keeps you up at night? I don't stab at night, but when I
say that, let me qualify that, yes, problems don't keep me up.
Okay? I stay up because I'm a person that sleeps hours at night,
not because I've got problems. It's just because I'm a
hyperactive guy. Yeah, and I'm driven by the need of the people
in the country. And I see the hardship, I see the difficulty, I
love it, because that's what I do. 365 days a year. I don't do
anything else. I'm not a guy that likes holidays. I don't like
outing. I just like to be in the field, yeah, and you can see the
difference you make. What drives me is the patience of the people
that are suffering. They endured the difficulty and hardship
always, but faith, especially to old people, but hope that
something will come one day. And I remember our teams delivered
something in Queenstown, an old lady in a rural area standing on a
walking stick, you know, holding it up. She picked up her hands at
almost sunset time, and she said, God, you didn't forget us. You
send the people to help us. I know you won't let me down. And that's
the kind of sentiment, not only this country. We get it outside
this country also, where people with all the hardship and
difficulty have so much of faith, we can't let them down. No, and
that's why we call upon everybody's got the means. Let's
pull this.
Country. We owe it to them. And one of the reasons why I like to
give back is I'm not on the other side. My child is safe, my family
is safe. You know, we're all safe, and it's a means of gratitude. God
Almighty, you give us this. These are your servants. These are your
people. We're going to put back. You don't have to be doing this.
There's a moment in your life, a story you've told many, many
times, how the calling came through to you and you answered
the call. Share the story with us. Gift of the givers is not my
organization. I didn't get up one morning. I say, Okay, today I
think I was forming organization. Give it a name, get some members,
find a constitution, 1234, and five. I'm going to do.
I was told about a spiritual teacher in Istanbul, and in August
91 I landed up there, yeah, and I met him. It was post Gulf War, and
I saw people of all religions, all nationalities, people which don't
even believe different countries, Americans, Russians, Europeans,
Africans, Australians, Canadians, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Muslims,
black, white, everybody. I found it very difficult to understand
this, because the Gulf War had polarized the world so much into
different groups, nations and civilizations. And I'm thinking,
How is this possible? You're all here. You're not fighting, not
screaming, they're not shouting with each other, and everybody's
embraced with love. I said, Is this the dear life I love this? I
saw the spiritual teacher. I fell in love with him. The moment I put
my eyes on him, I went back and matomie. I need to go back there.
So I landed back in August following August again, 92/6
August, 1990 2:10pm. Thursday night. The spiritual teacher
finishes the religious programs suddenly lifts his head up, makes
eye contact with me and looks heavenwards at the same time, oh.
And he says, My son in FLUENT Turkish. I don't understand the
word of Turkish, but I understood every single word that he said, My
son, I'm not asking you, I'm instructing you to form an
organization. The name in Arabic will be wagful wakiffin,
translated 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. Oh, serve people but love, kindness, compassion and
mercy and remember the dignity. The dignity of men is foremost
some when somebody's down, don't push them down, hold them, elevate
them. Wipe the tear of a grieving child, cares the head of an
orphan, say words of good counsel to a widow. These things are free.
Don't cost anything. No. 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. Yeah, because you're dealing with human dignity,
human life and human emotion, not because of ego. He went
on to say, my son, the most important thing to remember that
whatever you do is done through you and not by you. There's no
place to say, I am somebody I do. No place for that, no place for
ego. I told you, you spoke in Turkish and understood. And I
asked him, How is it that when you speak Turkish, I understand, and
other people speak Turkish, I don't understand. You, said, My
son, when the hearts connect and the souls connect, the words
become understandable. Wow. I've experienced that many times. I
asked him, Okay, now you told me all these things. What does it
mean? What am I actually supposed to do? I'm a doctor. I've got
three surgeries in a place called Peter Merrill in South Africa. So
what I'm actually supposed to do? Told me one line, you will know,
oh no, for 30 years, I do know what to do, how to do, what not to
do, what to touch, what not to touch, how to manage, how to
intervene. It just comes to me, and I just know exactly what to do
with I do, yeah, wow. Went to immediately after thinking, Oh,
this is too much. The statement you said, I have a session at
home, I have I have employees, I have a family to feed. Didn't that
unsettle you that this is just too much? The pre trip, I saw the
quality of this man, my love for him brought me back. And whatever
he was going to say, I knew it was going to be good. I was not I
didn't have to vet him. There was something about his spiritual
aura, and I knew whatever he said was going to be work out fine. My
father was distraught, and he said, Are you sure you studied for
seven years? You're a doctor. What's going to happen all that
learning and all that teaching? And I said,
I know I'm doing the right thing. And many years he passed on, nine,
2016
many years later, he says, I admire your courage and your
faith. I wish I had what you have, and I'm very proud of you so in
the end, not in the end, but you know, later on in life, yeah, he
said, I can see what you're doing for the people of this country in
the world. I endorsed you fully. I support you fully. That's the
right decision you made in your life, interesting, but, but, but
you were fine with it. From the word go, from the minute you
started, you knew that this is something that you actually.
You are fine with this uncharted territory, because we have a short
life. We live 80, maybe 100 years. If you lived long, it's relatively
short relative to how long the universe has existed. So your
stint in life and your contribution to society is one
that we will remember for years. And most of us live a life that
does so little, and yet you took on this huge responsibility
without even doubting surely, at some point you said, maybe this is
not such a good idea. No, I never felt that. You know, I because, as
I said, You will know, and that was a test of my faith. And I knew
because that faith was so strong, that's the reason I do what I do.
Yeah, I'm always sure it's gonna work out. No English challenges. I
expect challenges. That's a part of religious teaching. God says,
you will get grief. There'll be difficulty, there'll be
challenges, there'll be obstacles, there'll be thorns. But you will
succeed if you do things the right way, the sincere way, no ego, no
fame, simple, just pure service for the right intention, you will
succeed. It may take long, but you will succeed, and everything has
worked out. You know, religious teachings become is a very big
part of your life. You make reference to it a lot. Is it such
that if it wasn't there, maybe some of these big decisions you
probably would not have made? No, it's a integral part of my life.
Yeah, the spiritual teacher is from my religion. I have to follow
somebody who follows.
When I saw my religion, I'm happy with what I saw. But of course, he
teaches you that you embrace all religion. You embrace all people,
because all religions from the same source. The God is the same,
the name is different, right? So on that basis, because he gives
the broad outline, but you need to know then, the principles, the
values, the teachings, all the laws, which is in the book itself.
You know, I haven't done all the rules. I mean, I'm not this
qualified guy in religion, but the basic stuff of human caring, of
honesty, of transparency, of dignity, of not stealing, of not
hurting somebody else, or not breaking somebody's heart. Yes, we
make mistakes. You know, humans, we go, we fall off the track,
somewhere along the line. But you jump by when you come back online.
