Speaker 0:
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is, uh, Johan hen. I'm the CEO of optimum investment group, and it's my privilege to welcome all of you here today. So in typical capetonian fashion, I prepared quite a detailed pre, uh, speech. So if you allow me just to get the speech and then we can go through it.

Speaker 0:
Oh, my word. I think in my rush, I actually forgot to speak. Graham, can you help me? Sorry. Will you bear with me for about a minute or two, please? Just one minute. Just chat to your friends. We just want to get this sorted out. I'm just contacting my p a quickly to get my speech. Graham,

Speaker 0:
let's see what we're running out of time. Let's see what we can do for you.

Speaker 0:
Sorry, guys. I don't know how it happened. Actually, on my way here, I realised I I forgot to can Can we do it this way? Uh, just

Speaker 0:
use t g BT maybe. OK, well, I've got no choice.

Speaker 0:
OK, so I'm just saying, uh, please write me a welcoming speech for the investment conference with the theme collapse or reset. Let's see what happens.

Speaker 0:
Please. follow my speech on the screen. That's the best I can do this morning. And now. Now we're just waiting for the WiFi. That's here we go. Here we go. OK,

Speaker 0:
Yeah.

Speaker 0:
That'll that'll probably do. Maybe even as good as a capetonian speech. There we go over to you over to you. So you you will You can follow my speech now, so I will just stand in the background and compliment the speech.

Speaker 0:
But, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the wonderful world of A I OK in Cape Town?

Speaker 0:
Uh, for you that don't know what a I means in Cape Town. We we also don't know. We think it's a one. Everything is fine. So,

Speaker 0:
um, when I when I decided to do this welcome speech, I actually went back and thought about what we were set. What was said last year when we started with our investment philosophy introducing our investment philosophy, and at that stage, a a I was, you know, nowhere. We we we knew about something like a I and now it's starting to get fully integrated in our life

Speaker 0:
simultaneously. I asked a question for some of you that was at the presentation. What did you think? Or what do you think is the chances of a nuclear bomb attack? Some of you said yes. There's a good chance. Ok, if I ask you another question today, what is the chances of a total blackout? What will you say? All right, so the Ukrainians are still holding out, Uh, irrespective of us believing they're not gonna make it. All right, So, um,

Speaker 0:
a year ago, we were still dominated by discussions on covid. Um, now we hardly talk about covid anymore. A year ago, the rand was 16 Rand. I don't know if you know what it is this morning. 19 rand. OK. A year ago, the prime rate was 7.75%.

Speaker 0:
This currently it's 11.25%. It's probably going up. What does it mean? The prime actually went up by 45%. So most people are paying close to 45% more on their loans and mortgages and and debt

Speaker 0:
and very important. A year ago, Joburg still only had one mayor. Now it had 10 already in the past year.

Speaker 0:
And PE is still looking for a mayor.

Speaker 0:
You,

Speaker 0:
All of these changes happening in one year. Now we at O I G or Optimum Investment Group. As I would like to say, we don't believe we can foresee all these changes.

Speaker 0:
That's why we follow a a different approach. And I attend a lot of investment conferences and I see how people talk about investments and how they actually propagating their products. We're not here this morning to actually do a product sell. We are here this morning to once again make you aware of our investment philosophy that overrides all our investment decisions and that Phil Investment philosophy is based

Speaker 0:
on major changes in the world. And we call it a thematic investment approach, not at all costs at fair value. So we like to identify those broad themes and that can drive our world going forward and capitalise on that. We're not gonna try and make your money on short deals and on short changes in the market.

Speaker 0:
Now it's easy to talk about that, But how do we actually capacitate ourselves to actually do that? And I can say we're very privileged, and that's our first speaker to have Mr Graham Codrington what happened to Graham? Oh Graham is a is a renowned futuristic. His whole life is trying to determine what's gonna happen. Uh, in the future,

Speaker 0:
Uh, when I was growing up, we call those people palm readers, right, And you pay them for 100 rand, and you got your future. And that's what Graham is keeping himself busy with. So Graham is our our first speaker.

Speaker 0:
Now, you can be as good as you, uh, as you possibly can in terms of predicting the future or identifying trends. But if no society has political stability, people are not going to invest in this in this country. And we all know the challenges we are experiencing on the political side. So our second speaker is a renowned politician, and a lot of you will probably remember him. Uh, Musi Maimane

Speaker 0:
Now, I also heard through the grapevine, and unfortunately, he is on his way here. He got stuck in traffic. Uh,

Speaker 0:
but Musi has been, uh, nominated for the order of bravery in terms of how long it actually lasted with Ala Ala He so we're not allowed to talk about it? Apparently. So don't ask questions about a to MSI. Um, the third Speaker OK, Sorry. The the one thing that actually always amazes me about South Africans are our right.

Speaker 0:
We are actually an incredible nation of resilience, OK? And our humility. Right? So we thought, you know, there's a lot of good things happening, but we are getting bombarded so much by negative media and press

Speaker 0:
that we would like to bring a bit of hope through resilience to you. OK, so you hear a lot about good stories if you read through the back pages of the newspaper

Speaker 0:
and a brilliant story I read the other day was about Senegal in the Free State. I don't know if you all know where Senegal is. A year or two ago, it was known for huge racial, uh, conflict and hatred and cultures. And um uh, a farmer was murdered in the area. There was huge problems and then the communities got together across various cultures and they started an initiative called Tai Towns

Speaker 0:
and that's been rolled out to so many towns now where they just clean the place and work together. And that is what we as South Africans, are actually good in,

Speaker 0:
in order to actually give us more hope in regarding that. We're also very privileged to have Doctor Suleiman here today, Uh, for you that will know him. He's heading up Gift of the givers. One of the probably one of the most hu humility type of guys that I've ever met in my life devoting his life to the problems in the world. So I will also join us later on

Speaker 0:
then. Lastly, we also very privileged to have the founder of Optimum Year, Lauren Smith. Lawrence will do the final remarks at the end of our conference. So without further ado, I'd like to hand over to the programme director Eugene Sasaki. That's gonna take us through the programme. Thank you very much.

Speaker 0:
Morning, ladies and gentlemen. For those of you who haven't met yet, my name is Eugene. Um I'm the programme director today, so I'll facilitate all the questions. I'll facilitate the panels here today. Um, we have quite a full programme this morning, so if you do need the restrooms, please feel free to use it during the time on. Um, while we're busy here, there's restrooms to my right and to my left, to your right and to your left as well at the back of the room.

Speaker 0:
Lunch will be served afterwards. So please stay around for a drink and just a bite to eat with us. Um, but to kick off today's programme, we are gonna I'm gonna hand over to Graham. I don't think I have to introduce him again. Johan went into quite a bit of detail.

Speaker 0:
Acclaimed futurist. He's got six books behind his name and he's the CEO of, um, tomorrow. Today with him on the panel Johan Hen CEO of Optimum Investment Group you've already met, and then Franco Botha to my left hand side, who is to my right hand side to the left of Johan, chief investment officer of, um, Optimum Investment Group.

Speaker 0:
But first and foremost gonna hand over to Graham. Guys, please. We are gonna put up a number. If there's any questions, we won't answer them immediately, but keep them, send them through as they pop up. We'll try and address them at the end of our session. So please send your questions through. Um, we really want to keep it interactive. Today is about everyone in the audience. It's to give everyone hope that it's not the end

Speaker 0:
of South Africa at least, and that there are still opportunities out there. So please, let's keep it interactive. Send through the questions, but without any further ado over to you, Graham,

Speaker 0:
Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody. I'm gonna sit here because I'm gonna use my computer a little bit for the the first part of it. Could you put my, uh, screen up? Uh, if you were with us last year. You'll remember We tried to do a little bit of interactive getting to get your insights into some questions. And we're gonna do that, uh, again today. So we gonna flick over to my screen there, please, guys. And if all of you can grab your mobile phones, we're gonna put a QR. Code up,

Speaker 0:
uh, on the screen. I'm not sure why we

Speaker 0:
have you got a problem.

Speaker 0:
If we do, then I'm gonna flip to something else quickly. Give us a thumbs up, guys or not.

Speaker 0:
OK, um, but grab your phones quickly. I'm gonna put a QR. Code up. It's a little system called Aha Slides. There we go.

Speaker 0:
Uh, the guys on the far edges there. I hope your your cameras will pick this up. Just point your camera at that QR code. Hopefully, I'm not in the way over there. That should open up. Hopefully, all of our technology is gonna work today. Um and that should open up a page for you. And I'm asking you a very simple question. Just tell me what brand of car you drive. Um,

Speaker 0:
if you prefer, you can tell me which brand of car you would like to drive. If the investment portfolio, uh, works itself out here, uh, properly, at o I g just, uh, pop that in. If the QR code isn't working for you, you can just go to any browser on your phone. Just go to a high slides dot com slash o i g and you'll get to that same page. OK, so then let me

Speaker 0:
show you what that looks like. I say, OK, uh, we we took a bet earlier that Toyota would dominate the senior, and so we're not wrong. Um, but there's a nice mix of things,

Speaker 0:
so keep that open because here, let me show you Let me show. And if you haven't been able to get in, don't panic. Just relax, OK? Just uh, enjoy, uh, everybody else's answers. But, uh, Johan started us off today with just dipping into a I. It's becoming a bit of a party trick, uh, at conferences

Speaker 0:
and things to use chat GP t to help us to do things like welcoming speeches and addresses. And, um, I had wondered just in your, uh, perception. So again, if you're on your phone, you'll see it. That just tells you to refresh the page, and then you get to the next question.

Speaker 0:
Now, I'm just wondering which industry do you think is going to be most significantly impacted by this artificial intelligence? Big Data analytics? Um uh, the machine learning robotic automation. And I know probably the answer is all of the above, but I'm giving you only one choice. So pick, pick the one that you think will will be hit most.

Speaker 0:
And, uh, yeah, I I I mean, the answer is all of the above. I I can't imagine an industry that wouldn't be impacted. The one we're gonna have a bit of fun with to today, though, uh, just to start off. And I'm gonna put Francois on the spot here because, um, with the Lawrence in the room. Uh, Jon, I'm I'm a bit nervous that I'm gonna just in front of everybody's eyes. Remove your job.

Speaker 0:
Um uh, but, uh, Franco, we're gonna have a look at what chat GP t reckons will make for good investment. Because, as Johan was saying, if we taking a thematic approach to investment,

Speaker 0:
what you're not trying to do is make a specific prediction about exactly where something is gonna be at Christmas this year or three years from now. Uh, in in. In many cases, when you're investing it, it's possibly almost as good to just throw a dart at a dartboard with the New York Stock Exchange companies on it. What you want to do is you you want to dig deeper

Speaker 0:
and have a look at. Well, if artificial intelligence is a thing, if this exists now and we see the potential of the technology, then we want to be asking, what does that do in terms of its impact on an industry? What are the themes that emerge?

Speaker 0:
And then you want to look and I'll leave Francois to explain this in in a moment you want to, then look for what's the best fair value investment that you can make. So, Francois, I be I'm giving you a few seconds head. Start there to think about that question. Let's ask chat GP t that question.

Speaker 0:
So here was Here's chat GP t. And this was Johan's opening speech, which Johan was fantastic. Well done. Um, a great opening speech there. Um, yeah, but here I'm sure many of you have played around with chat GP t and maybe just done what Johan did. A lot of people are just using it as if it was a Google search engine.

Speaker 0:
You know, here's my question. Give me an answer. That's not even starting to see the power of this artificial intelligence. And a lot of people are saying it's not that intelligent anyway, and it gives you a wrong answer now and then.

Speaker 0:
It does have a limit. It it only has knowledge up to September 2021. At the moment, they've done that deliberately so that you can't use it as a new source so you can't get so if we're gonna ask it about stock prices and things. It's only knows until September 2021 it'll even. It'll even tell us that. But what people don't realise is that the the chat

Speaker 0:
word in chat GP t is where the power is. The first answer it gives you is probably as good as a second year university student, I say. Second year in particular, I see some of you are similar ages to me. I have a second year university student at home. They are the worst human beings in the world

Speaker 0:
In in first year they they they come into this new place and they realise yes, Like I I I I I am. Can I be here? Is this amazing? By second year, they think I know everything. You cannot argue with me. I know everything. By third year, they realise they know nothing again. So but second year is that worst place. And that's what chat GP t is. The first answer is the second year university interns answer,

Speaker 0:
which is a good answer, except it's a little bit arrogant and sometimes has mistakes. So you push back against it. So one of here is for those of you who want to to use the side. I don't wanna type while you're watching so I've just

Speaker 0:
recorded some stuff. So what I've said here is this is what I would type in as my question. And this is kind of how much information you must give chat GP T when you ask it a question, you must tell it what you want it to do. You must tell it why you're doing it. You must tell it who the answer is gonna be for the more information you give chat GP t the more you chat to chat GP t the cleverer chat GP t uh, comes back to you.

Speaker 0:
Um and, uh, what I'm gonna do is just add in here. I want you to pretend

Speaker 0:
to be a chief investment officer,

Speaker 0:
OK? This I'm gonna give you two things that will change your life if you use chat GP t The one is to say, I want you to pretend to be somebody,

Speaker 0:
um, or act as somebody you could literally say. I want you to pretend to be Barack Obama and then it gives you it. Sounds as if it was the answer was written by him. The the other one is this bit here. So for those of you who can't read from the sides here. I've said the conference is aimed at a sophisticated audience of private investors,

Speaker 0:
uh, looking to, uh, maximum maximise their savings and retirement plan over the next decade and more so I'm giving. I'm telling it, you're not day traders, right? We're not looking to give us the quick wins by Saturday.

Speaker 0:
Uh, that's not a thematic approach. They are South Africans. That's useful context and information. If we're trying to get investment advice, but they have an international view, I'd like your help to give them useful insights into different investment options. I will supply you with an industry or company name, and I'd like you to give me a brief summary of the investment potential with a few bullet points of positives and negatives. So I've given them. Here's what I'm gonna do. Here's the context. This is who it's for. This is the format I want my answer in. Then the

Speaker 0:
trick number one that will change your life. I want you to pretend to be something. And then the last one is the best thing you'll hear all week on chat GP T. You can impress every friend you've got. Do you understand?

Speaker 0:
What do you understand? Says is I don't want you to just answer one question. I want to have a conversation with you now.

Speaker 0:
So now it's ready. So I got you, OK, we've got a context now we can chat and I can throw all sorts of things on it. So it says, Yeah, cool. I understand. Let's do it. Proceed. OK, I will proceed.