Others you own human so you appreciate that, and you fix
yourself up if something goes wrong. But religion is absolutely
the basis of everything paramount in your life. You have solved so
many human problems. You know the list is endless. When you started
what? And I'm not really talking about some of the first things you
did, what was, what was immediate in terms of human challenges that
you felt this we need to address almost immediately. Well, because
you said, you will know the moment I walked out of that place the
sixth of August, it came to me respond to the civil war in
Bosnia. Now that's the crazy thing to do. You don't even form an
organization. Now, if you haven't done a food parcel, you haven't
done a soup kitchen, but you want to go into a war zone in another
country, yeah, but that's the teaching that came not even 10
months later. The same month, in August, same month, I took in 32
containers of aid into Bosnia. In November, I took in another eight
containers of warm items, and in two. In 1993 we started designing
the world's first containerized mobile hospital. We are proud of
it because it was African technology built in Africa, world
first state of the art. CNN filmed it, and they said the South
African containerized mobile hospital is equal to any of the
best hospitals in Europe. And that was built in 93 and we took it
from Africa to Europe to say we believe in our country and our
continent, and from there onwards, as things came in front, somebody
came to the house and said, Look, while I'm talking to somebody,
then wife would come and talk to my wife. Then my wife would
realize, oops, there's domestic problems. There's kids that are
naughty, there's some other kind of issue. So she said, I think we
need to start a counseling service. So we do all the
training. We bring the people. And takes two years we set up a
counseling service. And every project we set up expands and
grows, support groups, going out, outreach teams, all that kind of
stuff, trauma counseling. It just keeps growing. Every project we
set up grows. We've got 21 different categories of projects.
Then somebody came and said, You know, I'm an old lady. I got to
speed school kids. They're very hungry. I need some stuff for a
soup kitchen. So we start one soup kitchen, and suddenly 818, 1900
preschools come, and we expand the program. And then a hurricane hits
in pen lay in 1994 Christmas Day, and the floods hit Peter
milesburg, even their floods in 1995 Christmas Day. And that day I
was our car was packed. We are about to leave for the Burg. The
rain came, and the good thing happened is my house was just done
up, and there was something wrong with the drainage system, and all
the water came right into my house. And I said, You know what?
This is happening? What has happened on the other side? My
wife and family took all the stuff out of the car. We're going to eat
in there. We're going to have these people for Christmas because
all the food parcels are gone. The same thing happened the year
before, in a Christmas day in Penland, Christmas Day the
following year in floods in Edendale. And we got involved with
the communities. We took the kids what to learn, to see how to do
stuff, pack a parcel, take the stuff in your car and deliver it,
because we didn't have big, big trucks and all that. It was an
evolution, of course, what's now computer, then, is just.
Just no comparison. So we did it, and it was those kind of things
that God showed us. Okay, now you respond to a disaster. Now you
give a soup kitchen. Then somebody would come in that's there. You
will know, yeah, you'll talk and it comes to you. I mean, covid
came to us, yeah. And now what happens? The municipality from
calls and says, You got a water issue Day Zero? Can you come? So
we go and we put 45 balls. You get called from Sutherland. We spoke
on the radio about, yeah, dying in Sutherland. So we send in foreign
the bees are dying in nicer after the fire. So we send in 300
beehives, 30 tons of sugar, money for plants, and money for nectar,
pollen, substitute and support a research center. So everything
comes to us. It's Makanda. There's no water. The university is going
to collapse. So you drill balls. So whatever challenges come, it
becomes a part of an ongoing project. It doesn't stop there.
Then school kids, okay, stop to prison. You know, lot of houses
destroyed. Kids got no uniform, no clothes, broken. Buildings. Okay,
send the stuff in. Let's support mercy pole. Big fire, 1800 people
displaced. They need stuff. As an aside, what I found in recent
times, when we respond to a disaster, the thing that stands
out strongly, people say, Don't worry about everything else. Just
give us food. I'm thinking the fire was only two hours ago. Are
you strongly? And then we understand that these people are
living in those systems have been hungry for a very long time. And
you say, You know what? Don't feed only the five victims. Feed the
neighbors too. Because, whilst they agree, show the other guys
angry too. Yeah, when you bring a food parcel, not for the victims,
only for the neighbor too. And that's our policy, not from now,
it's for some time you know, when you describe and you literally
touched on probably 1% of the stuff that you've done over the
years. You You You make the impossible seem so easy. And even
when you speak of them, you speak of them as, yeah, we did this, we
did that. We did that. Do you sometimes look at it and say, How
the * do we pull this off? Because it seems so big. If there
was a disaster now in my street, I would struggle to make big
decisions that you make every day about a country that you've
probably never even been to. But to be fair to you, I'm a disaster
specialist. I'm doing this for 32 years. That's Well, that's true.
You were not that at some point. No, but I learned from the first
day, as a teacher said, You will know from the first day I knew 85%
of what I know today. I learned at the first mission, a war. Mission,
everything, international transfers, customs duty in
diplomacy, passports, visas, war, infection, safety, security, all
that kind of stuff, you know, getting the right goods,
appropriate stuff with, you know, I learned a lot of that in the in
the first place. Mission, yeah, there's a reason why the
inspiration came go to Bosnia, yeah. So as the days years ago,
you'll be ready for everything else. So yes, it looks easy, but
it's years of experience, and I have good teams. And we go for the
best. We get the best hydrologists, the best drilling
teams, the best building construction teams. We right now
in Charlotte, we're doing a 15 million upgrade at our I was there
today. It looks incredible. Wow. The guy from the Premier's office
was there and he said, You What is this? You know, world class
quality, yeah, dbsa Development Bank of South Africa. I saw the
plans and saw the stuff. They said, You guys are in another
league altogether. So even we are an NGO, we put status in an NGO.
Do you think this only business can do we? Because the teacher
said, Whatever you do be the best. Yeah, you do. We don't have a
compromise on that. The quality of the food we give our staff eat the
same food. Yesterday, a journalist made a comment. A disaster
management guide said, You guys are eating the same food that you
gave me. The people on the ground that we won't give them what we
ourselves won't eat.
Wow, you know I'm I, I've spoken to you many times on the radio.
I've read up on a lot of stuff that you've done, and when I hear
you speak of these things, and that's why there's so many awards.
But one of the first things you say when, when you react to the
awards, there's a team. It's a typical Nelson Mandela comment. I
didn't do this alone. And you say that a lot, even when you were
awarded, what award was that I found a social justice champion
last year? Yes, exactly. Almost immediately, said, I'm not alone
here. There's a huge team. Give me, give me a sense of this team
that you speak of before that. Why do I say that? The teacher said,
first, it's done through you, second, and not by you. Yeah.
Secondly, he said the eye can't do the work of the ear, the ear can't
do the work of the head. It can't do the work of the heart. The
heart can do the work of the hand, and can't do the work of the leg.
But if all these things don't function, the body falls apart.
That's true. So in everything that we do, my teams are all those
different parts of the body. They work together, they gel together,
and they committed together. You want to know about the teams. They
are not people who do this for a job. They do this because it's a
calling. Because you want to do this for a job, you're going to
run away, you know, I'll call you on Christmas Day, just as you get
home to about to eat your food parcel. I need you back Christmas
Day. Floods in Edendale, floods in in my in Soweto in 2010 my
daughter was getting married. I was.
At home, I had my house full of guests. My offices were closed. My
daughter's getting married the next day, and we got a call of
floods. I saw it too. My teams, I was my guest when the house and I
was outside coordinating my teams and bringing them back to work,
wow, and they come back with a smile to work. To me, the greatest
example of dedication is covid when everybody was scared, when
medical guys were scared. In hospitals, my teams delivered food
parcels, when people want top of them, because of lockdown, food
parcels and soup kitchens and going to 210 hospitals with speed,
delivering PPEs to and going to the covid wards. Mm, fearless,
Monday to Sunday, and nobody got sick, they work, they backed off.