Speaker 0:
Um, Francois, help me out here. Let's think of one of a big company internationally that that you would be interested in Just you, because I'm gonna test your knowledge against chat GP t. So I want to give you the best chance of success here. Franco, I don't want to run your career and your job this morning. So what company do you know? Quite a bit about

Speaker 0:
that we can quickly check here. I think the the company that, uh, impresses us mostly is probably John Deere in the agricultural space. Yeah, the amount of a I that they use. Cool. So now you see all I can because chat GP t is ready for a conversation. I don't have to give it any more information. It knows exactly what I want.

Speaker 0:
Knows what format to give it to me in. And now we just go for it. This is now the chat of chat GP t. So now, Franco, we we in your hands. OK, so this is now the kind of thing that a chief investment officer might spend an hour or two

Speaker 0:
in the morning. Right? Are you Are you happy so far? With what you can see?

Speaker 0:
Ok, um, not bad. Hey, not bad. Now, remember that this information only goes to September 2021. So if something very significant happened at John Deere last year, we wouldn't know about it. Which is probably gonna save your job this morning, Franco, because hopefully you up a little bit more up to date than 18 months ago. Um, but isn't this amazing?

Speaker 0:
Ok, in terms of this is not a Google search. You could get all of this information from a Google search,

Speaker 0:
but to have now this a I system go onto Google for you read 100,000 Web pages,

Speaker 0:
gather that information, structure it in the format. I asked it to structure it and give it back to me in beautiful English, By the way, it also doesn't have to be English. This, uh, speaks about 58 languages at the moment. Um, including, by the way, Zulu Xhosa, um, Swahili and Afrikaans. Um, so, Yeah, but it gave us a few positives. You saw those going up the screen. There's a few negatives just to to be to be careful. About

Speaker 0:
what? What did you think of that? Does that look good? Yeah, I think there's some some things that I can add, but, um,

Speaker 0:
at this stage, it's it's really looking good. Um, yeah, I can I can perhaps just quickly tell you what we what we read up on on John Deere. Obviously, we all know the green tractors that, uh, is basically used on on farms. Um,

Speaker 0:
I think currently, John Deere is more than, uh, a tractor manufacturer. It's a It's a data centre. So what, they're busy with, um, they have 40% of all the farming equipment is manufactured by them.

Speaker 0:
What they're busy with is they started to realise. Listen, we've got 40% of tractors driving around on farmland. What if we can use that to generate data for us? So what if we can take soil samples on a farm in Bloemfontein, that's farming. Mili and compare it to a farm in the US and see if the US farms yield is more than the farm in in the free state.

Speaker 0:
They give that feedback to the farmer. Tell them, Listen, you need to put more fertilisers in your ground. You need to do this or that to increase your your yield on the farm. So that's the type of technology that they're starting to use. One new thing that they're also busy with is on front of the tractor. It's almost like a face recognition system, like when you unlock your iPhone. So when the tractor drives over the crops

Speaker 0:
at the front of the tractor, they see OK, this is crops, and this is wheat. By the time the tractor passes, it gives the crops water, and it gives round up or whatever. You put on weeds to kill the weeds. That's the type of data that they use within the tractors. Now we all know about self-driving tractors. I think

Speaker 0:
a year or two ago that has been everyone would say. Sure, the tractor can drive itself. Yes, these days, they can. What they're busy with is not just to drive themselves but also move from one field to the next field. So when they're done here on this form or in this field, the tractor automatically knows OK, The next field he must go to is

Speaker 0:
coordinates X Y Z. So that's what they're busy with currently. So they're selling. Yes, they're selling manufacturing. They're selling equipment, but actually, they're locking the farmer with the data that they provide. They saving cost, they increasing the yield on the farm. And it's all with the data that they get from from their tractors.

Speaker 0:
While Franz I was talking you you saw in the background. I then said, Well, let's think then, about the sector as a whole If it it's called smart precision farming,

Speaker 0:
Um, we're literally, uh and and I I know this from a banana farm down in the the South Coast that that my family is involved in. Every single tree has its own sensor,

Speaker 0:
and they send a drone to give exactly the right amount of moisture and fertiliser to each individual tree. And that's not a farmer making that decision. The system that's what artificial intelligence is doing.

Speaker 0:
And so what I asked J. G BT to do is just go one step up. So we now see there's an interesting company in a sector. We then take a bigger view. The thematic approach asks, Well, if technology is the overall theme and you've seen something interesting say at John Deere, then what does the sector itself look like?

Speaker 0:
Um, and we're not gonna go into detail now into all of these. That's not the point of this conversation. What we wanted to show you, uh, is a I Now, uh, Francois, while you talk, I'm going to ask the same question to you and to chat. GP t. Um, So the question is, what stocks could, um, South African investors, uh, buy to get exposure to a I

Speaker 0:
Yeah, I think, uh, in the South African market, it's it's across different, um uh, categories or sectors that you can can include. I think, uh, just last week, we saw the results of capitec and the amount of, uh, new, innovative thinking that they've got just in the banking sector. Compare that to, um, more established, well known one of the Big four banks. Um, capitec is definitely much further ahead with new technology. Um,

Speaker 0:
using data to see OK, how do they lend out to the consumer? Um, so that's one just in in one sector. Uh, you can move over to to the mining sector, um, mining the amount of technology that they use. Um, And also, uh, we're probably gonna touch on renewable energy as well. Um, you can go to, uh, Anglo Plat or, um, that's part of the Anglo group.

Speaker 0:
They've got a hydrogen hydrogen truck that they that they busy, um, deploying on their on their mines. Now, that thing weighs 220 tonnes. Um, if you put on all the the, uh, coal or whatever they they take out of the mine, it can weigh up to, uh, 500 tonnes. And it's just using hydrogen and some of the breaking when it goes downhill. Then that also generates electricity.

Speaker 0:
Um, they're spending on one truck. It's almost a million litres of diesel a year now. They've got 400 of these trucks. They're converting that into hydrogen. It's green energy. Um, their diesel emission is obviously, uh, one of the biggest things within the mining sector that's coming down. Um, so all the industries are using technology firstly, to do the, um,

Speaker 0:
to do better business, but then also to save the planet, go net zero on emission standards. Um, so it's across different sectors. The banking sector, mining sector, Um, even your retailers the

Speaker 0:
if you look at how people interact on on their phones as well, you can speak to my wife the stuff that she buys online, she constantly comes to me and say, Yeah, this is the new special today I just thought about buying this thing. And now I got the pop up of of the special that that they, uh, advertised on the phone. It's like, yes, they're using

Speaker 0:
technology. You probably searched for a thing yesterday and now take a lot is sending you a message and telling you Yes, it's on special today. Um, it's that type of of, uh, technology that's being used in in retail sector to get people to buy the stuff that they don't really need. But they get it at a discount, and then they feel great about themselves.

Speaker 0:
So what, You don't know? Because you've been watching the audience is, uh, behind you. Uh, GP t four, actually, is what I'm using here. Uh, when I first asked the question, it gave me all the ones you probably would have given as well the big, standard international ones. And then I said, no, no, you didn't quite understand me. Uh um, by the way, uh, Eugene was just noting it gives you all the same disclaimers that every financial advisor will give you. Of course.

Speaker 0:
Um then I said no. No, but now go South African Pacific, and, uh, it went to Napa. Ultron ETF s. But, uh uh, it says that, uh, it can't really help us as much as it would want to. And I strongly recommend conducting your research or consulting with a decent financial advisor. There you go. OK,

Speaker 0:
I I I we don't wanna make too much of this, but I just want to show you one more thing. And this will again, uh, it will be the third thing that will impress all your friends who use chat GP. And you can show them how smart you are after this morning. What we can do is we say go back

Speaker 0:
to the the previous, uh, list of international companies. OK, um,

Speaker 0:
then it gave me a table

Speaker 0:
of the results with a column for, uh, let's say, 10 year historical. I forget about spelling. Um, stock price, uh, stock price change, um, risks And, uh, let's say name of CEO. So

Speaker 0:
again, I mean, you can see I'm not speaking in, like, full sentences and that we're having a chat between people who know what they're talking about. And I'm asking this thing to now, do a little bit of extra work for me. So hopefully, um

Speaker 0:
yeah, OK, that's fine. Uh, OK, so it says that it it can't provide the 10 year historical price changes, but it'll do the other stuff. Uh, for me.

Speaker 0:
OK, here we go. And so, um, I I wanted to push it. I didn't think it would give me the stock prices. It doesn't like doing that level of detail because of, uh, the fact that it isn't quite as accurate as it should be, and it knows it. So I'd rather it doesn't give you the information and says Go do your own homework. Um, but the stuff that it can do, it will do for you and even formats it for you.

Speaker 0:
So those of you who might have been hearing the chatter about chat GP t and saying, Yeah, is it really as powerful as all that? Imagine you Now apply this power that we're just using for a little fun and games thing and to do a fun welcome and all the rest imagine you take the power of this and now push it into some of these industries that that we've been looking at

Speaker 0:
to give you AAA second example. And in fact, here, let me I'm gonna ask you another question. Now, now that you've seen, um, some of this, um, if while I'm talking, if you would go back to your phone Sorry, we're getting you to do a lot of work here this morning, but if you would go back, um, and and have a look here, uh, the second big theme that, uh, we look at at at O I g is demographics. And,

Speaker 0:
uh, this is linked to a whole lot of different things around people living longer. Maybe getting married later, maybe having fewer Children, people moving around the world, and and one of the big things has got to do with health care. So if you take artificial intelligence and put it into the health care system,

Speaker 0:
imagine what's going to happen. Well, we don't have to imagine, because since last year, uh, if you remember last year I talked about if you were with us last year, I talked about living beyond 100 and living to 100 and 25 having to plan for that.

Speaker 0:
Well, some of the things that have happened and in fact, just in the last two months is unbelievable. Two companies, a Japanese pharmaceutical called, I say and, uh, an American Pharmaceutical lily have announced that they are just about to start Stage three trials for Alzheimer's cures.

Speaker 0:
OK, so for drugs that will, uh, have a significant. And I don't think they're saying 100% cure but have a significant impact on Alzheimer's. There are vaccines that are in Stage two trials for cancers, variety of different cancers, including a general cancer vaccine. Now imagine we get some of that stuff in the next few years.

Speaker 0:
So again, from a thematic approach, you might want to take a chance of of looking at I say in Japan or looking at lily in America and saying Alzheimer's, that's gonna be a big one. Uh, that might already be factored, though, into the share price. Or you could again take a thematic approach looking at,

Speaker 0:
um, a group or an industry, Um, and realising that in in health care environment, we're gonna see a tremendous increase in, um, health, Uh, longevity and people living longer. So, uh, uh, Francois, before I ask you what you think we should be doing in South Africa

Speaker 0:
to kind of expose ourselves, maybe to to heal the healthcare theme I I was interested in in the request, I took a fat chance coming to Pretoria and adding, Stop eating meat. Um, as a lifestyle choice, some of you will say if I die tomorrow, it's fine. But I'm eating this this steak

Speaker 0:
um, uh, but, uh, the easiest and most obvious way in is vaccines. And I know many of us have had debates and discussions with friends and family about the covid vaccine and whatever you decided, OK, that was your decision. But I think when we begin to see vaccines for cancers and vaccines for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and some of the diseases that many of us know come naturally sadly with old age and then you suddenly realise, But we can deal with that.

Speaker 0:
I I mean, personally, for us, it's a magnificent thing, right? But from an investment opportunity, imagine what happens in these environments when you find something that almost everybody in the world, uh, is gonna be interested in first of what? What do you what do o I g look at? Because I know healthcare is quite a big theme for you guys. Hey,

Speaker 0:
thanks. I think, uh, it's a nice thing just to combine the thematic approach with also valuation and what's going on in the in the world. So, yes, there's a there's a thematic approach. Um, we know healthcare is gonna be, uh, quite AAA sector that will grow in in future as people get older. Um, all these things that's mentioned here on the on the screen. Uh, probably if you get a three d printed body part, you're probably gonna go to a hospital to get that, uh,

Speaker 0:
recommend you just go to the the corner and put it in there. You're probably gonna go to hospital um so all of that is the the theme of of health care. But then also, we have to look at where we are in the world economy. Um, things are quite volatile. The health care sector has always been a defensive sector. So currently, where we are underweight in the in the US for valuation reasons, um, we tend

Speaker 0:
we've moved a lot of capital more to a defensive type of business. The healthcare fits that. What I do, I mean, with defensive. It's a business that generates constant cash flows like a hospital. It's constant flow of money. It's fixed cost. Whether the economy is good or bad, the the hospital still operates, so that defensive stance within the healthcare sector is definitely something that we that we value. And it's trading at quite cheap

Speaker 0:
levels. So it's this this tail wind that you have on a theme on valuations and the defensiveness we we like quite a quite a bit in South Africa. Um, we have to talk about the the N. H. I or the National Health Insurance. Um, I've I've been to meetings, and it's probably gonna get signed before the end of the year. and everyone is saying, OK, that's the end of medical aid and that's the end of the hospitals in South Africa.

Speaker 0:
Currently, our hospitals are running on on 70% occupancy levels. Um, if the n h I comes in the hospital CEO thing, that will actually increase the OC occupancy level within the hospitals. So now they can turn more patients in and out, generate more cash. Um, and for us as investors, that's that's a positive. Um,

Speaker 0:
we can debate whether the government will get it right and all the negatives that that goes with it. But I think for South Africa we always think, OK, N h I. That's the end of our health care system. Our hospitals are actually quite bullish on on that. As I said, it can increase the amount of patients that turn around of of patients in the hospital that can increase, and it leads to more profit for us being the the investor.

Speaker 0:
One of the interesting things is I think it's, uh, actually a remarkable time in history. Uh, for something like N h I in South Africa and, uh, Musi Maimane is gonna be joining us so soon. He he had a last minute appointment put in with, uh, I believe the the prime minister of Denmark. And it's tough to say no, uh,

Speaker 0:
to a big foreign investor, uh, coming wanting to speak to you in the morning, but he's on his way. But one of the themes that Musi is gonna pick up is that in a time of chaos and crisis and change the there's obviously always threat. But there's also always the opportunity. That's what every investor is looking for. There's risk and reward, and you're trying to just find that balance. And I I agree with you that n h I,

Speaker 0:
um if you combine it with the fact that the sorts of technologies we've demonstrated this morning work spectacularly well with medical information

Speaker 0:
that you can now actually take what the government has in mind for n HR, which really let's understand the government is not trying to destroy the private medical system. They're just trying to give access to the medical system to everyone. And if you incorporate something like a doctor GP t into the system, um, you can imagine that at very little extra cost you, you you raise the game.