And when the the beta the strain came in November, 2020
and people in Transkei and KZN were dropping dead in the car park
and in the casualty and in the ambulance and in the taxi and in
the house. When there was no oxygen machines, my teams
delivered in 48 hours, 900 oxygen machines to every single hospital
in Transkei. They drove at night. And of course, as part besides the
teams, we have to look at the other side, the CEOs of the
hospitals. Then say the staff at the gate was wait for it. The CEO
of the hospital waited himself the machine, 1011, o'clock, 12 o'clock
at night, and took it and put it on the patient. And we saved every
single life on every single machine. Amazing. So, and then
that's the permanent stuff, the medical teams, the search and
rescue teams who come and go. Those are the volunteers, yeah,
and there's a core group of them, you know, and they put their hand
up for every disaster. Now you need to understand that these guys
got very expensive homes. They got very expensive cars. They live in
the most expensive suburbs. They've got highest life they
travel on business class when they travel with us. You want to sit in
a cargo plane? Yeah, we're going to sit going to sit in some small,
dingy plane. You want to sleep outside with gunshots all over the
show and yes, switch, no functional toilet, no proper
water, no place to stay, nobody to protect you. You're on your own.
And they take this with their strides. And they come the same
guys put their hands up over and over again, we want to go back. I
told you in the beginning, the journalists have said, and they
said, we find God. We find spirituality in these missions.
And when we go, we don't give, we get, we receive. When they see,
they look in the people's eyes and how the people receive them. I
went to Syria.
It's Arab culture that the guest has to be looked after. So I go to
this camp. It's freezing. I'm not the guy that likes winter ice
cold, you know. And this child is walking around on you with an
underpants, little girl a vest, no clothes, and she comes to me with
a bowl of olives. So I tell my host, like my guy, the guy, what
is this for? So he said, you could eat it. I said, this will haven't
eaten food of the war. If I eat this child's olives, what all of
this child could have to eat? My friend, that's not your problem.
You are the guest. You're the guest. You're going to offend the
child if you don't eat the olives. David's getting stuck in my
throat. Couldn't eat it because you felt bad. I fell I'm taking
this child's food away. Yes, and I was in Yemen, and the lady was
fighting and shouting and screaming. It was prayer time at
Ramadan, and we went to many houses, and at prayer time
suddenly lies. There was no food in any of the houses, just like I
said, everything was dark. So the lady screaming in the streets. And
asked my guy, why is the lady screaming like this? She said she
screaming at all the other neighbors to say that you her
guest? Oh, no, because you are foreigner and you are guest. So I
said, You know what? This lady's got nothing in the house. It's
fasting time. If I eat her food, what she going to eat? Yeah. So he
said, Look, there's a letter of the law in the religion says You
mustn't lie, and the spirit of the law is you don't break a heart. So
which one said God's it's prayer time. It's time of fasting, the
break. Sorry, we'll delete it in the after. But I'm going to lie.
So I tell like I tell the lady I've been invited for supper by
somebody else. I can't break that trust, not that invitation, so I'm
very sorry if I come back next time I will eat with you. Which is
a big lie, yeah, but spiritual teacher said the spiritual law is
more important than the letter of the law, because you didn't break
somebody's heart, and that's the essence of religion. You don't
break anybody's heart, jeez, man, I listen to you and I
and I wonder, I wonder about US South Africans, because the
Spirit. If we were to multiply you at 60 million times, we would have
a very different country. You may not necessarily, every day see
yourself as the Savior, but there are people who look at you, and
that's why they call you to say, Do you want to come here and help
us here? There are people who look at you as a savior. And if we
embodied the spirit of Doctor MTS Suleiman on a daily basis, we
would live in a very different country. Or, let me say this the
spirit of gift of the givers. Then let's, let me divorce it from you
for one second. We would live in a very different country. How
difficult is it for us to achieve that state of mind? Or is our
system so contaminated? No, no, it's coming. I've, I've seen, you
know, it's there's a lot of.
Just that the other guys don't get the press and the media and the
courage, because they're not big. There's a lot of people who do a
lot of good in this country. I was at an event recently. It was like
recognizing women, you know, and my wife got an award at that
event, but every woman who came there had a beautiful story. Hush.
Took care of preschool people, elderly people. Some yet trouble,
took found money, took people to hospital. May not be big things,
but for that person that you have, it's the biggest thing that has
happened in their life. They don't need anything else to happen. So
the schools want to emulate I've been invited. I've done 151 talks
this year. Jeez. And everybody,
people want to know about the story about how to give hope to
people. How can emulate you? People say, how can we follow you?
And of course, take the medical teams, those who ordinary people.
And that number has multiplied into the hundreds, where, because
we had all the hospitals now, the guys in hospitals are saying,
please use us. We are part of your team wherever you want us. And
there's a new spirit coming the country right now, my biggest
emphasis is health, because there's nothing more important
than health. And covid showed that to us. Private hospitals are
saying, okay, we can give you awards for free and giving you a
theater for free. Well, bring the patients from the public service
and you can do them, but they can't stay here for more than two
or three days. You need to take them back to Doctor. That's fair,
of course. Yeah, you can. We want to try to encourage our own
private doctors to do the procedures, if not, you bring your
teams and come. And we did some. It wasn't a private hospital, but
we did something in Robin, in Kimberly, my team members head of
surgery in hospital. And it says, as much over as all we are
overworked, there's people battling here for weeks, waiting
for and for months and for years, waiting for catch up surgery, and
which has been delayed because of covid, yeah, and before covid,
too. So I said, What do you need? He said, look, we've got surgeons
who are willing to work after hours, no extra pay their
hospital, surgeons, the public servant doctors. I said, That's
admirable. He said, we've got, we don't have any status, and we
don't have scrub sisters, but we got the theaters, we got the
consumables, we need some consumables, and we got the after
case stuff. Can you help? Yeah, I just put it my list, but in five
minutes, so I said, I'll come through five scrap sisters, five
editors. We only did a 10. We put them on a flight, we send them to
Kimberly. In 60 hours, they wiped out 71 operations. And more and
more people are calling. How can we do this? We want to expand the
program throughout the country to do kind country to do catch up
surgery. I'm talking to the CEOs of hospitals, private hospitals,
medical aid societies. How do we all get involved? So to answer
your question, just from that one sector, everybody wants to make a
difference. I spoke at the teachers event. The teacher said,
you motivated us. We retired teachers. We all want to come
back. We want to do something. I spoke to the saps. You know, the
launch of this near the festive season 656, the minister asked me
to come and speak there. We finished off and other places the
cops were retiring. Said, we don't retire anymore. We want to serve
the community in honest, integral way. Wow. So it is coming that the
change is coming. The mindset change is coming. More kids, I
told you, youngsters, more and more youngsters are donating.
Black females are donating. You know, other other groups of
elderly groups are donating more than in times of hardship,
difficulty, lockdown, covid, the donations are still there. So the
good, the inherent goodness, is there in the country and it's in
it's there in all of us. It's across race, religion, color,
yeah. You know, whereas several unrest within 48 hours, the same
groups that were affected each other were working with each
other, providing food, bottle, water, clothing, you know, helping
each other. It built a nation, and the same areas that got hit with
the looting got hit by the floods, yes, and the people embraced each
other. They saved each other, they helped each other, they supported
each other. We must not allow politicians and people to cause
conflict between us and give them a clear message, you are a
traitor. Yeah, anybody who tries to destabilize the country, you're
a traitor and an anti patriot. You're still money. You're a
traitor because you're robbing the poor people. We we as community,
should not allow that to happen. Should silence any politician, any
counselor, any group that wants to cause friction between us. Have
you had challenges with with the political class. No where you
struggle to gain access and no for no other reason but to destabilize
you. No, they won't even try it. Yeah, because we got the support
of the entire country. But besides that, government knows that I'm
blunt, I'm straightforward. We fight in the day, we're friends in
the night. And who calls us every time there's a disaster, it's the
government. That calls us, nobody else, yeah, and they know they
have to turn to us, but I say emphasize, there's a lot of good
people in government. Yeah, there's a lot of good guys in the
political parties. There's a lot of good guys in the civil service.
There's a lot of sovereign tickets everywhere who want to do good. So
we did not to show anybody up. We dare, because the people need us,
and we got the skill, and we can do it. In fact, we renovated so
many hospitals during covid, but no memorandum of understanding, no
agreement, nothing has department is so difficult to work with, and
they just look the other way. And, you know, and, and when people say
it's gift of the gift is coming. Ah, don't worry, let them do it.
Fine, no problem. Wow. Do you sometimes, with your typical
attitude, almost South Africans, that there's enough money in
government, there's enough resources in government. We are
not the poorest country in the world. We actually quite, quite
well resourced. Do you sometimes feel, but they should be doing
this themselves? There's there's money for this. Why are we doing
this? Do you sometimes have that feeling? As most South Africans
know, you need to look it in context. You see, the tax base has
been eroded. Lot of high net worth people have left the country. 7
million people's taxes can't look after 65 million people. It's
impossible. So it's not who the government is. It could be
Australians, Germans, Americans, Canadians, could be running the
country. They're gonna have the same problem, because if you don't
have a tax base, you don't have the resources to fix things. If
you have a civil unrest, you have floods and floods again, and you
have covid, you don't have the extra budget to pay for the normal
things that you're supposed to pay for. Now you're 200 billion and
behind, and NSA eats your billions of rands. Nscom meets your
billions of rent in fuel, not their prom, not their fault that
it is diesel price went up. You know, of course, the government's
failure. It should look good. It has failed in maintenance. And
that's the general rule that all our certificates maintain your
house, maintain your car, maintain your building. We should all do
that. We learn from the past. We can't stay in the past. Now let's
go forward and fix the things and do maintenance so they can't do
it, and that's why they need the support of South Africans who have
the means. We're not doing it for government, we're doing it for the
sake of people. But allow me to have on this point, because it's a
typical South African conversation this where you know for sure there
was money available for disaster in the floods. I remember reading
the story that said a National Treasury said, yeah, we've
allocated money for this. We're just waiting for administrators to
come and sign it out, and they haven't been here. And you go to
KZN, and I happened to go to KZN three weeks after disasters, I
remember some of the roads were still closed, and they said, Yeah,
nothing has happened. Not a single thing has happened. Treasury says,
Yeah, money is available, but nothing has happened. And I don't
want to use the C word corruption. It's a part of our system, and
that's why I say. It wouldn't be surprising, and I know you
wouldn't do that for you to say, but guys, you should be sorting
this out, and you don't get to that point. Why is that? Several
reasons. One, Kalman is entangled in its own systems. And I've told
it to ministers face to face. I've engaged them. I said, your systems
are a mess. You guys got the best constitution. I see you guys, it's
not their countries, it's our country together. But I said,
since you guys are in charge now, you guys have got the best
constitution. You got the best ideas, the best policies, but your
systems of unlocking, you know, making. I mean, let's take an
example. A minister calls me, amdan Sani in Islam has floods.
She says, Doctor sudhaman, I'm the Minister of this department. I'm
so embarrassed to call you. I can't release money to help those
own peoples. Because of our systems, we can't release money.
Can you please help? Can you go there? I said, Madam, we are ready
there. Yeah, Afghanistan, you're a minute too late. Yeah, it doesn't
matter. So, and the problem is, because of this, checks and
balances, the disaster Act allows you to break all rules. So I don't
understand when they declare national disaster, why they don't
act instantly. And I always tell government, there's three words
you guys don't understand, urgency, emergency and disaster is
not in your vocabulary. Yeah, when you declare a disaster, you can't
be responding nine months later. No, the point is, actually you
can't have a three week meeting. No. And the problem is now, who's
going to get the money, and you know, who's going to benefit from
and who's getting the contract? They need to change that system
and find a far more efficient way, because at the end of the end of
the day, while you're haggling, the poor guy is still sitting in
the community hall. There's still hundreds of people in a small
place, or 15 of them in a family man's house, which is a recipe for
family unrest and, you know, and disturbance in the family, and a
lot of social issues. So you got the money find a system to improve
it. And those are the kinds of things you should be looking for.
You know, looking at you're more worried about who the new
conference guy is going to be, who the New Deal leaders will be,
who's going to be the next councilor. How to step aside.
Don't go outside. You must make a distinction that, yes, you are a
political party, but when it comes to country, the country comes
first, not your political party, because your political party has
couple of million people. The country has 65 million people, so
your allegiance is to the people, not the party. Yes, you don't go
wrong. You follow the system, but your party can't cripple you to
the extent that the country becomes dysfunctional. But that's
where we are now, but that's what we gotta fix up. Yeah,
I think Doctor MTS for Minister of disaster. There's a there's a
portfolio for you, Minister of disaster, doctor, MT, Suleiman,
the size of your organization, surely it gets a lot of respect.
That's why you would get a call from a minister. That's why you'd
get doctors would say, I'm coming. Yes, without a difficulty. Have
you had times earlier on where it wasn't as easy to get people.
To to rally people are around you. No, we it's a scale. So when you
start off, you say, Okay, let's go beyond that. Be behind that.
Whatever you do, you have to be realistic. Don't take on something
that is far bigger than you and have expectations that will
destroy you. So I have a policy if I'm going to an earthquake, my
focus is only one street. What happens on the other side is not
my problem. I can't save everybody, true, but the street
that I take, I must make sure that I do a damn good job on street.
And somebody has to take street two and street three. If I
finished it one properly, I try straight through, yeah, time and
resources and help somebody else. If I had to do all three streets,
I'll do nothing. I won't help anybody. Wow. So in the same way,
when you start off the mission, it's the first one, the first
medical mission we were trying, okay, let's take seven guys to get
seven guys easy, because you studied with people. They came,
they came back and stole the story. And the next time, there
were 14 guys. The third mission, there were 30 guys. The fourth
mission, there were 60 guys. The next mission, I can have 400 guys.
Yeah, more than you can even like, you know what? The best part?
Yeah, I get calls from guys in Australia, wow, Canada, UK,
America, parts of Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong. We've seen
what you guys do. Can you please incorporate us in your team? Yeah,
I said, but I got too many South Africans want to go. I can't put
anybody else inside here. Yeah, gift of the givers is probably one
of our greatest exports. You know, we've done well with Trevor Noah
and many other actors and actresses and Charlie steron. You
can't we, you can't, for a second, not acknowledge that gift of the
givers great product that South Africans export. And whenever we
say South Africans export, essentially we're saying yourself
and your team, and the respect and the support clearly you get from
everywhere else in the world is probably, as you say, just as much
as you get in South Africa. Am I correct? Yes to so those countries
that know us, it's growing. It's been growing. I met people from
the airport, and then in the airport and came running to me. I
can say they foreigners. They say they know my name. Gives out the
givers. I know everything about you foreigners, right? And the
other thing is, we've had a lot of respect from embassies, especially
in the last two years. The ambassador themselves. Don't say
virtual meeting. Don't say come to me. The ambassador comes to your
head office. Doesn't come to your office in Joburg. We don't have
offices. Doesn't come to our office in Joburg from the embassy
comes to our office in matters, but takes the five of flies and
comes. We had a German, the Canadian. Those are embassies.