Speaker 0:
And then if the private hospitals and and I agree with you, the private hospitals have the attitude of saying, actually, what's going to happen is we are just going to get more customers.

Speaker 0:
Uh, we're just gonna get more patients, uh, in the system. Uh, there's a way to look at this, which doesn't induce fear and panic, but actually says, uh, who knows, this could work out. And as South Africans, we tend to make things work out. Uh, in the end, Um, I think I ended last year's conference with this quote, but it always sticks in my mind. Winston Churchill was asked about the Americans

Speaker 0:
and the fact that they came into World War Two so late, and he answered, and he said, No, no, no, no, no, He said, the Americans, they always do the right thing

Speaker 0:
after they've done everything else. And I think that's a bit of South Africa as well. At the moment, somehow we end up, uh, doing something right. Grab your phones one more time. Now, I've got another question because the last theme I want to talk about this morning is the e s G,

Speaker 0:
uh, environmental issues. uh, and and sustainability and green governance. Uh, themes. Of course. These are huge themes. We know this, um, and I'm just interested to find out from you. All of this is anonymous. By the way, you're not, uh, now committing yourself to an investment strategy with this, uh, question.

Speaker 0:
Uh, but I'm just interested and and please, honour, answer Truthfully, I mean, you might look at that saying, we know what the politically correct answer to Graham's question is, but I'm I'm interested in what your actual answer will be. Um,

Speaker 0:
it's been quite bad news over the last year. Uh, since last year's event, uh, climate change is moving worse faster than we imagined. Um, the weather is getting more violent, so it's not. Maybe warming of the planet is not the right thing, because the summers are getting hotter, but the winters are getting colder.

Speaker 0:
Um, the rain is getting either less or more. I was just listening on the radio coming in today. Agri s a CEO saying the big problem in South Africa is at the moment, literally right now is that half the farmers have had too much rain and the other half have had too little.

Speaker 0:
And, you know, you wanna say sometimes, yes, the farmers are never happy. Um, but it it is worse than it's ever been. I mean, literally, the data shows us that, and that's the new reality going forward. So this concept of looking for the investment opportunities in an angry planet I mean, that's probably what the environmental theme needs to be, and there are opportunities there. But at the same time,

Speaker 0:
the faster and and and tougher that climate change moves, the more that that galvanises action of governments and and and investors as well. And so at. At the cop summits last year and earlier this year, $1.5 trillion has been promised by governments. Now, that's not That's not all going to turn into actual money. But a lot of that has been promised. And a lot of that has been promised to Africa

Speaker 0:
because, of course, Africa's statement is, you know, a country like like us. Which is why should we now switch off our coal plants? I mean, they're running perfectly already. Um, and that was meant to be a joke. I see. Load shedding is not fun. Um, But you know it. The rest of the world saying Europe is saying You guys need to go clean energy and we are saying we'll just have energy Thanks what? Whatever form it comes in.

Speaker 0:
But the German government has given a few billion rand to us. Uh, earlier this year, Um, and the Danish government, I believe, is throwing some money our way as well and is engaging with the opposition parties to make sure it's not just used incorrectly that it actually gets allocated to energy development. So that's good news.

Speaker 0:
And it's good news that there are big investment, uh, opportunities and funds that are looking into this, uh, climate space. So again, the thematic approach to investing doesn't try and identify just the one winner and then you, like, buy all of their stocks and and hope you got it right. It's looking at the themes, looking at the big pictures and making sure that you're mitigating your risk on the downside

Speaker 0:
and that you you you're catching any waves, uh, on on the upside. Uh, Franco, do you wanna add to that in terms of the environmental side and some of what o i G s do. Yeah, I think Graham, um, I'm glad to see the The guys are more or the audience is more, um, they want profit, and both is equally important. I think, uh, I tend to agree with that, um,

Speaker 0:
if you travel overseas, everyone is just talking about EST. I think that is every single investor or company that we visit is EST within the South African context. We must also realise we're sitting in South Africa. If we're gonna apply e s g screen on the J S e, we probably gonna exclude most of the companies. Uh, our resources companies, our coal coal mines, um, they don't really score high on on E. S G.

Speaker 0:
On the flip side of that is, if everyone is spending this $1.5 trillion on E. S G. There's a lot of money flowing into that so that that trade is getting quite crowded when everyone is buying the same stock just for E s g reasons. Um, so we might find other opportunities outside of the of the E s G. That's perhaps not a pure E S G play, but it's trading at cheaper value.

Speaker 0:
Um and we think we can make more money at the end of the day. For for our clients, um, one of the or some of the the examples is our mining, uh, resources companies within South Africa. This whole e s G drive. If you just look at renewable energy, they need copper, cobalt, lithium, obviously, and batteries. All of that we get from our mines. Now, if we invest in our mines and the mines aren't scoring well on on E. S g.

Speaker 0:
But all the minerals that they produce are being used in wind farms and solar et cetera. Then, are we supporting E S G? Are we not? So I think it's it's not so easy to just say it's a straight answer. No, we're not investing in this because you can definitely make a case of investing in, um in one of our mines that produce minerals that will end up in a solar farm. So then you are supporting the the E S G, um, framework as well.

Speaker 0:
Can, uh, the guys on the screen Can you, uh, flick to put the WhatsApp number up now? Uh, this is a bit too big a room for us to just take raised hands and ask questions. But you we do want you If you have a question, uh, to throw to us, Uh, if you can use the the the WhatsApp number, that's probably best. Have you got it on

Speaker 0:
on a slide? There is a good answer. OK, so if you have a question, uh, for us, uh, throw it in, but otherwise, uh, Johan Eugene, do you want to, uh, get in? I've just had a note, uh, saying that, uh, Vusi is it? It's ridiculous that he's now in a roadblock somewhere. Uh uh, on on the way. So, uh, anyway, he's on his way. And when he gets here, we'll we'll hear his insights on some of these themes. But for now, let's take your questions.

Speaker 0:
And there's some questions coming through. So I think, yeah, let's kick off.

Speaker 0:
I'm gonna circle back to the technology part, Graham. And you specifically, um, one of the questions that came through now is we don't see a lot of these listed tech stocks in South Africa. And you alluded to that. Fran alluded to that. Johan, Is there any other way in the South African market that investors can actually get exposure to these type of tech stocks. Or what are the other options for investors?

Speaker 0:
Yeah, I think, uh, South African Tech capacity is is totally underrated. I think there's some serious technology capacity that are working as we speak to come up with new solutions. Uh, most people think all our tech guys are leaving South Africa. Go work in Europe. Yeah, he can work here, but he's still a South African, right? So But that's also not necessarily the case. So

Speaker 0:
what I find now is that I had recently had interaction with major players from overseas that are actually looking for innovative tech products, uh, developed by South African

Speaker 0:
Tech small companies that they actually can market through the major Telkom's platforms. All right, so those guys won't expose our capacity and our products on those major, uh, Telkom, uh, platforms like Vodacom and 02 and all of those in the world. OK, so that says a lot about our tech capacity. The problem that most tech companies do have is the question of finance and capital.

Speaker 0:
So what we do is we also run funds. Um, we call it, um, private equity funds where we look at things like tech. We look at other areas in, in in the thematic cycle where we can support these up and coming, uh, tech companies that clearly has the skills,

Speaker 0:
uh, that need just a bit of capital to actually get him going. And I think those are the opportunities that can really pay off for you in the future. Uh, those coming through, uh, the long space is very crowded. It's very ana analysed. Uh, so it's difficult always to attract value out of that. But maybe we get the next Mark Zuckerberg here right in South Africa, which is not, you know, far fetched. Especially with a o. I and all the capacity and opportunities that it does offer.

Speaker 0:
So, yes, as a investment company, we look beyond the normal traditional, long only stuff. We also look at those emerging companies private companies and see how we can support them and give our investors exposure to that exciting area.

Speaker 0:
Thanks. Joan. Um, I've got another question here on chat GP t for you, Fran. And the question is, if chat GP t is subjected to new information, will this help in assisting the investment decision. And I just want to add to that. Can it actually already been used? Because Graham showed? Yes, the data is slightly lagged. But can it assist you as the chief investment officer in any way in the investment environment?

Speaker 0:
Yeah. No, definitely. I think it takes a lot of work away from from analysts. Um, I think the the output that you get is is is obviously quite generic, but it gives you a good understanding of the business. We saw it now with with John Deer, um, to have a quick snapshot of a of a business in South Africa. It's easy, you know, basically all the listed companies in South Africa, but globally

Speaker 0:
in the universe is it's massive amount of companies. Now you can run screens and say OK in the healthcare sector. I want a company that's trading on a B level below five and a high dividend yield. And you put in different, different matrix that you want out of the the companies and you will find a name perhaps, uh, a company that's

Speaker 0:
listed in Japan quickly go on to chat GDP, they tell you. OK, this is the company. This is the history. This is the supplier of the company. Um, this is the customers of the company. So it saves you time for your analyst to go and read, um, up on on that Just another way that that, um, a r can be used within the investment approach is,

Speaker 0:
um before covid obviously listed companies. They've got results, uh, calls. So you dial on to the call. The CEO tells you every six months, every year what's been happening in the business. Um, how well they did. And obviously, if they struggle, the CEO s just tend to avoid that. So they only tell you how well how well the company did now with covid, everything went onto onto teams or zoom or one of these, um, platforms where you can see the face of the CEO.

Speaker 0:
Now you've got technology that analyse facial expressions of the CEO together with analysing the sentiment of what he's saying. So without listening to the call, you already get info on this guy is really bullish on his company, or he's a bit unsure of what's going on in his business. Did you say bullish or bullshit? so sometimes it's the same thing.

Speaker 0:
Um, so it's those type of things that you can now easily do. Um, without even listening to the call, you'll already get a report on what has been said. Facial recognition, facial expressions on whether the guy is is positive or not. And there's a wonderful, um uh, part of chat GP t that I use. One of the things you can do is you can

Speaker 0:
take a chunk of text. You pop it into chat GP t and you say please summarise this document for me. So what you now do is you take that, um, briefings call, you get the transcript, which is generated automatically chat GP. T takes the transcript, puts it into a summary mode.

Speaker 0:
And so you don't sort of sit through the whole lecture 28 PowerPoint slides and so on. You get the summary with the sentiment analysis, and you get a sense of, of, of whether this thing is going well or not. And he has a really cool one liner which I heard in passing on the radio, so I can't give the person credit. So you can just credit me for this really excellent insight.

Speaker 0:
They said a I isn't going to take our jobs. You don't have to be worried. A I won't take your job,

Speaker 0:
but somebody who uses a I will take your job if you don't.

Speaker 0:
And so I don't think a I is gonna take the chief investment officer's job. But the chief investment officer who uses a I is going to be much better than the chief investment officer who doesn't.

Speaker 0:
And so what I would be looking for is, is a company, uh, that is actually telling me we use machine learning assisted intelligence in our business. I don't think that that's cheating or anything. I actually think it's taking the best tools available and and using them wisely to, in some cases just free up time. In other cases, gain

Speaker 0:
insight and research you wouldn't have otherwise identified because there's too much data out there and it doesn't work for you, and then sometimes to give you an insight that maybe you wouldn't have had, uh, yourself. But I think that last piece is the smallest piece of of contribution of banks bank Graham Graham. The next question is actually for you, and it's also as a futurist. Did you know that A I would be as disruptive as it is today. So what's your view if you rewind 23 years ago,

Speaker 0:
I've I've been waiting for this. So open a I has been around for a long time. In fact, Elon Musk was one of the founders, and he left open a I, uh, to go and work at Tesla. That's when he thought he only could be CEO of one company at a time. Um, and so open a I has been around. They've been in partnership with Microsoft for about seven or eight years, and it's Yeah, it's been very exciting to see some of the the early noise coming out of that side,

Speaker 0:
uh, of things, but, um yeah, for for a number of of years now, I've used the example of preventative health care as the example of what a I is going to do for us, uh, in in the future. And I can just give a a personal illustration. My my oldest daughter, um, is she's 23 she was diagnosed, uh, three years ago with bipolar,

Speaker 0:
which, um, had had a She had a massive manic episode, and I'm not speaking behind her back. She wants to speak about this stuff stuff publicly because so many people have to deal with heavy, heavy mental illness and we often don't talk about it.

Speaker 0:
And, um, she's just recently three weeks ago, her psychiatrist has said the meds that you are on are not working. This is often with mental illness that doctors say, Here's my first choice medicine and you try it and then you have all the side effects and then you go, Oh, OK, well, that doesn't work. Now you try the second choice and then the third, then the fourth choice, and eventually it's a trial and everything which is hectic

Speaker 0:
on your body because you gotta put these drugs in, leave them in for a few weeks, then, is if some of you are nodding you, you know the story.

Speaker 0:
So the doctor said, You know what we could do If if you can afford a little bit of money, let's do a full

Speaker 0:
machine learning assisted genetic test where we do a full DNA analysis of you. And so she's just done that and a few weeks ago got the results back. And now she's got pages and pages and pages of data which was literally not available even seven or eight years ago to the richest people on the planet.

Speaker 0:
Um, and now you've got a doctor who's got to work through that. But imagine you had chat a doctor GP t who would now work through that and say, Amy, for you. Don't try these drugs. This set of drugs will work, and that's been something you, you know, I've been seeing and hoping for and talking about and using as an example for people to say. If you've got a massive pile of data

Speaker 0:
that you can't imagine a human being being able to sift through that data,

Speaker 0:
there's your Your genetic code has billions of pieces of information.

Speaker 0:
But if you could imagine a team of 1000 people spending 10 years looking at the data and then coming out with insights, well, then that's what a I is. A. I is taking massive amounts of data, looking for the patterns and then pointing human experts and saying

Speaker 0:
there's a pattern there the day the A. I doesn't necessarily know what the pattern means, but it can see a pattern,

Speaker 0:
and then the human expert comes in and says, I I know what the pattern means And so that's where we are right now. It's It's a remarkable time. And the next 10 years in everything from precision farming, uh, John, the example to to to health care, uh, to just writing better speeches, The world's gonna get better. I think, uh, I think it's gonna be remark. But, Graham, that actually leads me on to the next question. There's been several of these

Speaker 0:
questions from the audience. Now I'm gonna direct it to you again. I'm sure Fran Johan will also have something to add. Um v r. Virtual reality At recent times been growing at a wild pace. Suddenly it feels quiet with a I and t p t taking centre stage both of serious consequences to people v r brain overlay. A. I perceived redundancy. Does the world consider this? And how do futurists highlight the risks? So there's been several questions around the risks associated with a I.