These are ambassadors
coming. You're a Europe country, you're on your own, and they
appreciate what we do, yeah. And they've taken notice. The Embassy
have taken notice all over. What's your biggest supporter? Because to
finance your projects is ridiculous. People of South
Africa. Do you know, when you walked in here, we had notes on
our computer, and humility corrected our notes. You said that
story is old. What you have there is old. And we had, I don't know,
I don't know, maybe 15,000,060
6,000,001 66 million, uh, shakes just corrected me there, and you
immediately said, No way. That's like so little
to fund. Really? Ask this, this way. So far, what type of monies
do we talk to talk about that has passed through your disaster
solutions, so to speak, 4.5 billion and climbing on a daily
basis. Yeah, on a daily basis. You know it's happening all the time.
And you know what? As a policy, we don't have fundraisers. We because
you don't have no one that is putting together a presentation
right now to go and knock at someone's door. They knock on
somebody's door. We don't phone anybody. We don't make handballs.
We don't make pamphlets. We get lots of media coverage. So the
only presentation we make is when corporate companies call us and
say, Look what projects have you got? We want something in the
health field. Okay? We want something in the drought field, or
something education field. Can you put something together so we can
analyze it and see how much we can give towards that. And sometimes
you will tell him, but you know what the project you want is not
making sense. Is not workable. Okay? You suggest something, you
know, and that's a new thing, that corporate mentality is changing
towards what's more practical and relevant and effective, and they
quite willingly doing that, yeah, not as a new phenomena. The year
is not even out. Please. Can we have meetings in November and even
into December, right after the 15th and onwards, we want to know
what we want to fund next year? Yeah, which never happened before.
There is that's why I said. There's a mind shift change.
There's compassion in commercialization, where
capitalist South Africa is understanding the value of human
capital from a spiritual point of view and from a compassionate
point of view, and they're taking care of their own staff, first,
and the families of the staff in their areas, and then the rest of
the country, which is a great thing that this transformation has
come, that yes, we can make money, but don't forget the people that
help us make this money. You keep going back to covid being one of
the triggers of this state of mind that we have. It was that.
All it. That's where it all started, first time in my life.
Because I always tell the corporates, you guys have a CSI
division. They guys are not serious. Okay, 90% be points they
take. They take the ticks of boxes. I said, you guys, you guys
are not even touching reality. What else going on in the ground?
I said, but for the first time during covid, the CEOs of
companies called and said, forget all those things. We're not
interested in. All those things. In all those things. In fact, they
said it was done now tax certificates is lasting under
people's mind. The only thing is, our community is in distress. What
do we need to do? How much do you need? Wow. And if one guy calls
me, I say, okay, but when every corporate tells you that, but to
me, the defining moment was 11th, April 2022, this year, when the
flood waters were raising, Rose eight meters in 45 minutes, some
places and the people started to struggle. I'm expecting the guy
for me. I need a helicopter. I need a boat. I need a diver. You
were there in second waiting. No calls like that. You didn't not
one. The only calls I got up till one o'clock in the morning was
from corporate South Africa. Our people are in trouble. They need
help. What do you need and how much do you need? So I told the
guys, are you guys feeling well? So they asked me why? I said,
Since when have you guys stood up at night to give away money?
It doesn't never happen at night. You'll stay up all night to make
money to give away money. That's the first and he said, we learnt
from covid. We saw the hardship, we saw the lockdown. We saw the
difficulty. We went through the difficulty. We now understand what
other South Africans go through. Yeah, and we want to have it's
instant, David, you don't have to make a call the court when a fire
comes. Sometimes we know there's a fire because the corporate has
called us. Yeah, you didn't know where the fire No, the fire is.
Yeah, opportunity.
Wow. This is a tan in the tide, eh, completely. And naturally you
would appreciate this, because this is a new wave, but doesn't
this wave now, saying, wait a minute, I can't handle any of this
gifts that are coming, so to speak. Or you, you immediately
have to put systems in place to accommodate, yeah, we can. We can
do billions more. Yeah, because we know what it's help. We know it's
very simple. Hospitals need upgrade, yeah, schools need
upgrades. We need to put fun kids to become teachers. We need to
find kids to become special education needs teachers, because
there's kids with learning difficulties. They'll never make
progress in life. That's it. We need to fund paramedics, nurses,
what is psychologist? So we can put hundreds of millions of rents
into that, but after they qualify, once the government, that's why,
Sir, give government four years to fix their systems for the next
four years, let's help them. Yes, let's say, Okay, now one corporate
pay for the kids to study, the other corporate will or four
coppers get together and pay the salary. Okay, through a governing
body, post or something that's paid the salary. In the same way,
our biggest problem in health system now is government has cut
the post of registrants. Registrars are those guys who
become specialists in medical field. So if there's less
registrars, it means less specialists, less academic
medicine, less research, poor quality care for the for the
patients. Yeah, burnout. Essentially, our future doesn't
look and that's upwards downwards. There's no teaching, because the
junior kids are dependent on the registrar to train them. While the
registrar is training, he passes the skills on lower down. That's
it. So I make a call to corporate South Africa. I say, I know it's a
very difficult sell, because it's supposed to be the government's
job, but government's got no money. 7 million people, 65
million people to support, look after. It's not possible. Let's
give government four year support. Let's fund 500 registrars. Wow.
Each registrar is 1.2 million salary per year to the government.
We can't give less than the other guys paid in the same one, but I
need a compliment for four years. It takes four years to study. So
you give us five this easy, 500 companies get afford 1.2 million
in this country. Not a lot. Yeah. Can you imagine what it will do to
health system? Each register can see 40 patients a day. That's
12,000 patients of highly critically ill people in one year
from one register, sheesh, can you see them? Just lie to the face of
health. People go back to work earlier, economically active.
They're more positive. You know, a man can say, I can go back to work
to prevent to produce and provide for my family. I feel empowered. I
feel good. The mindset change and the positive energy will come just
from that one investment. We don't have to look at 100 other things
when you take that model and apply it in other areas as well. Yes,
wow. Do you know, something that comes across quite a bit also now
with what you do, because in the past, you would walk into a
disaster, do the best you can and walk out. But I've noticed now
there's you stick around a little longer to try to help other issues
related to post disaster challenges, and what, what led to
that? And when did you when was it? Was it a clear decision that
you made? No, it's all it's all dependent on resources. Yeah, like
I told you, I can only do one street when I go to area, of
course. But when we were small, we only got money for 50 foot
parcels, not more than that. So there's no point going there and
doing all the research. And people think you're coming back next week
and you're never coming back again. That's wrong. So when we go
back now, when we go we have a three to five.
Policy, we stay with the people for three to five days. We give
them their food, the hot meals, and by that time, most of the baby
with informal settlements put in 24 hours, that house is rebuilt,
right? So that's the first thing we do. Then we say, okay, you need
toiletries. You need hygiene. You need toothpaste, you need a
toothbrush, you need a rollout. You need a soap. We need a towel.
We'll give you that. Then. That's why you know Hall. But when you go
back to your house, you will need the mattress, a blanket, some new
clothing will be that you but my kids lost the school uniforms.
They got burnt out. They can't go to school. Okay, we'll give you
that and shoes, and we'll give you the stationery. Then, when I was
in musipoundelli Two weeks ago, at the fire the same place, after a
long time, I walk in the fire, I get a stench of switch, yeah, I go
into the house and the guy is rebuilding and the ground is wet.