Speaker 0:
Can you maybe unpack that in front? Or maybe touch this, especially how the governments also step in to a certain extent. Yeah, so there's a number of levels in which you have these conversations around thematics. The one is the technology itself. Does the technology work? Can we see the benefits? Then you have a look at the impact on institutions. How does this change industries and sectors and communities? Then you've got to ask, what's the impact on the planet?

Speaker 0:
And that leads you to your final question, which is, Are there any ethical considerations? And ethics is not just is it right or wrong? It's also Is it good or bad?

Speaker 0:
Does it? You know we can do it. But does it make our world better?

Speaker 0:
And so again, to go back to the previous question? People say, As a futurist, you know, how much do you get right? How much do you get wrong? I mean, nobody can be 100% right, but I've kind of been very bullish about a I, but I have never seen the future for the US

Speaker 0:
and and the virtual reality world. Um, I think virtual reality is great for playing the odd game here or there. I think it's great for the odd little escape, so it's like watching a movie. But the But to think that all of us, if we had the choice of either Let's take an example, you can either work at the office or now Covid has taught us you could also work at home or a coffee shop. Now Mark Zuckerberg comes along and says, What we can do

Speaker 0:
is you can stay at home, but you can put some glasses on and you can pretend to be at the office

Speaker 0:
like someone must explain to me why that sounded attractive to anybody at any stage. Um, And when Mark Zuckerberg released that Metaverse video from Facebook, that was saying, Here's what the future can look like And he walks around like a robot and then you realise No, that's actually a video of him. Now, here's the robot. Um, and they show you pretending to be at the office. If I'm gonna be in the metaverse, I want to be a dragon.

Speaker 0:
I don't want to be a receptionist. Um, at the at the at the Metaverse branch of Standard Bank, please not, um So all these banks that ran into the metro verse and bought land in the metaverse I hope they kissed their money Goodbye.

Speaker 0:
Um, so I I might be wrong. Of course. Uh, but at the moment, I'm bullish on a I and bulls on me. Yeah, but in your opinion, Graham, do you think v r Just it's a bit too soon. It's like it's such a big leap forward, basically. And we have to as humans we want to be exposed to increment. No, I I I think it's different, Eugene, I think that the people who are developing it, uh, have never actually gone outside.

Speaker 0:
Uh, fair enough. Um, I think the no seriously I think the wrong people are, are are are working with it. So there are some very cool use cases of v r. For example, there's a construction company in Pretoria to come to Johann's point. South Africans are at the forefront of this. You'll find South Africans internationally are in these companies, often leaders in the field. But here in South Africa, the mining companies there's there's an A I and artificial and and, um

Speaker 0:
V R lab at at Tucky in the mining department, which will blow your mind. They can literally take you on the second floor of the mining department down into Anglo deep with virtual reality headsets. And then you can feel Amma claustrophobic

Speaker 0:
or a construction company that puts you on the top of a crane in a crane operators booth to see. Are you scared of heights? Can you handle this crane? Let's throw a big wind gust at you now if you do that in virtual reality,

Speaker 0:
that's a lot less expensive than if you crash an actual plane or or or have a a rockfall underground so I can see some spectacular use cases. I would definitely love to spend half an hour every afternoon with a gin and tonic in the middle of the Kruger Park. Every afternoon I put on the V R headset, you've got those cameras that are already established. We just turn them into three D, and I can literally in real time

Speaker 0:
sit on the deck at Cuza and see what's in the what's in the watering hole. But do I want to live? There

Speaker 0:
is Is that what I want my office experience to be like? I don't think so. So, again, this is part of what we're trying to do from a thematic approach. You're not trying to guess exactly which technology works and then pin your investment hopes to that. You wanna look at the themes and one of the theme questions is, are people really gonna use this?

Speaker 0:
And it's like you say it's the direction that you move in. Not not pinpointed. Johan, You wanted to add something. I don't know if there any more questions. I just wanna quickly also share my view from a baby boomer perspective. OK,

Speaker 0:
so some of you I look at this are very, you know, like, my age and, uh, come a long way we never grew up with with I t and all of these things, so it can be overwhelming to all of us. So I just want to give you assurance, uh, that we're not here coming with outer space stuff, OK,

Speaker 0:
what we as an asset management company is trying to do is to diversify ourselves. Why do we exist to give you better than the market? Otherwise, we can just buy the market and give you the market. So all we do and this thematic approach is critical for us to actually try and outperform our competition. Otherwise, we don't have an existence we still invest in bonds, OK? Bonds are actually very attractive at this stage, But

Speaker 0:
the stuff that that we're talking about, we honestly believe is gonna put you as a as a lot of your advisors in a position to give your clients a competitive return going forward.

Speaker 0:
So, uh, I just wanna bring that perspective over as well from from my side that a lot of these things are also foreign to me. I'm just looking for out performance. That's all I'm doing. Fran, I've got another question for you, though. Um, if an investment decision is made from optimum, but the A I is providing conflicting data suggesting a bad investment. What decision would take priority?

Speaker 0:
Um, no, we'll always override the A. I, um I think I think at the end of the day, um, you need to simplify things as well. Uh, there's no better way to make money to is to make sure that what you pay for the stock that you buy, you're paying a fair value or you're paying actually quite a cheap, uh, price for that for that stock. And yeah, A I can give you all the all the info At the end of the day, you still need to decide.

Speaker 0:
Are we buying a bargain, or are we paying too much for a stock and that that will always sit with the investment team? Um, because, yeah, I think, uh, over years and years and years in stock markets, the one thing that is always true is when you buy something at a cheap value, then you tend to outperform. Um, and what, uh, how do you get to to analysing a stock to make sure it's cheap? Well, that's human human capacity that that still does that.

Speaker 0:
Thanks, Franco. Just Johan. As an economist, this next question is posed to you. South Africa is part of the BRICs countries, and I know specifically South Africa has been Or rather, the A N. C. Has been very side towards Russia. What impact will that have on South Africa if there's going to be a split in the trading blocks, the West on the one side and the east on the other side?

Speaker 0:
I think South Africa is actually very clever. Now. My F fellow colleagues won't agree with me because they're not taking any side

Speaker 0:
because what's clearly happening I believe in the world and the world that we live in. Is there new geopolitical boundaries being formed? Um, I think China has got huge aspirations. Uh, they can't be very aggressive on their aspiration because of their dependence still on the American economy and American consumer. But clearly, we know that there is something starting to develop, right?

Speaker 0:
Um and I don't want to call it the East versus the West, where there might be bric countries like Brazil that will also form part of this new, uh, block that are trying to oppose and trying to be less dependent on the influence of America. And South Africa knows that, because South Africa, uh, is is trying to position himself on both sides, so we know how

Speaker 0:
the approach towards Russia has been. But last week, there was a full delegation in America, a plea plea with the Americans not to stop our privileged, uh, export arrangements with America. So I think we're in a world order, which is changing the outcome of that. We're not sure yet, but I think some of the major big players, um, wants to and especially in that regard china,

Speaker 0:
uh, want to have a stronger presence in the world and a more dominant force in the world. Uh, and I think South Africa is just checking out which one is going to win and and join that side. All right, so, um, we are a big exporter to China. We know that, but we're also a big exporter to the West. You know, some European countries, uh, are our biggest export partners in In In, In In our fruit and commodities and stuff like that.

Speaker 0:
So yeah, so I can't tell you where it's gonna go, but the way I see it is, South Africa doesn't want to take a chance to pick the wrong side. At this stage. I I I agree with Johan exactly on that. And obviously we all have our own opinions about the morality of war, and you you might have picked your your side personally, but countries shouldn't be run by sentiment and personality.

Speaker 0:
And as much as we might say, Well, there's a There's a moral decision to be made here, and you could see arguments in both directions. Possibly

Speaker 0:
South Africa is an interesting case. We are friends with everybody.

Speaker 0:
No, there's no country in the world that says we won't trade with South Africa. Think about that.

Speaker 0:
Ukraine and Russia want our business,

Speaker 0:
and China and America want our business.

Speaker 0:
That's a good place to be.

Speaker 0:
There's a moral conversation. We can have that at coffee.

Speaker 0:
Yeah,

Speaker 0:
and actually, that links really nicely with the next question. Francois. Overseas or local? How can we feel comfortable investing in a Third World country like South Africa?

Speaker 0:
Yeah, I think it's again for me. It's coming back to valuations. Our stocks are are really cheap at at this stage. And, um, yeah, at the end of the day, it's the price that you pay for for the companies. And as I said, valuation is is on our side. Yes, we've got our problems. Um,

Speaker 0:
but just remember, there's also international businesses that that comes here and taking out our companies like Heineken did with with the, um, Pepsi took out Pioneer Foods. The list can go on and on about international companies that comes here and buy our businesses.

Speaker 0:
Uh, MS c taking out medic clinic. It's all listed companies on the J S E. That's not listed anymore. So those international guys are seeing something in South Africa. Um, and I can guarantee you is the valuation that they see. They can buy businesses at really cheap values at this stage. And they know South Africa is an investable, uh, country. And again, I'm not ignoring the

Speaker 0:
problems. We all know about the problems. But if an international company takes out our listed businesses, um, it shows that that there's decent value in our market. Um, and that's also where we we allocated our portfolios. It's more to the to the cheaper South African stocks. Uh, Joan mentioned we like our bonds. Um, so we see a lot of value in the South African listed equity space, but also in the bond space.

Speaker 0:
Thanks. I think it's important to note especially some of the largest stocks even listed on the J. C. They have no operations in South Africa. Richman Process Anglo American B H P Billiton. Those guys are only listed here. They do not operate in South Africa at all.

Speaker 0:
Um, I think one other thing One of the largest companies in the world, um, Amazon, is building a 1.2 billion rand office in in Cape Town. They've already um appointed over 6000 people in South Africa, and Fran can also expand on this. The Europeans like to use South Africa for call centres because our English is completely neutral so people can understand us really, really well and our time zone is the same.

Speaker 0:
So there's lots of call centres in South Africa and it's it's links back to what Graham said. Remember call centres? Not 1000 people sitting together in a room anymore. You can do that from home now. As long as you have good Internet, you can service anyone in the world from from your your study. Basically.

Speaker 0:
So we need to to those type of things are not always featured in the media. It's always the bad things. And I think I'm gonna hand over to Graham, um to who will introduce Musi in a second and just to give to unpack. Where are we going with this? Is there hope, um, for for the South African political landscape. So, Graham, I I'd like to throw that question to you. Can we just have my screen back up again, please? And if you go to your phones one last time,

Speaker 0:
uh, this time. It's not a poll. I'd actually like you to think about this and just type something in for me. So this is just free text. You can just type a sentence. Don't type an entire political manifesto here. Ok, um, just a sentence or two. But I just wanted to frame the question this way. I could have asked the question

Speaker 0:
Like what? What do we have to fix, You know, or what do you think the biggest problems are? But I wonder if what we've done so far for you this morning might

Speaker 0:
get you to see why we frame the question this way. What are the opportunities that are available

Speaker 0:
in we? We've said this already in in every time of of chaos and change and disruption and risk.

Speaker 0:
There, of course, are the threats. But there are the opportunities as well. And I wonder what opportunities you, uh, might see as you as you look at this, uh, country that we all that we all love and and live in.

Speaker 0:
So, uh, if you can't see it just on the sides, Uh, very quickly. And Musi welcome. This is gonna transition, uh, to what you're going to, uh, share with us. And, um, just so if you can't see that just to read a few of these job creation,

Speaker 0:
um, and then there's a lot of ones about energy. Uh, I think this is something we're not talking about enough. As more and more of you are putting solar into your own homes as businesses, um, are now doing it. That is, every every day that that happens, there's less pressure on on the grid. And as big the big solutions are still required. But as those big solutions come on,

Speaker 0:
they come into an environment where the energy mix is different from what it was 234 years ago. So, yes, crisis. Yes, we wish that had been sorted out a different way. But typical of South Africa, we kind of getting on with it and doing what we each can. And maybe there's There's a message there that we'll hear a little bit, uh, from as well, tourism, uh, coming up, Uh, service delivery, the informal economy. Absolutely. Job creation,

Speaker 0:
I still believe. And with this, I'm gonna hand over to you. Thanks, guys. Um, that in South Africa,

Speaker 0:
if we activate south Africans, whether that's us individually, whether it's a group of investors who put their money in a particular place and a particular location. Uh, however we might activate South Africans as big as our problems sometimes look and feel.

Speaker 0:
Actually, there are solutions, and those solutions might

Speaker 0:
make a difference in our country quite quickly. It's not as if everything's broken and there's no hope, Um,

Speaker 0:
or maybe I'm wrong. But Lui, let's hear from you. Thank

Speaker 1:
you, Thank you.

Speaker 1:
Good morning. Or rather, I should say Good evening. It's probably more appropriate. I truly apologise. I,

Speaker 1:
um

Speaker 1:
I apologise because I'm not late because it's a black thing like, let's let's let's not make the two synonymous, right? Neither is it a political thing, although in this instance it's a government thing. We've got a visiting head of state, which I had a meeting with, and noticeably on my way out. They blocked literally roads all the way through, and so then, as you were trying to get through sponte, we decided everyone must stop, and that was the party. There's nothing more entertaining than sitting

Speaker 1:
on just a stop to wait for other people to get through and the police were there, so I truly apologise and I'm hoping that in many ways in the next two hours that I've got No, I'm joking that at least we can speak about this beautiful country.

Speaker 1:
I don't want to traverse a lot of the ground that maybe has been covered this morning,

Speaker 1:
but I think it's important to remind ourselves I want to take lead from what Graham was saying that indeed South Africa is a great place.

Speaker 1:
I've had the great privilege of travelling all over the world as many of you have.

Speaker 1:
South Africa is still relatively a place you can bet on

Speaker 1:
SMS as early as as early as in the 19 forties 19 fifties, that South Africa is one of the places where almost the worst never happens.

Speaker 1:
We find ourselves at a crucial moment in history

Speaker 1:
where ultimately I think as a country we face profound opportunity.

Speaker 1:
But I won't downplay the threats that go with it,

Speaker 1:
but maybe ask ourselves where we find ourselves in the world as we sit right now.

Speaker 1:
The first is, I think we've hit a maturation of nationalisms and I I know many people might say what does that mean? But in many ways

Speaker 1:
we've been through British colonialism.

Speaker 1:
We've been through Afrikaner nationalism,

Speaker 1:
We're hitting the peak of African nationalism,

Speaker 1:
and I think any leader who sits in this country would sit back and ask the question, What is next?