So I said, my friend, are you going to put your stuff on his wet
ground? So he says, What am I supposed to do? So I said, How can
you solve the problem? He says, cement. Yes, the concrete brought
a slab. I said, can't you do that? He looks at me, he says, I'm a
poor man. How can I do that? Yeah, I was there. I told my teams
tomorrow, deliver one pocket of salmon to every house. And we did
it. And we brought in building material, and we brought in the
sheets, we brought in the nails, and we said, pull the house. But
as an aside, a message I want to give informal settlements, let's
space our houses out. Yeah, why have the the tragedy of this bunny
and lose you all your life's possessions? Let's set up like you
had Ward committees in old days. Set up informal settlement
committees, Executive Council, and we say in street one, we're going
to build 50 houses, one meter, 1.5 meter apart in every direction. If
one house burns, other houses don't burn. That's true. We keep a
gap between the first row and the second row. A fire engine can come
through, drive through, and ambulance can come so smoothly.
And we say, Okay, once it's 200 in this space, we can't take anymore.
You control crime, you don't allow bad behavior. You put discipline
people, and you say, not more than this is allowed. And this is not a
model that kind of works. I saw it in Saint Albans, a school in I
went to the school, I told the teacher, we put all those balls
out. But you know, informal settlement here, not saying the
informal settlement people are bad, but criminals hide in that
place, and you got no friends here. Informal settlement guys
came out committee members. They said, there's no fence here,
because nobody will steal anything here. Whoa, the school is our
school. Our kids go to this school. We protect the school in
this informal settlement. There's no overcrowding, there's no crime.
People just can't walk in out of here. So you've seen this, it can
work. And then a guy is painting the wall to the school. So I said,
my friend, you're a painter? He said, Yes. I said, like, how much
you charging for this? So he says, I'm not charging for this. So I
said, Where do you work? Says, I got no job. Where do you live? I
live in informal settlement. This is my payback to the school,
because it looks after my kids. We got it in South Africans. We got
it. We just need to apply the system. Yeah, wow. Geez. You, you
know, something that comes across as you tell these stories is how,
how sharp your memory is
about all these things that you've had, you've done live in the
field. Yeah, you don't live in an office storage. Where do you
store? I got big warehouses. Yeah, I got we got 65 vehicles. We got
our fleet of trucks. Yes, trucks. We have water tankers. We have
buckies, we have water trailers. We have vehicles. We're not so we
don't use cars. You deploy. You start with your stuff first. But
let me put it this way. Let's take jagaftain, the damn Titans dam
that collapsed. Yeah, in less than eight hours, I had teams already
arriving from East London, craftinet, Bethlehem, Johannesburg
and Peter melsberg.
That's the speed at which we move. Wow. In mtata, when they had the
disaster, I sent in trucks from craftinet, Cape Town, Joburg and
Durban, and they got to amtata before the disaster management,
which is 30 minutes away. Why
do you do you have a committee of decision makers? What happens?
Say, there's a disaster right now? It's this conversation stops. I'm
the boss. This conversation stops. Basically, you have calls to take.
It's simple. We in my stuff. Don't even wait for me. They already
know. They know. They know the the drill. You know what? It's a
disaster. People have called us. They're in trouble. They need
help. City council has called us. Nobody else is going to do it.
Yes, we're going to respond the guy, they tell me already, they
send me pictures with them on site already.
Wow. And sometimes we're responding to multiple disasters.
The same time that I was about to say, Do you ever have to toss a
coin between design we respond to all and when the cyclone and I
came, we had teams in Mozambique, in Malawi, in Zimbabwe, and we had
floods in Durban, and none of the other normal projects suffered,
nothing stops. The rule is, nothing stops. Is it largely
because going back to where we started, largely because there's a
lot of volunteer people who would just volunteer their service? No,
I don't have volunteers. The only volunteers I have, it's the
disaster teams. Yes, the medical and the search and rescue. That's
more for international disasters. But.
My staff are all full time staff. How big is your staff? 90. Wow.
90. Full time staff. There's the truck drivers, the Packers, the
the social media guys, the accountants, the phone people you
know, and the cop to a whole corporate team that presents all
the reports to to see how we spend your money, yes. And and then to
to the to the funders so they know the transparency. Yeah. And then,
of course, my job is on the field. I do two things. I go around
giving talks and do the interviews. Like, what I'm doing
with you now, yeah? And I'm on site designing responses and
interventions for critical and new disasters, all disaster type of
results, fire. I don't have to tell my teammate what to do, but
they know what to do. You've seen most so they know what to do,
yeah? Like, how Okay, I need to really look at the whole thing.
What's the best options to do? Yeah? Yeah. I design a model, and
then all the engineers, or the municipal they come and sit and
talk to me and say, This is what you're going to do, and we roll
out the plan together. So we fight with the government, but we work
with government. That's Yes, we do together. I like the statement and
not that I appreciate it. You fight with government, but you
find a way through, you know, because you're not asking for for
tenders, you're not asking for a job, you're saying, I'm here, I'm
giving you water. So where do I put it? Essentially, and you
initially, Elia said, you don't struggle to get them to agree to
half of the stuff that you do. They call me gays. And when they
come, even if they don't call us, you know, when we get there, to be
fair to them. They're very grateful. Yeah. And they tell you,
you know what? You know there's no budget, and you know, we got no
help, and you You saved us. They tell you that you saved us, you
helped our people. We really appreciate that. Yeah. And the
lady who has been going over the top right now is the premier of
the Free State. She is singing our praises in every corner of the
province. Wow. Tell it to fix the roads.
When next time you speak to her, I was in fixed back two weeks ago. I
was very upset, because these are roads that I've seen, I know, and
now I can't drive on anymore. What are some of the challenges that
South Africans are struggling with right now that you see on a daily
basis, hunger is a problem and so forth, plus no no jobs,
unemployment, and that's why I'm asking corporates to take young
people in and give them apprenticeships, yeah, besides the
stuff that you got, give them an apprenticeship and give them a
stipend, you know, some kind of money they can go home and look
after their families. But more than that, the money it will give
the guy self worth, let's say guy. I mean, men and women, yes, self
esteem, self worth, dignity, positivity, experience through
ideas, learn from other people and get motivation, then to study and
set it home. It breaks you when there's no opportunity to do
anything. And we need to give these kids an opportunity. And
it's an expense. The text is right enough from the text, you know?
Yeah, it is an expense. Let's give our kids an opportunity, and let's
give them apprenticeships, whether it's in farming, whether it's in
cash register, in the supermarket, whether it's in a franchise shop,
whatever it is, cannot beat a plumber, carpenter. Let's just
take them on and give them the skills. Yeah.
What is your leadership style? No. Macro management. I allow my teams
to do whatever they want to do. Yeah, after they've learned from
you, obviously. And if they're going to make mistakes, I know
they're going to make mistakes. I allow them to make the mistakes
because it's not going to be any reputational damage. It's fine.
Then it's a learning process, and they never make the mistake again.