Speaker 1:
So here's the risk. The risk is we can wait for another form of nationalism to come on board.

Speaker 1:
Or actually, as majority of South Africans who were recently polled indicate, they say they want to live in a society where ultimately each of us as various individuals can be offered the opportunities to prosper

Speaker 1:
and take the country in a unique direction.

Speaker 1:
I think that's a powerful moment in the world.

Speaker 1:
In fact, there are those who call themselves populists who would say No, we must rail against that

Speaker 1:
and as such, group a set of people and say, Actually, these are your enemies. If it's not the immigrants, it's this race, this tribe, this religion and all over the world a populism is forming to try and to regroup society into features that cannot that are mostly biological,

Speaker 1:
and I think as you are starting to see, there's far more common ground amongst people in the middle who say we can lead in a way that acknowledges our individualism.

Speaker 1:
So my first bet for South Africa's politics is that we could mature truly a new South African type of politics.

Speaker 1:
I I don't know about you, but I'm deeply tired of what typically is called black parties,

Speaker 1:
white parties, Afrikaans parties, religious parties.

Speaker 1:
We have to be able to build something fresh emerging from that.

Speaker 1:
And I wanna tell you a story. A couple of years ago, I landed in an air strip in Lusaka,

Speaker 1:
never been there in my life,

Speaker 1:
and we were boarding this airlink flight

Speaker 1:
As we landed in Lusaka. I noticed that we started taxiing for what felt like a long time.

Speaker 1:
It felt like we'd landed in water CREF to park at O R. Tambo.

Speaker 1:
So as we're cruising along, I'm thinking to myself, because the last time I saw something like that happen

Speaker 1:
was when, um someone was gonna be arrested on the plane for an immense amount of drugs. So, like the generation that I am part of, I pull out my phone because I think this is a phenomenal twitter moment.

Speaker 1:
I start forming as I see on the side of the tarmac, A hole of the army standing on the side.

Speaker 1:
I think this is gonna be fantastic. The general of the Army steps onto the plane

Speaker 1:
and then, like I'm filming this, I'm thinking this is incredible. And as he gets closer to me, I get a close up like I've never seen before. He looks at me and he says, you, sir, we are here for you. I think to myself I have no cocaine.

Speaker 1:
He takes me, puts me up and then I ask him like any good South African would ask, Do you know who I am?

Speaker 1:
No. The question has context.

Speaker 1:
At the time, I'm the leader of the opposition in South Africa, established in the Constitution. I think at least I hold some position for him not to ill treat me.

Speaker 1:
He gives me the answer I will never forget. He says, Mr Maimane, we know exactly who you are and I want to tell you, sir, the temperature is rising.

Speaker 1:
Whatever that is, right.

Speaker 1:
So I then decide to phone the South African ambassador who is waiting for me on the other side of the tarmac. He says to me. I phone him and then he doesn't answer the phone. I'm travelling with two other people, a chief of staff and the head of security. They get up, they are phoning different people, and eventually I see him on the floor lying down with the Army soldier like Army's general's knee on his neck. I'm thinking to myself, maybe I should sit down at this point

Speaker 1:
as I take a seat, he says to me, I want all your technology because he noticed I've been filming all of this.

Speaker 1:
I said, No, you can't just I can't just meet you here for no reason other than the temperature rising for you to take my phone, My iPad, everything that I have

Speaker 1:
and I want to say this to you. The pilot of the plane comes out.

Speaker 1:
I didn't at this point think I was in trouble until another passenger who has now been told to disembark, starts walking past me and says, Mr Mamani, I run private prisons in Lusaka. When they take you to one, give them this address.

Speaker 1:
OK, he says to me, in the best Afrikaans I could ever hear in my life, he says. Says the pilot, he says. Your technology. I'm paraphrasing. Play in park and

Speaker 1:
your laptop.

Speaker 1:
Reluctantly, I hand it all over,

Speaker 1:
but like a good B e e South African. I have a spare phone,

Speaker 1:
so I sit and I wait for everybody to leave the plane and I make this decision to go.

Speaker 1:
I asked the guy, Can I go to the bathroom? So sure.

Speaker 1:
Get up. Go to the bathroom, pull out my spare phone phone. South Africa say Listen, I've been arrested in Zambia. Put it in every news outlet you can imagine.

Speaker 1:
My wife said she was sitting at home

Speaker 1:
watching the ticker take at the bottom, saying my money arrested in Zambia.

Speaker 1:
It was one of these moments that any wife would simply say. Is this my my money?

Speaker 1:
Yeah,

Speaker 1:
long story short. The reality of it is that democracy is always fragile.

Speaker 1:
We were arrested because the leader of the opposition in Zambia at the time was in fact mobilising in a community really seeking a new political leadership that would bring all Zambians together and the boot of oppression had told him he can't lock them away. And anyone who sought to challenge that idea was taken out,

Speaker 1:
I tell you that because even in the continent of Africa, new leaders are emerging that are railing against the old order.

Speaker 1:
In many ways, it's what would typically be called post liberation era politics. But it's a new politics of a kind, and it's important for us to know that because as South Africa, we are in the process of going through that.

Speaker 1:
The second is I think we are hitting a point of a post ideological world. No one could sit here today, regardless of this being an investment conference, and convince me that capitalism will solve all our problems or anyone could tell me that socialism will solve all our problems.

Speaker 1:
A new era must emerge. That's why a conversation about E. S. G. S and all of those things becomes important because it offers a critique about the way we've seen the world. It mutes the voices of people like Thomas Piketty, who highlight the level of inequality in the world and ask in his latest book, Now Perhaps is a time for socialism,

Speaker 1:
for most people would go. If you think socialism, then you think Venezuela, if you think capitalism, you think some of the inequality that we see

Speaker 1:
a new set of values must occur.

Speaker 1:
Thirdly, we are in a geopolitical reorientation.

Speaker 1:
A fight between Russia and Ukraine isn't just a conflict taking place in an area. It is asking us globally whether we choose the Global West or the global East.

Speaker 1:
The good news is that you have a choice to invest in a continent of 1.2 billion people that suddenly presents new found opportunity.

Speaker 1:
So with all of that, in a post covid world,

Speaker 1:
if we come back home, I could spend my morning talking to you about energy, crisis, water crisis, crime, unemployment. But even with all of those things, we now need to find a new leadership that will do a couple of things. And the first is this. Actually, what I find beautiful about

Speaker 1:
the moment we live in is that we can build on new values. Part of the leadership cohort that should emerge in South Africa must be values driven. You can't convince me what's going on in Johannesburg, Tshwane and coalitions that that demonstrates values of South Africa.

Speaker 1:
I would make this case that the value that must triumph is the idea of the notion that we must see the humanity in one another, because when we do that, we do what Steve Biko so cleverly said and said We as Africans and I include all of you black, white, Indian coloured we can offer to the world a much more human face.

Speaker 1:
We are here

Speaker 1:
in a time that we can offer hope to the world. I genuinely believe that

Speaker 1:
if we recognise values, we recognise that our threats are the same for each other,

Speaker 1:
which means if we invest in human dignity, products of the future are going to be those that uphold that, because your future clients are not going to put up with any investments that strip away. The dignity of human beings

Speaker 1:
matter. How does that work? Well, in the minerals? I was this morning discussing the minerals energy complex, and in truth, when you take away energy and you take away coal from South Africa and say, don't invest in coal. But we will sit in Washington, Germany and other parts and fire up our coal powered stations just so that you Africans there at the bottom can live with load shedding whilst electricity is going elsewhere. You can appreciate the indignity that that presents to many Africans.

Speaker 1:
You can see how many people are starting to rail against this idea when during covid, our scientists discover a variant and then the global West says, we will shut you down without any sense of consideration.

Speaker 1:
This presents massive opportunities for us. So here are the things that we must do

Speaker 1:
because I've got to finish here, and I'm happy to take as many questions as possible

Speaker 1:
for South Africa's purposes. We have to given where we are chartering on a new world. We have to build a modern and a capable state.

Speaker 1:
I

Speaker 1:
state is archaic

Speaker 1:
guys. If you still want to apply for an unabridged birth certificate, you have to look through reams and reams of paper.

Speaker 1:
Surely that can't be.

Speaker 1:
Some of our technology is ageing, so I challenge you to say this. In a digital universe, there's a massive opportunity to invest in solutions that in fact, diversify the nature of energy that we can. Secondly, it's how we educate our kids.

Speaker 1:
We can be able to build an education system that leaves frogs just an industrial or a third a third Industrial Revolution. Fourth Industrial To really leapfrog our kids into a competitive dynamism that goes forward.

Speaker 1:
But

Speaker 1:
the hope is this.

Speaker 1:
Every time the economy has led in South Africa, whether it's through business, confidence or not, change occurs.

Speaker 1:
We're living in one of those times. We're living in a time where the gap between productivity and competitiveness and business confidence are at their lowest, which means this thing. And I wanna say this as carefully as I can. Sometimes the more things fall apart, the more they fall into place.

Speaker 1:
We're living with incredible opportunities for change as we sit here now.

Speaker 1:
As I said earlier, what's wrong with South Africa can be fixed with what's right with South Africa. We have a private sector that is still vibrant and capable of trading. This gives me hope for the new world that we head into.

Speaker 1:
So as the theme of the conference, is it a reset? It's a global reset, but it has got domestic consequences for how we go forward.

Speaker 1:
We will have to choose in the next one which direction we go, it's not up or down or it's not centre left or centre right. It's whether we go backwards or we charter a new way forward. And that will mean we have to put together policies that bring us

Speaker 1:
into a transition that will ensure that South Africa maximises its opportunities.

Speaker 1:
I know many of you are asking yourself what's gonna happen next year.

Speaker 1:
Here's some good news. Our recent polls indicate the fact that a N C will be sub 50%

Speaker 1:
at this point, not sub 50% enough.

Speaker 1:
But maybe with a bit more load shedding, who knows?

Speaker 1:
Coalitions are a conversation we cannot avoid. We have to only answer the question. How do we manage those coalitions?

Speaker 1:
The danger is if there are coalitions of old, there will be coalitions of race of religion, culture or corruption.

Speaker 1:
If we manage coalitions of the future, they must be of pragmatism. And how do we charter the world going forward now? You might look at Joburg and say, Well, what hope do we have? I actually think, given the state of what the global economy is, a coalition that's pragmatic, that looks at the future is well on the cards. And just between you and I amongst US girls, as many people would say

Speaker 1:
that conversation is well on its way and I'm confident we'll find each other and find a new way forward that gives me hope.

Speaker 1:
The next triggers of hope is the fact that intra Africa trade is beginning to increase. The Africa Free Trade Arrangement is giving us the space to be able to actually trade and do great things.

Speaker 1:
So now, in wrapping this up,

Speaker 1:
if the opportunities are before us, if this country ultimately can change,

Speaker 1:
it requires a new activism from you. As business leaders,

Speaker 1:
you can't sit back and say, Well, let's hope for the best.

Speaker 1:
I don't plan on being mean to people, especially if you are late.

Speaker 1:
But I will say this. The tragedy about business here

Speaker 1:
is that it's never found a government it does not like.

Speaker 1:
That was true during apartheid, and sadly, it's true. Today.

Speaker 1:
We need a new leadership

Speaker 1:
and an activism that invites you as business leaders to say. How do we invest responsibly

Speaker 1:
build a sense of South Africa that we can work with, call out rubbish when politicians put it out and make sure that

Speaker 1:
we have an activist voice in society

Speaker 1:
back to Zambia as I close,

Speaker 1:
I pull out my phone. My phone! The news are now going. I can see the general is panicking.

Speaker 1:
Eventually he leaves the plane, comes back with new sets of tickets, issues them out on the plane to now only three passengers. He said you lot have been deported out of Zambia. You best leave now.

Speaker 1:
New passengers join in

Speaker 1:
that are like Thanks. Have you ever seen when people are hurtful? After a two hour delay,

Speaker 1:
they had that look. And then they said you are the reason we have been delayed.

Speaker 1:
We fly to South Africa.

Speaker 1:
The prisoner I went to go see Haen. Chile is released.

Speaker 1:
He stands for a local election

Speaker 1:
wins.

Speaker 1:
I get this bizarre phone call. Hey, your guy has one there

Speaker 1:
you must come.

Speaker 1:
I bought another airlink flight. I land in Lusaka.

Speaker 1:
I see the same parade on the tarmac

Speaker 1:
and I think to myself This brings back memories.

Speaker 1:
Airlink doesn't have a business class, so I'm passenger one. A

Speaker 1:
three generals come walking now onto the plane.

Speaker 1:
I'm sitting in the front so I can hear them talking to the host.

Speaker 1:
They say to her we are here for passenger one A, I think to myself Not again. I take my bags, I get out, they march me, they roll out the red carpet They say to me, Mr Maimane, you are an honoured guest of our president, Mr Hale.

Speaker 1:
Hm?

Speaker 1:
There is nothing in the world that makes you walk past an army knowing what you know. It's like I'll see you boys later. But if you look at the Zambian economy today, the kwacha is getting stronger than the rand. There are massive reforms because when leaders take activism, change occurs. And here's the hope

Speaker 1:
at the same time as all of this was happening. If you rewind at the movie to 1980 you may very well discover as change was happening in Mozambique, Malawi, it was happening in Zambia. In Zimbabwe Kenneth Kaunda, then Robert Mugabe South Africa was last the recent round of elections. Malawi elected a new president Lazara Chakra, Lesotho took Maa, who started a party six months ago. Today is the Prime Minister

Speaker 1:
Uh in Zimbabwe goes to elections next year by recent polls. Nelson Chamisa is leading the government on the day I've told you the story about Kienle, my hope is that in the same wave of change that took place in the S a DC region, the same wave will take place in South Africa. Come 2024. I wish you well, Thank you. And God bless

Speaker 1:
so

Speaker 1:
mhm.

Speaker 1:
Yes,

Speaker 0:
I've already got some questions for you pouring in. Um, the first one is, um, you've been in parliament now, and in South Africa. Is there any other countries we can look at that went through the same sort of electricity issue that we currently get? Is this something that South Africa as a whole can learn?

Speaker 1:
Absolutely. And I and I think we can look at a country like Poland. Uh, the leadership there did an incredible job by incentivizing solar panels of roofs to bring about change,

Speaker 1:
we can look at, um, Germany. Funny enough. A number of years ago went through a similar crisis and sought to diversify their energy.

Speaker 1:
The principle always remains. You need decisive leadership. You need to augment the deficit

Speaker 1:
and the deficit in terms of demand and ultimately ensure that you can lead citizens through load shedding. Our dilemma is that we have a government that doesn't seem to worry about electoral prospects at times. So it seems to want to comfort us into the belief that if you just keep load shedding on, we are avoiding a grid collapse.

Speaker 1:
So as things stand at the moment, the pathway is as straightforward as this. We have to make sure our coal power plants and I know I'm not sounding very popular are working well at Eskom.

Speaker 1:
The second thing is, as Graham was alluding to earlier, manage demand and bring it down. So all the roof space that's available in schools, hospitals, et cetera must be used for solar.

Speaker 1:
And thirdly, we have to figure out a way as to how do we augment for the 6000 megawatts? And I'm proposing this that b 00 so build own operate kind of facilities that use whatever technology is available, whether it's safe, nuclear, whether it's coal, wind gas can begin to augment for the 6000. And I'm comfortable enough that learning the lessons from various parts we can be able to see that transition take place.

Speaker 0:
Thank you. Yeah. It's interesting to note even a country like Germany, one of the most developed nations in the world, has faced similar type of of obstacles, and they have managed to overcome it. So definitely doable in South Africa as well.

Speaker 0:
Um, another question we have here from the audience. Maybe just unpack a little bit more of what a potential coalition would look like next year because exactly like you mentioned, we see everyone keeps on referring to Joburg tswana I to a certain extent, and it looks unstable all the time. Is that what's waiting for South Africa on a national level, too? Or how could that potentially play out? We've

Speaker 1:
got two choices next year. It's how well Julius Malema does and how well we do.

Speaker 1:
And when I say we, I mean people like me who share particular sets of values. And I mean people like Julius, who share particular sets of values, and those are two diametrically opposite to each other. Why I say that is that if you were buying an investment in South Africa, you'd look at it from a 5 10 year period, right? You'd think, What is the long term prospects? In truth, the A N C. Succession planning means that three years from now, Cyril, if you

Speaker 1:
will face another elective conference. It happens to be in the middle of his second term as president all over the world. Second term presidents are just lame ducks.

Speaker 1:
Everyone knows that. So power will shift away from him to a new leader,

Speaker 1:
and by all accounts, Paul Masha will be the person who's at the helm. So then the question becomes in an A N. C. That has a shortfall of 10 or or so percent. Where are they gonna get it?

Speaker 1:
And Paul is a close friend of Julius. That's where it's coming. So when you look at Joburg, Joburg is not a coalition of many parties becoming hectic. Joburg is a coalition of the A, N C and the E F F with puppet mayors.

Speaker 1:
Mhm.

Speaker 1:
So the scenario is well on its way now.

Speaker 1:
So what we've got to solve for is that missing 10 to 12%. That's the only debate South Africa must be engaged with. That's what we've got to solve for, because those values must find political vehicles that can ensure that even if the coalition is with whatever remains of the A N. C, you can pull the country to more. The centre or build a grand coalition with the other opposition parties. That deficit must be fixed for.

Speaker 1:
And I am telling you now, the conversations we've been having pertain to all the other parties, including the D A, including everyone to build that central ground

Speaker 1:
so that we can get over the 50% mark because, in truth, you can't have a revolving door in the presidency where it's your turn this month. The union buildings aren't an air B N B, so we genuinely have to find that 12%. So my call today

Speaker 1:
is that let's beat the e f f full stop.

Speaker 0:
Thanks, miss

Speaker 0:
which he will be around for lunch if there's any further questions. But I'd like to introduce our last speaker today. I don't think he actually needs a lot of introduction. Dr. Suleiman, Um, the gift of the givers. They've already raised more than 4.5 billion rand worth of aid. Uh, that's been deployed in more than 45 different countries across the globe. And with that, I'll just like to give Doctor Nia Suleman a warm round of applause. Thank you.

Speaker 0:
She

Speaker 1:
fuck.

Speaker 1:
I know my story.

Speaker 1:
The

Speaker 1:
thank you, everyone Thanks, Lawrence. Thank thank you. Thank you very much for the invite. I'm we We were on the programme earlier. Together.

Speaker 1:
A special thank you to Joan Van de from From Effort Engineering. We've got a very special history that goes back to 1993. I'll mention that somewhere along the line when I speak

Speaker 1:
this type of discussions are taking place throughout the country. Everybody is worried about Eskom, about hope, about the future, about our new generation, about our Children. It's going on everywhere. Last year I was invited to do 100 and 73 engagements

Speaker 1:
and I've spoken to everyone. It was the same story. What's the hope for the country?

Speaker 1:
Let's go back a little bit in history. You guys are investors

Speaker 1:
and you guys, you know you in for the long run. You don't put 100,000 on Friday and expect it to get 200,000 in the following week. It doesn't work that way. And all investors tell you wait for the long run. Wait for four years or five years. Everything takes time in terms of returns. In the same way disasters don't last forever.

Speaker 1:
Difficulties don't last forever

Speaker 1:
as long as the thinking people to want to make a change. We can make that change and alluded to the part. We have good people, new people working together to bring about change.

Speaker 1:
The important thing is not the governance, not the structure, not government, not corporate, not private, not public. What is important is the individual.

Speaker 1:
If you want change, look in the mirror.

Speaker 1:
Sort yourself out first.

Speaker 1:
It's about an individual that fixes the system, not an entire group. It's the people. You have the right people. You make the right difference. And this happened history over and over again. And I mentioned it this morning, was there. My father in law went to some building one day

Speaker 1:
and he came to the guy and he said, There's a problem with the computer. Innovation is not correct.

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The computer made a mistake.

Speaker 1:
So my father in law asked him a very simple question. I mean, he's not scientific guy. I think you asked a guy a simple question. Who put information in the computer?

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It's us.

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The problem with the system is the US,

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and the biggest problem that we have is 44 important qualities are missing

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spirituality,

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morality,

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values and ethics. You fix that in government. You fix that in corporate. You fix that in the health service, you fix that in the religious sector, in the sector and throughout the country, you will look in the mirror and police yourselves. This is what the country needs to bring about change. The second thing that we need to look at is mindset.

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Everybody is negative. You know, The spiritual law is if you keep setting out negative, negative will keep coming back.

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You have to think positively in everything.

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He came out of the Great Depression. I was not there at that time.

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But people came out of the Great Depression and they survived.

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In 2008, the banks collapsed.

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We didn't say failed. Well, we came out of that.

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At one point. The interest rate was 24%.

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We came out with that.

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The rand dollar price went to more than 19 rand to the dollar at some point and we came out of that. So every change in every difficulty is dependent on mindset.

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Our problem is that we've been dealt for heavy blows in succession.

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2020 covid destroyed the mental health of the entire nation

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because doctors don't ever want counselling.

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I specialise in disasters. I'm not a normal tourist. I'm a disaster tourist. I only go to places that I messed up

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and and and my teams that come with me always say, No, we don't want we fine. We we don't need a problem. We don't have a problem. For the first time in my history,

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I've seen on every single medical chat in this country.

Speaker 1:
Is there some type of mental health support?

Speaker 1:
Can we do yoga? Can we go counselling? Is there some spiritual mind, mind, mindfulness and all different kinds of things? If the medical profession that is so useful death is so messed up? What about guys who lost their jobs, who lost their father?

Speaker 1:
Children companies had to close down. It's a huge mindset change which a lot of our mindset attack, which a lot of people haven't recovered from. And while to start recovering from that comes the onslaught in 2021 July in K z n. So those guys got a double problem. The shops are burned, factories are looted, machines are destroyed. 50 billion is lost in the economy and the people. The oops. It's two things together now

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and then comes the floods of July of April 2022 messes up the same province again.

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And just a few months later, Eskom comes to stage eight.

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So when you put all these things together, it becomes a major problem.

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But the reality is that we are still far better off than many people all over the world.

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See, we evacuated people from Sudan in the last two weeks.

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That country was prospering

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and suddenly the same people in the same country the president and the deputy are shooting each other in the malls, in the hospitals, in the streets, in the city centre, destroying each other, destroying their people, thousands in the street, lying in the shopping malls, in the basements, everywhere in their own country, their own people.

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You can never fix that

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300 years. That's never going to get fixed to what you want. When the problem is internal, you can never fix it.

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The same problem in Syria. I've been there. We were there for 11 years. You can't fix that. When people of the same religion, same colour, same street, same neighbourhood, same locality. Turn on each other. It's never going to fix up

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that hate. And the prejudice will always be there. The same with the former Yugoslavia. We've been there too,

Speaker 1:
and you will find that those things will never change.

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It changes when it's from the outside.

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Germany and Japan were flattened in World War Two. They are part of industrialised nations G seven today.

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Can it be changed? Yes, they have improved. It can be changed.

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What is the biggest fear in this country?

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People say Eskom cry this that or the other.

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But we need to go back a little bit in the history and look at the positives.

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You see, April 27 94 was the defining factor in this country.

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Not because the black government replaced the white government.

Speaker 1:
Governments come and go, but what we can have a Chinese government to do it all changes. It's people. They come and they go. That doesn't change, or I mean that's what important is not relevant. What is relevant is the quality, the mindset, the personality of people. Like I said, the people going to the computer

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and the people on that day on 27 April 24th. What happened?

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The world media came here with war rooms. They call it war rooms

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because they were expecting this country to explode.

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There's going to be violence. They're going to burn the shops. They're going to burn the houses. They're going to steal the money. They're going to steal cars. They're going to loot the shops. They're going to do this. That and the other people are going to get killed. They're going to be in the streets. They're going to take out revenge for hundreds of years of operation.

Speaker 1:
Everything's gonna happen. Buy food. Put it in your house. Don't go out. Keep your passport ready. Disaster is gonna happen.

Speaker 1:
Nothing happened. It was the worst recorded history for international media because they like sensationalism. They like blood and mayhem. They like disaster and negativity. Nothing happened.

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People walk peacefully in the hot sun to vote,

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but in nothing that happened. Actually, everything happened

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as like you to say the people have spoken.

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They spoke without the words.

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They spoke with action.

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The action was this that we Although we had detention without trial,

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our family members disappeared.

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We were oppressed. We were beaten. Our Children were shot at.

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We're not going to have any revenge.

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We're not gonna take any vengeance. We're not going to turn against anybody. We're gonna hold hands in 95. We wear Francois Piras T shirt,

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sample of oppression. We put the step into the national anthem. Sorry. I'm a very blunt guy. We're going to put the in the national anthem because we believe in togetherness. We believe in social cohesion.

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The masses have kept to that for years.

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Everybody, The world especially the economists, failed state

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from his point of view.

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When people are being oppressed, Was it a failed state or not?

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When people had no water up to today they don't have water. In Limpopo, in Eastern Cape. The cow, the sheep, the pig, the dog and the people didn't want the same water up till today. Right now

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I heard it before. Where was the loud voices of failed state?

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It wasn't there.

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It was strong. Hope only complain. Sorry. I reach people.

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Poor people are suffering without electricity, without water, without food, without civil service delivery without hospital services for years

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we need to be positive and we need to fix that system.

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It's not a failed state.

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It's just it's got challenges. Failed state. Sudan is heading into a failed state. Syria is a failed state.

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Go to Yemen. I've come back from Yemen because we got big operations. There only got operations in disaster areas. I told you that

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there is no Telesco. There is no electricity in the country.

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You make your own electricity in the country, the hospitals, the houses, the people and they got no means. It's one of the poorest countries in the world. There is no water.

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We drill boreholes with full water and we send it to the hospitals to do dialysis

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because there is no water. If you walk around in the streets of or or Sana and other areas, you see hundreds of buildings

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in incomplete.

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Not a single construction worker on any of those buildings. It's completely finished. No construction industry, no jobs, no movement, no activity. But they are still positive and moving along.

Speaker 1:
We have much more than that. Yes, we have challenges, but we have much more than that. In terms of positivity, we're going to change our thinking patterns. and say Hopefully, yes, things will change. They will get better. So let's go a little further. From April 27th, 1994.

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Everybody was worried when the looting place took place in 2021. What did the media say?

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Insurrection.

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What is it? In selection

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you attack the airport, the harbour, the union buildings, the presidential palace, the the the military, the police all important infrastructure which interaction in the world.

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You take the shopping mall.

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First time I yelled at

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and it wasn't riots. The words are wrong.

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It was looting very big difference. Nobody care about guns and mockeries and stones to attack anybody. Nobody attacked anybody. Yes, we had some violence afterwards when people tried to burn shops. It wasn't ordinary people. These were ordinary people. Two year old 12 year old lady on a walking stick. I mean, that is writers walking stick two year old.

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But they just came to take a tonne of fish, took a pair of shoes, took something else. The biggest guys in the mess were those who were driving German cars,

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putting loads of stuff in the back of the vehicles and stealing stuff. It's a failure of ethics or spirituality. Morality and the poor people got blamed for that.

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They were the father and they paid the highest price they were used. Do this in South America, in Europe, in Southeast Asia and say, Please come take free stuff.

Speaker 1:
They will come more numbers than what we had in K Z n to take the free stuff we drive to do that. They came with no malice, no harm to anybody. Don't come to hurt anybody. They don't burn the shops. Somebody paid them and said, Burn the shops.

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Actually, that even showed us how weak the enemy was. I call him the Traitors and the anti Patriots

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because they needed to send poor people as father to go steal from shops to make it look. They had big numbers.

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They had no big numbers.

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You tell anybody to steal it or steal. As I said, people in German cars were stealing too,

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so they didn't steal and they walked past the street and they greeted you and they smiled and they went to the fridge and they ate and the washing machine and people said they're hungry. Who's gonna eat a washing machine?

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and they don't even have electricity. And they took the stings and he went. My wife grilled one of the Children. She called him home. He wants a Bursary, so she called him home. She said, Did you loot?

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He said yes. So he said, What is looting? So he puts his head down and he said, stealing. So she asked him if your mother was alive today. What should she have done? Your mother was a churchgoing lady, a domestic said. My mother will kill me.

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So why did you do it?

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Because everybody else did it.

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Do you have any regrets? Yes, one.

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I had to give the fridge back. I carried it from the shopping mall on my back to my house, and I had to give it back. They gave him the Bursary.

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It's about giving people a second chance,

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giving them an opportunity and helping them along.

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And so

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great things happen in this country.

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The same people who were affected Corporates that were affected in the mall showed the same sentiment that the press showed on 27 April 94.

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Those who lost their shops, who lost their warehouses, who lost everything that was burned and their vehicles found first,

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then say, Tell the people to go to hell. We're not going to give them anything.

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Tell us, what do the people need?

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How can we help them?