Have you ever dealt with a crisis of reputational management? No,
no, fortunately, not. No, never. Yeah, because we know in advance
what to sort out, you know, to make sure what they can do and
what they can do, yeah, and when you leave them, you know, they
say, delegate that thing doesn't work with me. When I delegate 10
people, they come with 50 new ideas, and they come with 50 new
projects each. And when you leave them, they get so happy, they come
up with new ideas, the new systems. And quite honestly, you
know what, I think that's a good system. Yeah, in terms of also
management, for the last few disasters that we went out, I
never let the teams. I stayed behind. I didn't go over the first
team. I let the first teams go see what they have to do, implement
the program. And I said, You know what organization is in safe
hands. My guys know what to do. So, you know, should we be hit by
buzz? God forbid, tomorrow, gift of the givers will carry on. Yeah,
yeah, we'll carry on. We've already put since 2017 we've been
putting systems in place. All my guys know their work, so I already
get to hold the things together pretty much. Yeah, and of course,
I'm the face of the organization. Yeah, everybody wants to talk to
me. That's the problem, right? Of course, a lot of my teams have now
been interviewed by media. I tell them, you go to the meeting, you
go to arrangement, you speak to the people, you'll be on the
ground, kind of stuff. So they do that, but just the skills. And of
course, I'm the spiritual link. Spiritual link is very, very
important, yeah, and it's passing on No. And
80% if I drop dead now, 80% of what came down will carry on, no
effortless. Has any family member joined in? Yes, my son. You know
my son? He's He's traveled me lots of times while he was studying
engineer. He put up satellites, first in Syria, wow. And then
suddenly asked he wants to join? So I told him, Are you sure you
want to do this? Because there's no family life. So So doing it now
full.
Time, yeah, and he left that very lucrative job, but DSTV, you know,
and took a major knocking salary. And so when I went to the
spiritual teacher, I said, my son wants to join as a courtesy, I'm
asking you. So, yeah, he told me what took him so long. He said,
You got bigger things coming. And it was 2016 and we can see what
bigger things came. A lot of bigger things. Yeah, the last
three years have been a move. And my wife, of course, she was the co
founder with me in the beginning. Yeah, she's been there from the
beginning. When I'm traveling, she's talking to the Reserve Bank.
She's talking to the donors. They want to know something. She's
talking to the people. She's set up the counseling service. She's
growing that. So she's always been there from the beginning, she's
met the spiritual teacher. She's also, I do know, as a devotee of
the spiritual teacher, so she's been there. You know, it's an
unfair question to ask someone who's done as much as you've done.
If you were a musician, you would have released hundreds of albums.
So it's unfair to say some of your proudest projects, because a
disaster is not a proud moment, but projects that you look back
and reflect and say, you know you glad you've started this. You know
covid. It always goes back to covid. Anything demoralized,
broke, killed and brought hardship and difficulty was covered. You
see, you can only you can talk about how good you are and how
skilled you are, but until you put to the test, you won't know. And
my team support my normal volunteer, full time staff and my
medical teams came rose above to challenge. They came with flying
colors. When the moment I said, on my medical chat, covid Guys, who's
ready, every single guy in that chat put that up hand. You know,
we're sure we are ready. Where you need us, wherever the crisis is,
we're coming. You're not afraid. We are here to serve what the
medical, the non, the non medical teams who deliver the food
parcels, the sub kitchens, the PPE hospitals, all works 365, days a
year. Rain took all the chances, went in everywhere. And of course,
this is disaster that lasted over two and a half, two years. Yes,
it's not a three day disaster. Out of it still carries on. We're
dealing with people who are dying now in China. A part of it still
carries on. So it's the longest disaster, the most complicated,
the most loss of lives, the most challenging, and it has caused a
lot of mental health issues among healthcare workers, police,
teachers, kids, parents who lost their kids, kids who lost their
parents and those who lost their jobs, the fear, the anxiety. It's
caused a lot of mental issues, and to me, it's the defining factor in
how a country responds to a disaster and how people are
resilient and how people are coming out of it. It's and also
it's in my own country, yeah, I think I responded to in my own
country. Yes, we do great deals other countries, but this, we know
we can sit back and say to the teams, we did it. Yes. 210,
hospitals, PPP used to everybody, 4000 seer, the oxygen machines,
ventilators, visual and lingo, scopes, dedicated covid awards,
oxygen points, 10 testing teams and the retail the private sector.
Price was 1450, we brought it down to 600 she wanted to drop the
prices
mobile teams, testing the cricket teams, testing the soccer teams,
to going mess and poise. Our guys came to the party and they stood
out. Delivered 1.4 million food parcels, hundreds of soup
kitchens, you know, sorry, upgraded
hospitals. Infrastructure upgrade. Put in balls in hospitals at a
critical time, sanitizer, paid for staff to support existing
hospitals, change the internal configuration of systems, going to
the doctors just to talk to them, my friend, how are you doing? Are
you okay? Thank you very much for coming. We were feeling down. We
filling out of energy. Thank you for coming. So I go just to sit
and spend time with them, to talk to them, to say, you guys are
doing a great job. Then we have hospital heroes. We have a goodie
plaque for them. They can afford it, yes, but, but it comes from
outside. It's like, it's more I'm far more expensive for the same
thing. If you buy it from the shop, it's like, you see me. You
see me. We appreciate what you're doing, and it builds such a
camaraderie in the country. It's undoubtedly the greatest project
ever in my history. Your team and their own motivation, because
that's also something you have to deal with. What happens there?
It's a calling. I told you. We on the chats all the time. Every
single day, we got messages. We talk to each other, we visit each
other, we set up training programs, we meet we upgrade we
have skills. We upgrade our equipment. Anybody has a problem,
they call, you know, five people will respond or private message
me. I'll do this. I'll come and meet you. We'll do this. I'll come
to your house. The team is one family. One guy is sick. The whole
team is sick. Oh, you got a problem. We all got a problem.
Yeah, we all stand by you. So the spirit of what you do for
strangers in invented commerce, disasters, it's the same spirit
that you bring to your own team? Well, my rule is very clear, my
teams come first. You've got to choose between my team dying and
somebody else dying, somebody else dies. Yes, my team doesn't die. So
I said we don't go debtors. We come first. Yes, if we're not
there, we can't help anybody else, pretty much. Yeah. So we come
first, and we have systems that support each other all the time. A
guy has got a problem he knows who took.
All, and we'll try to solve the problem during covid. They called
him. My hospital is in trouble. I don't know what to do. I'm
depressed. Boom, four hours later, the stuff is there.
That's amazing. Have you had people call you to say whether
it's different countries, different companies, different
rich people, for example, saying we want to duplicate your model in
our country, in our system. Have you had someone ask you, how do
you do it? So we want to, we can do it elsewhe, a lot of people
have asked me that. Yeah, right. And, you know, and they they say,
we watch you, watch your social media pages, but they said, the
kind of things we do we can't do.
That's why it's so surprising that you continue to do it. We can't do
it. And of course, the other thing with us is we don't look at race,
religion, color or class. A lot of people tell us, Look, we're being
honest with you. We can only do it for our group. We can't read you
on our group. We can't understand how you guys do it. We're in a
group is color or religion or yes or race,
and it's they said we can't do it.
They say we wished we could get out our skin and do it the way you
guys do it, but we admire you. We're sorry, but we fixed it our
thinking we can only do it like this, but clearly that's a that's
a disability. Yes, for for one to know that they can do better, but
I just can't move beyond this. It's such a point, yes,
eventually, yeah, but you've had people saying, Help drop model for
us so we can create it in another country. Let's say this did come
with another paper. It has to be in the ground. Yeah, that's not in
the books.
You're telling me you write a whole book on disasters. I haven't
been there. I'll tell you, throw your book away. It's not going to
work. Jeez. What's what's still coming for you in your thinking,
the infrastructure, how great the teachers, the doctors, the water,
the job creation. But to me, more than anything, I waiting to see
spirituality comes. Spirituality comes ethics comes, values comes,
morality come. We don't need policemen. We don't have to worry
about corruption. We don't have to worry about money be lying there.