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You want to grow, hold the hand of people and bring them up. And they said We will give them stuff and they put in millions into our hands to help the people come up. Now we have that kind of positive feeling and you hold people up. A miracle happens on 20th March 2023.

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Some political parties, which MUI talks about,

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says

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If you don't stay at home,

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talk about human rights and everybody's rights would infringe your own rights that if you don't stay at home, there will be looting, intimidation. You can get killed and you won't be responsible. What kind of nonsense is that?

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The people were not going to be the second time

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you see when it happened in 2021.

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Black people are a blunt black people couldn't go to hospital.

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Staff couldn't go to hospital. Black people died in the IC U. Black Children were hungry in the waters,

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and those who are doing the espionage and the traitors and anti we doing it for the sake of our country.

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Four

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for yourself.

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Because the Sudanese president and general are also need for the country In the process of doing for the country, they are destroying all the buildings, all the shopping centres, all the hospitals, all the water plants, they for the country and putting thousands of people in the process. You doing it for yourself?

Speaker 1:
You are not doing for the sake of the country. Poor black Children whose parents who worked for years lost all their property practises. The malls were burnt.

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They lost their income. They lost chance of learning. Children died. People died in hospitals. They couldn't get there. Now the shop that gives them goods nearby is not there anymore. So now fuel price goes up, taxi price goes up, food price goes up and the suffering and the hardship increases for those people. But you see, s P 94 on 27 April we have a very forgiving nation,

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A nation full of heart, a nation full of faith.

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They went and they withstood all their difficulty. Thank you to corporate South Africa. We put over 200,000 ft parcels in a short space of time to help everybody

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and people on that day on 20th March 2023

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showed the middle finger to the political party that told that you shall root.

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They were actually standing at night and and old people what it is around the malls. You come here and we will teach you a lesson

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that is the South Africa, that we don't know about the forgiving people right now. As I'm speaking to you, the Children are dying of hunger in and in,

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They said the 2021 was about hunger.

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If it was about hunger,

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Eastern Cape will be running over 15 times already.

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2002. We had the World Summit on Sustainable Development in and But in Eastern Cape Front page of the Sunday Times, 160 Children died of starvation.

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Right now, as I'm speaking to you, when they come to hospitals, the Children are dying

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and we ask the parents why you come so late

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and they said, Don't you know it's very normal to be angry here.

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We are all very, very hungry,

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that starvation when he goes out to the Children. They are angry, too.

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The difference is the adults can survive. The child can't survive.

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And when a child comes to the clinic, it's too late. It's dead.

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You need to educate this to the dietician that you got involved with the government to fix the programme to help

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as part of spirituality. When you give you get back.

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There was a company called from Norway.

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They make what is called a fortified and nutritionally enriched peanut paste. Got a fantastic taste. Open the paper. Squeeze it in the mouth. The Children absolutely love it. The adults love it. We bought

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thousands of rands of this stuff. I just started giving it out.

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They saw it on our social media pages. They call it. They set our factories.

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Nobody

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from Cape Town. Please come and collect

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15 containers of peanut paste. Total value 25 million rand.

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A foreign company could see the hardship of our people.

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Can our own people see that of our own people

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and make the difference?

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And that says yes.

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Two miracles happen. Well, three. The one what I told you about was during the unrest of 2021 where all the cops called and said, Help us, How do we help?

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But in 2020 something changed

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when Covid took place. The heart of corporate, you know about about investments. It's about shareholders money, your clients, money making profit at any cost. Medical aids. I mean, the medical private hospitals all about 300% What the medical aid charges. It's about breaking money, money, money, money.

Speaker 1:
You forget the human part of you.

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Covid came in many ways as a blessing.

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You see, you could go to the front of the best private hospital in the city

Speaker 1:
and tell him I need a bed with oxygen. I got two billion rand and they will look at you. So what?

Speaker 1:
I know the president. I know the Health Minister. I know the CEO of your company. I know the group. CEO. I got two billion rand in my account.

Speaker 1:
Do you think they're gonna take out the guy from the bed? Who's got 50,000 rand?

Speaker 1:
What? Your two billion rand. You die outside the hospital

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and it happened Not too bad, but people had money. They died outside the hospital. That was part of spirituality. A conscious awakening that money is nothing.

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Health is everything. Spirituality. Ethics is everything to the to the credit of the hospitals. Then say you got more money, we'll bring you in.

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They left the person in the bed

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and then CEO s of companies started calling us, not SI CEO s and MD started calling and said, What can we do to save our people and to save our country?

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As the people of 94 said, We won't burn, We won't take revenge. We won't make destruction.

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The CEO s came and said, How do we help the country? Our companies are falling down, but we want to take out more money. It was the best year in our history.

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When media said you won't get money, I said, we're taking three times more than what we normally take. Why? Because we know the Ubuntu spirit of South Africans.

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And then we asked him why Why? You got more money.

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And they said, For the first time in our life,

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we understood the difficulty that poor people go through.

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You see, we were living in our ivory towers,

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but our money couldn't get us up dead in the hospital, the most expensive hospital in the country. We couldn't buy oxygen.

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What happens to ordinary people?

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We had a donor come to the office and he says, Last year I gave you 2.5 1000 rand.

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This year I haven't made one cent business in three months. Everything is shut,

Speaker 1:
but I'm gonna give you 10,000 rand.

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I'm taking it out of savings because the consciousness came to me that if I'm suffering and I have money in my deposit in my account, what's happening to those people who don't have money?

Speaker 1:
From a spiritual point of view? We call it a blessing. We call it means growth and development and progress and prosperity. So let's go back to 2020.

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It was the worst crisis in Eskom. We shut the entire country down.

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Jobs were lost,

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no money was made. People died

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and travel everywhere in South Africa today

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the malls are packed, The holiday destinations are packed, people are walking the streets. Do you look like people are all depressed and are broken?

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We are a very resilient nation.

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I spoke to the MD of Emirates a few weeks ago

Speaker 1:
and it says pre covid. We had 49 flights to South Africa a week.

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We are 43 already.

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Does that look like a candidate is falling apart?

Speaker 1:
No, it's not government,

Speaker 1:
it's us. You see, we need to understand something very, very clearly. This country does not belong to the government.

Speaker 1:
Nor does any country belong to any government in this continent. It belongs to me, to you and 65 million people. It's our country, the only administrators at the top. So stop complaining. Take all the ship and fix the country. It's called active citizenry. Then all the economies are and you guys are gonna tell me. Ah, but we pay taxes and we pay rates. And we pay fuel levy and the fuel price is high and we pay on airport tax. And we pay this debt. Yes, correct

Speaker 1:
You talking about.

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But how can any government

Speaker 1:
that has 7.4 million taxpayers look after 65 million people

Speaker 1:
that have come from a socially damaged past? With no opportunity, no knowledge, no study, no income With the youth population of 50% that's got no jobs. How are you gonna fix that?

Speaker 1:
Give the country to the Americans and the Canadians and the Germans and the Australians. I see if they can fix it,

Speaker 1:
they won't.

Speaker 1:
Nobody can do that. With 7.4 million taxpayers, it's impossible.

Speaker 1:
But let's look at the good side

Speaker 1:
in spite of all that mess, in spite of the corruption, in spite of all the wrong being in spite of the deployment

Speaker 1:
president, give him some credit. Everybody knocks him down,

Speaker 1:
is ineffective because he's indecisive, doesn't know what he is doing. He did a few good things.

Speaker 1:
It's important always to look at the good.

Speaker 1:
He appointed Edward Kisser

Speaker 1:
as a new man for SARS and you guys probably don't like it, but it's coming off a little bit.

Speaker 1:
12 trillion rand in taxes

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after the floods of 2019 covid of 2020

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civil unrest in 2021 floods of 2022 Eskom in 2023

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he collected two trillion rand.

Speaker 1:
What does it tell you

Speaker 1:
that every guy in government is not a bad guy?

Speaker 1:
You have good guys in government, Even in the political parties across the spectrum, there's good and bad in every political party, there's good and bad in every civil servant. There's good and bad in the religious sector, in the corporate sector, in the private sector, in the public sector, it's about to see that whole you look in the mirror.

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Two trillion rand 12.5 1000 dedicated staff.

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The SI U has caught a lot of people.

Speaker 1:
The hawks are almost to the same level of the scorpions of what happened eight or nine years ago. The N P. A. Is working. Yes, they got hiccups along the line,

Speaker 1:
but you can't fix the system overnight.

Speaker 1:
What's important is to be active, to fix the system, not to leave it and fall apart

Speaker 1:
in the same with Eskom. There are so many different things being done to try to fix the country in terms of energy, and you will have heard that hundreds of times over.

Speaker 1:
So my basic message is this.

Speaker 1:
The country is not going to fall apart

Speaker 1:
like investment takes years to recover problems don't last forever.

Speaker 1:
We've seen from what happened from 94 we've seen from 24,021 2022 2023 where people are not going to allow unrest. There's two critical issues.

Speaker 1:
Social cohesion and dignity. You fix that the country is safe, not everything else.

Speaker 1:
I want to go back to tell you some of these points that was infused in me many years ago.

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It's all about spirituality.

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Gift of the givers is not my organisation.

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I didn't get up one morning and say, OK, today I think I'll form an organisation.

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I'll give you the name I have a founding document, a Constitution and some founding principles. No, it's totally spiritual.

Speaker 1:
And, uh, the official date is 6th August 1992. For me, the spirituality was 1985 and explain to you why I was doing internship in hospital in Durban.

Speaker 1:
And I said to myself, Next year I'm going to be a medical officer.

Speaker 1:
Then I'm going to be a registrar, and then I'm gonna be a specialist physician in internal medicine.

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None of the above happened.

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I couldn't get a post. I couldn't study further. There was no opportunity. I had two choices, much like what the whole country is right now.

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Either make a cartwheel, sit in a corner be totally depressed and cry and say everything. The whole world is fought in a

Speaker 1:
or I make use of what's available and as an aside I agree with.

Speaker 1:
We don't shut down coal powered stations

Speaker 1:
in disaster management. You make use of what you have.

Speaker 1:
You make use of what you have. You fix it, you use it until you can create the alternative. You don't put the alternative in that's not functional and destroy what you already have. That's important part of disaster management. You make use of the best stuff that you had and you make the difference. So what do I do? I have to go to GP practise. It's what I don't want to do.

Speaker 1:
But it's a way of living and going ahead forward. So I go to Peter Marris in January 1986. I start my GP practise and I ask, the kind of guy from your city from Pretoria moves to Petersburg.

Speaker 1:
It comes from America.

Speaker 1:
We came back to the country and he came to teach French, to be honest, the first Afrikaner guy I know that teaches French guy. He comes there and is that night my neighbour comes to me, he's a butcher and he said, I got this guy. He's from Pretoria. He's teaching here and he's a doctor.

Speaker 1:
Meet Miller

Speaker 1:
and Miller says, I got this problem in that problem in that room. So Muller and I speak and I treat him a few times,

Speaker 1:
and one day he tells me a profound story.

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You say, you know, I was in America.

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I was walking through the streets of New York one day

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and I was totally depressed. My soul fell empty. My spirit was gone. I didn't know what I was doing. I was lost.

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And as I was walking down the street, I saw a man standing in the corner

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and my eyes blink to that man. I don't know this man,

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but my heart told me to follow that man.

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We have a teaching

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that when you're uncertain about something, follow your heart, not your head.

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So I followed the man and the man walked into Saint John the Divine, a huge church in New York which I visited on my way to Haiti for Earth Quake.

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And he said when the man walked in, I realised he was a Muslim,

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a Turk a master of socialism and spirituality

Speaker 1:
in the church. In the church, the man made a zar. A Zhar in Islamic terms, is an Arabic word for pronouncing or chanting God's names in Arabic. So in other scriptures you will say the living the eternal, absolute one and only kind, compassionate, merciful church that is sustained evolve. So it goes, He said. He made the Zar, but everybody in the church

Speaker 1:
there was a Jewish, thereby

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a Christian priest

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and people who say they don't believe joined the ceremony.

Speaker 1:
What did that show?

Speaker 1:
That the Christian elders of the church

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understood compassion.

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They understood humanity. They understood the oneness of mankind and of humanity.

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That one kind that we got to build in our country.

Speaker 1:
Mala then tells me we need to go to Turkey.

Speaker 1:
So I told him It's 1986. I still haven't seen Cape Town. When I'm gonna go to Turkey, you said something very profound. You said what God was happens. There's a time and a place

Speaker 1:
91. I ended up in Turkey and what saw in America I saw in Turkey, Americans, Russians, people from Europe, Southeast Asia, America, Africa all over the place Christians, Jews, Hindus, everyone.

Speaker 1:
And what was amazing that this was postal four and people related to each other. What respect, What kindness. What understanding what love, Nobody judged anybody.

Speaker 1:
And it was at that point that I learned from the teacher

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that people may have bad habits.

Speaker 1:
It doesn't make them bad people.

Speaker 1:
There are people in government who have bad habits. Some are devils, to be honest, but others are not in that way. We need to have an open mind. Show me a perfect among all of us. What a perfect person.

Speaker 1:
We don't have it

Speaker 1:
so always not to be judgmental and always think positive thoughts, he told me. When a person does bad things don't focus on the bad things. Look for one good thing that the guy has in him and focus on that good. And if you do that over a period of time, the good will come up and the negative will go down. And that's how we need to fix our society mindset, change, think positive about everything, and the positivity will flow in every aspect of our life. I go back to South Africa,

Speaker 1:
my heart yearn for that place. I haven't seen such love of different races, different religions, different colours And I come back there in 6th August 1992. The official date

Speaker 1:
10 PM After the Turkish Master tells me in fluent Turkish I don't understand a word of Turkish

Speaker 1:
But I understood every single word that you said that night.

Speaker 1:
You said my son.

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I'm not asking you.

Speaker 1:
I'm instructing you to form an organisation.

Speaker 1:
The name in Arabic will be translated Gift of the givers. You will serve all people of all races, all religions, all colours, 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.

Speaker 1:
In fact, in what you're going to be doing, expect to get a kick up your back if you don't get a kick up your back. Regard it as a bonus. Serve people with love, kindness, compassion and mercy. And remember, the dignity of men of man is foremost. This last part is the most critical

Speaker 1:
People won't destroy the country. If we have no food and no water,

Speaker 1:
people will destroy any country when they have no dignity when everything is lost, when there are no consequences because everything is gone, there is no limit to what you would do

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this way. Country can only be saved one way

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government Corporates, the public working together. There is no other way to fix this country

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because it's good everywhere and we need to hold hands together to fix what's broken and to make prosperity and to grow and to make development,

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he says. Right son clot the naked, feed the hungry, provide water to the thirsty and in everything you do be the best at what you do,

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not because of ego.