Nobody will take it. It will grow. You look after itself. There'll be
no poverty. People we looked after this country will grow. I'm
looking to that stage, and it will come. I know that. And that's,
that's the South Africa you dream of, yes, and it will happen. Yeah,
you're, you're a well loved South African. Are you aware of the
appreciation that people have for you? Well, I get people to take
hundreds of photographs every day with me. You're like, You're a
famous musician. Everywhere I go, I'm I'm carrying off a plane. I'm
talking on a phone, and the guy comes
selfie, and he just waves to when he carries on. I meet in the
restaurant. Take pictures. A lady jumps in front of me the airport.
Takes a picture. Husband comes from the back, but you left me
out. Can I take another one.
So you carry on. And now, when I go to events, I have to allow 40
minutes to 50 minutes for the talk, now for the pictures. Oh,
no. Lady will come and say, Oh, my eyes are closed. All my hair was
in. My eyes back again. Can we go again? We go again. And then,
okay, now we have a group photograph, another individual
photograph, one hour, but it's love, and I say it's fine. You you
let it be. I let it be because, you know, I don't hurt any
spiritual voice. You don't hurt anybody's feelings. Do you have
enough hours in the day? Do you find that you have to make it
work? Yeah, spiritual teacher, I met him again. I was in Turkey
last week. He's a new one, and he said, You need to make time for
yourself. My first teacher told me when I started. He said, three
thirds, 1/3 for yourself, 1/3 for your family, and 1/3 for the work.
I mean, to take it many times. Every time I went back, I said,
Teacher, this family doesn't work. Which part all
the stuff is going to the to the to the work? Yes, not to mentor my
family. And I said, Look, I don't create the disasters. I'm not
responsible. I want to respond to them.
Yes, so if there were no disasters remain, you'll have time to your
family. And then he laughed, and the new teacher said, Look, you
gotta allow some time. I said, I've been praying for that, but
there is so much of crisis. I stopped traveling, not because of
covid only, but from july 2019 I took a decision not to travel
overseas anymore, yeah, unless, if you are responding something
really, really critical, because my country needs all my time. Not
that I'm a special person, but I got the skills God has given me,
the gift. I know how to do things, you know. And the teacher said,
You will know what to do. So I want to use that for my country. I
would only say this man is a great man. He did everything in 60
countries, but in South Africa, he did very little. Yeah, he danced
everywhere else, yeah, and we didn't know him here. Yes, it has
to be home first, because these people are looking for hope, and
you know, we need to bring that hope back to them. Yeah? And
that's why I fight with government, because I don't need
anything from them, to be honest, it's because I need, you need them
to open the door so you can come and fix their own systems. Pretty
much, yes, you basically say, Give me this. You're saying, fix
yourself, read yourself, but fix it properly and in the right way,
without extravagance, amazing. Surely, you know, when you have to
react to a war, it's not an easy decision. It can't possibly be
yes, because you're dealing with irrational men that are shooting
each other. Yeah, and how tricky is the decision? Too?
True, and once the decision is made, and now you have to take
people with you there, what happens to your to your to your
measurement of risk, and all of that, war is not like a disaster,
because it's a long standing thing true. So we don't respond
immediately. And when you see the situation is getting critical and
now the country can manage and the refugees are getting more and the
food is becoming less and the medical skills are dropping.
That's when we decide to go in. When you go in, I go alone, go and
take one guy with me, and we go survey the train, and we say,
Okay, this is a good spot we can work before I bring the teams. The
strange thing is, I get more volunteers for a war than for a
national disaster. And I tell him, you get shot and you get killed
and you lose your eye and you're like, you know, you're single
parent, and what's going to happen to your child? And they tell me,
Hey, we adults. Yeah, we took a conscious decision. We're going to
help. And they tell you the last part, or from all the religious
groups, they tell you, you see, we're doing God's work. He will
look after us. That's it ever had to deal with a with a challenge in
in Syria, two groups are fighting each other in hospital, shooting
at each other. Guys were in theater, and from under the table,
they closed the patient, the fastest closure of a patient in
history. And then I called and went out, and I told the groups,
you see this hospital, I shut it down. Yeah, the leaders came and
they said, Please, sorry. You know we are backward people, and we
don't know how to we know don't know etiquette. We shouldn't be
fighting in hospital, but we make stupid things. Please, please, I
beg you, please, please, don't close this hospital. I said
Nobody's allowed to put a car in front of hospital because you guys
got ever putting car bombs. And secondly, I don't want anybody
guns. No guns in my hospital. Otherwise I shut it down tomorrow
and you and your families will die. Yeah, I'm a very blunt guy.
Next day, five cars come guys with boots, guns running into hospital,
guns. Next minute, they run out of the hospital again. What the
patients, with all the injured people run out of the hospitals.
They look at us, they give us sheepish smile, take out all the
guns, all the ammunitions, put in the car, carry the patients and
bring them back. What was happening? What was that about?
Because they realized, because I told them no guns in hospital,
they remember, remembered after it wasn't too used to running with
guns in hospital, and they stopped, and it never happened
ever again. War is such a dumb thing. Have you been involved in
this war that's taking place now? Which one? Ukraine? Yes, we're not
involved directly, as I said, I'm not sending teams, but we trained
them how to look after their own people. Yeah, we funded a lot of
stuff. We're still funding the victims, yeah. So we've trained
the Ukrainian people how to look after themselves, beginning of a
crash course in disaster management. And they're working
like geniuses.
And that's actually something else that you would do as a new field,
you know, like telemedicine,
virtual disaster implementation. It's a new thing, and they're
doing exceptionally well. I gathered them from the beginning,
what to do. You're a great South African. We, we are very lucky as
South Africa to have you and to call you one of us. Imagine you
Elon Musk, who left us so many years ago. You were here with us,
and we say to you, thank you so much. Thank you for being a South
African, and thank you for for choosing South Africa first, and
and will always, always appreciate you. And we, I'm grateful for your
ease of response to media. You know, you've picked up my course.
You know you're that kind of guy, and I say to you, thank you again.
We truly, truly appreciate you. You're an incredible, incredible
South African. And the awards, I've noticed in some of your
interviews. You do them just because, but they don't really
mean much to you. It's about solving people's problems. And as
a teacher said, it's done through you. I'm not doing it, you know?
And of course, I do the award. You can't again, hurt people's
feelings, you know? If they give you an award, I appreciate it. You
go and show the respect for it. You take it, but you can't do this
alone? No, it's a recognition of because even the person who prays
for me at night, we do not effective that praise. They
couldn't give money, but they got up at night to pray. Are they not
counted? That's one of the reasons we don't ever have functions. They
said, 30th anniversary, what function you're having? So I said,
What function we're having. I want to invite rich people, right? Only
people who give to rich people who give money, whatever. The poor guy
who gave 50 Rand in his pocket, she was more important. Yes. What
about the lady who got up to pray for us, who gave good wishes? I
invite nobody. There's just no function. For 30 years, we've
never had a function. You never had a let's let's pump and
ceremony function we have is training our stuff, nothing else.
Yeah, and no outsiders in our functions.
You're a hero, absolute hero. We're very lucky. I get very
emotional when I think about the work you do. How lucky we are to
have you. It's quite, quite amazing. Thank you very much. He's
a doctor who decided not to do doctoring, to Doctor our souls
now, because now you're telling us we can change and be better
people. Yes, and we should be That's true. Thank you very, very
much. It's a gift of the givers and team, because we have to
acknowledge the whole game. It's not individual. And of course, the
donors and the supporters and the media and the public, we all build
this together. Yeah. Stock time. Suleman, everybody. King. King.
David studio, podcast.