Speaker 1:
If anything destroys households, communities, companies and countries, it's ego and greed. We need to get it out of the system. It's about compassion and altruism, and that's the only way to fix systems.

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He went on to say, This is an instruction for you for the rest of your life. I was 30 years old at that time,

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and then he said something very profound.

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You said my son,

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remember that whatever you do

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is done through you and not by you

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30 years I'm intelligent enough to know the kind of things that we do is not humanly possible.

Speaker 1:
I asked him How come when you speak Turkish? I understand. And other people speak Turkish. I don't understand,

Speaker 1:
he said. My son. When the hearts connect and the souls connect, the words become understandable.

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I said, What exactly am I supposed to do? I'm a doctor. I have three surgeries in private practise in a place called Peter Meris in South Africa.

Speaker 1:
He told me one line.

Speaker 1:
You will know

Speaker 1:
for 30 years. I do know what to do, how to do what to touch, what not to touch. In fact, the moment I walked out of that place on the sixth of August 1992 it came to me respond to the civil war in Bosnia. I took in 32 containers of AIDS in November. I took in another eight containers of aid. And because you open my mind not to be prejudiced against black, white, Indian coloured or American Jewish, Christian, Hindu, it doesn't matter. Open your mind, don't misjudge people.

Speaker 1:
So in 1993 I called a man in Pretoria called Joan van der,

Speaker 1:
and I said, Johan, you built container units for arms sterilisation unit X-ray Unit Theatre unit. Let's build the whole hospital.

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I went to meet him in his factory in Roslin.

Speaker 1:
They came to my house and I said, I'm not a business. I can't guarantee I'm going to pay you

Speaker 1:
because we are still going to raise money and people are going to the hospital to take the water and they going to bomb it so they won't fund it,

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he said. What money you got? I said I got 300,000 in deposit. He said, I'll start.

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I said, If I can't pay you again, he said, It's my gift to you.

Speaker 1:
It's this kind of compassion and understanding that we are still friends. Up till today,

Speaker 1:
Joan and I go back a long way. It's this kind of South African that makes a difference. We took that hospital 28 state of the art units with a bus, a generator and an ambulance. Theatre IC u sterilisation burns, Physiotherapy, obstetrics, automatic rewards, General wards, a whole lot of things. Joan set and designed it to his family,

Speaker 1:
and we took it across. On 1st February 1994 CNN filmed the hospital and said the South African containerized mobile hospital is equal to any of the best hospitals in Europe. Not in 2023. That was in 94.

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So what am I telling you? We have the skills.

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We have the engineering capability.

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We can do anything to fix anything, Eskom or anything else. We have the skills in this country. Apply our minds, and I'll finish off with one last thing

Speaker 1:
to show you the skills of South Africans.

Speaker 1:
When does a disaster?

Speaker 1:
Some people take tents, blankets, medicine, food, diapers, Saturday beds and biscuits.

Speaker 1:
Some people send primary health care teams. In other words, flu cold allergy, asthma, high blood pressure, diabetes. Some people send trauma teams to do the real emergency stuff. Operations general surgeon, vascular surgeon, neurosurgeon, orthopaedic surgeon. Anaesthetics status IC U system. Some people take post opera after a few months. Spinal injuries make the people walk. Make sure they don't get paralysed permanently.

Speaker 1:
Some people take trauma counsellors like very much like what happened in court. Some people take search and rescue teams. Some people take the dog. Some people take medical equipment. Some people take search and rescue equipment. Some people rebuild hospitals. Some people rebuild schools. Some people rebuild houses, Some people restart agriculture again and places places where this conflict and some just taking hostage. Hostage negotiation teams are are taken

Speaker 1:
with the only team in the world.

Speaker 1:
It does all of the above.

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No country, no nation, no government, no NGO matches us. We're the only ones in the world that does all of the above.

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We can get off a plane and put an S. U and A theatre on the runway. In 15 minutes.

Speaker 1:
In Somalia we walked into a place and in three hours we set up an entire hospital with IC U Theatre everything. And it was the best part where all these people came from.

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They studied in our schools,

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in our universities,

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in our medical schools,

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in our hospitals. But one of them is an import.

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Every single one is South African highly professional. The spirit of Ubuntu dedicated, committed to change the system.

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Those same people had 210 hospitals in South Africa. During Covid,

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they made the world 1st January 20th, 2010,

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day eight of the earthquake in Haiti. In the collapsed Catholic Church, they made world history eight days into the earthquake. They pulled out alive. 64 year old an Azizi.

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Her first word from the South African team is I love you.

Speaker 1:
Sorry. His first word was I love God. You instil hope and faith into somebody 7000 kilometres away. And the second words were I love you.

Speaker 1:
A few months ago we repeated that exact same feat

Speaker 1:
on 13 September 2023.

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We had some difference this time, Instead of taking our own private jobs and our own private handler, we called the national Police commissioner and the provincial police commissioner. We could take our own people.

Speaker 1:
But if you take all the labels off and take all the badges off and take your logos off and we all stand together,

Speaker 1:
we all set up.

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We came from the same communities. We have the same hurts, the same hunger, the same pain and the same challenges. Remove the labels of government, private, corporate NGO.

Speaker 1:
And I said we will develop the public service because it will help the country. We call the Western Cape Provincial Commissioner General, We've been talking for a long time and he said, General, we need to take dogs and dog handlers to to Turkey

Speaker 1:
spirituality. I spoke to him many times and many, many times and he says, Look at the day today the head of the dog is sitting right next to me.

Speaker 1:
Tell the guy we want dogs, he said, approved in five minutes. They are never in the history of this country. Has the government approved anything in five minutes? So there's always a world first, he said. There's only one condition. Send a letter to the national to the police minister. He tutor is coming for the sauna tomorrow. If he leaves the office, I don't get the signature.

Speaker 1:
We sent a letter in 12 hours. Five dogs and six dog handlers were the airport ready to fly to Turkey on the 24th of April, BRI Brigadier Moli, who led the dog team, got called by President Erdogan and received a presidential award for the South African K nine team and S. A. P s coming to Turkey. That dog's name is Ghana.

Speaker 1:
On day eight, my team said we go too early. We should go on Day seven in the future. On day eight, it goes to the rubble

Speaker 1:
and it starts digging and it says There's somebody inside here

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90 year old lady pulled out alive in the rubble k 19 we were We were the only NGO in the world working in her time.

Speaker 1:
I was totally destroyed. There were 12 other countries. All came from the governments carbon plane, government equipment, government uniform, government money, government, food, government. We are the only ones that pay for our government to come with us.

Speaker 1:
And we took the canines across. The Chinese came to us Italians, Oman, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and the Turkish teams. And there are a few others.

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We were the only guys that had what is called a life locator and machine. You put it on the ground in three minutes to tell you who was a life 10 metres under the rubble.

Speaker 1:
We have special video cameras we put in the rubble. You can see inside special audio equipment. You can hear inside. Normally you can't hear too much noise in the back. But inside you can hear

Speaker 1:
and then the miracle of it all

Speaker 1:
The foreigners want to know how our dog is so clever.

Speaker 1:
So I said, our dog is south African. That's why he's so clever. So So I said, Why? What's the issue? They said a normal dog where they bring You need one dog to smell for life people and you need one dog to smell for bodies. Your dog in the boat, I said. Yeah, South African can do all that. So how did it make the difference?

Speaker 1:
The dog understands dignity.

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The dog understands compassion. When the dog smells the bodies in a building, it goes and it sits like this down. And you know there's deceased bodies in it. One of the buildings, they found two other bodies.

Speaker 1:
How do you know the dog is live people. The dog goes and frantically starts digging and excited and tongue starts coming out. And you know there's a live person there. Donna came. But to cross check it to you guys about governance and making sure everything is correct and nobody is lying. So they bring a second dog, Optimus, to check if the first dog is talking the truth. And Optimus comes and does exactly the same thing and they pull out a person alive from the level.

Speaker 1:
Now if we can train a dog like that?

Speaker 1:
What can we do with human beings? Ladies and gentlemen, this is the best country in the world. I've been to disasters everywhere. It's about mindset. Change. Be positive. We can fix this country. It's not gonna take. It's gonna take time. Investment returns on in five years. So you got to do that. What? Determination? What? Fate and belief. Ask the property and they tell you how you build one house in South Africa again. Check the air lands or stay at an airport in Cape Town. I said I'm gonna become a millionaire in December. I'm gonna start asking for €1 in the airport

Speaker 1:
because there's millions of these tourists coming to our city to Cape Town into our country.

Speaker 1:
People are visiting our country. They have faith in our country. We don't have faith in our own country. Yes, Eskom is a problem. Care of the grid. Those of you can afford it. And all municipalities are trying to do their own system. Wind, solar, whatever we have to use. Let's do it. Make use of the coal power stations. We'll fix other things later on. Right now, you tell a guy you know what I'm worried about energy, green things, that thing. But I'll give you our power in two years time. But if I use coal, I'll give you in two weeks time. What are you gonna tell me? They're gonna wait two years or they're gonna wait two weeks,

Speaker 1:
all of you.

Speaker 1:
It's not about wanting to pollute the environment. It's about saving an economy. It's about saving jobs. It's about making sure school kids have something to eat. So, yes, the system is not favourable to the rest of the world. But under the circumstances, it's the only thing that will save our nation. We have to do what we have to do it. Our country. Nobody can predict to us. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1:
Thank

Speaker 0:
you.

Speaker 0:
Thank you very much, Doctor Suleman. Um and with that, we are gonna have lunch after that. But I'd just like to call the group CEO Lauren Smith up to do, um, the thanks to everyone here and please join us for lunch afterwards. All the panellists will be available for any additional questions.

Speaker 0:
Ok?

Speaker 0:
Wow. I don't think I can say anything after this. It's been unbelievable. Except thanks, Graham for saving a huge amount on salaries next year. So thank you so much.

Speaker 0:
Listen to every one of you, Um, from my side, I would just wanna say thank you for attending. You know that ones that know me always know. I say that, uh, time and relationships trust integrity is the it's cost nothing. But it's the most important commodity in the world at the moment. So taking time out of your busy schedules and, um, in a place where we are at the moment, I really do think that this was necessary for all of us.

Speaker 0:
And, um yeah, so just give me a minute or two to thanks. Our special guest of honour. And I'm gonna start with you, Graham. Always good to listen to you. And since last year, when I saw Elon's travel from America to Beijing in what is it? 55 minutes? Something like that. I actually started to follow that programme. They had a big, uh I think about it a month, a month or so ago,

Speaker 0:
but they are busy with the test. And, um, those of you travelling to America, try and go to the space station and see what? What these guys are doing. It's unbelievable.

Speaker 0:
Always good to see you. She was like yesterday pre-covid when he was still the leader of the opposition. Luckily, that day we didn't arrest you. And the one thing when I when we look at the speakers and we see, uh, the one the one thing that you said that day and I don't know if people that the candidate will remember is coalition governments are coming and we've been seeing it and we have to work together. That's just how it is.

Speaker 0:
And, uh,

Speaker 0:
so on an investment forum, we're not showing slides and the way that we believe that the day when we started our business, we people that basically trust us with their money, we will take care as if it's our own and not take unnecessary chances, but also give the right advice for the future.

Speaker 0:
And then we had to, and I mean, I followed a long time ago when I sat with him and he he told me about doctor and he said, Listen, they built this hospital in Bosnia and I said to myself, Gee, was a hospital in 1993. Am I correct?

Speaker 0:
And it's 20 years down the line and, uh, we started engaging in the moment when I've, um, called the doctor Suleman and I said to him, Mr Johan, he said, That's my brother and I'm gonna help you and let's do what we can do. So if you want to to to give to your organisation or whatever you do, please support those people for what they do. Go to the website. It's unbelievable what they do. So thank you so much for the, um just a few words of thanks for the O I G team.

Speaker 0:
Um Johan. Francois. Eugene, all of you. I don't want to leave anybody out to the rest of the team. Enrico, that's here. Guys travelled from Cape Town. All our colleagues, our friends, our clients, um, advisors that's here. We really appreciate you. And, um, there's a lot of external advisors here as well. And, uh, believe you, me, we really appreciate the time that you set aside to to join us. Um, where

Speaker 0:
to? You? You really you can give her a round of applause for organising this.

Speaker 0:
It's really been excellent for the venue. People we say to you. Thank you. So much for, um, for for the as a TV. People taking, uh, basically making this life for us. Um, also from Cape Town. Malia and Chloe. We really appreciate your time to to be here and And who of you Never thought of immigrating.

Speaker 0:
Be honest one.

Speaker 0:
Do

Speaker 0:
I suppose you all live in Cape Town away. But but this is it. So 96 97% of the audience said somewhere down the line, we said, um, we're gonna go. And the day when I moved from Gauteng to the Western Cape, I actually got confused with because we would travel buddies at a at a point in time. But you were you we would do the vice. And I went to the school and said, Well, first of all, I must get a school for my kids

Speaker 0:
and the the the headmaster said to me, but where you are? I said, no, no, no. I'm gonna stop in pole. I'm not gonna go to Perth. So the the thing is that we we need to understand is the rest of the world is challenging times, but we need people like doctor, Suleman said, And that's the That's my mindset for the last couple of years to make a difference in the community where you where you are, the negativity is trust me if you start

Speaker 0:
if you start. If you start an issue with someone today, you will definitely find a reason not to like someone, but try and see the good in people and try to make a difference. And I want to to basically to leave you with a thought and, uh um, in 2000 already So 1994. I was still a young man when it was the elections precisely 2021 years old.

Speaker 0:
And then you say to yourself, um, what's happening? What? What, what? What? What must I leave? Must I go And do you remember exactly like, um, like we've we've heard from the speakers, The guys packed up clothes and it was chaos. I mean, it was just, like, couldn't believe what's happening.

Speaker 0:
But I, um and I've kept this to my heart since since many moons ago, and this was written in 2000, and it's a lady called, um Joanne Feed and please go and read a book if you can. It's called when hungry and then eat.

Speaker 0:
And she said in the book, A piece of it says South Africa is a place of spirit distorting paradox. A land with a bipolar disorder that swings you from joy to despair in the space of a heartbeat. It twists your arm behind your back, and it ties your sanity in a knot. It bullies you until you forge your opinion on politics, race, crime, aids, the state of the roads, the economy, politicians,

Speaker 0:
if not for a wishy washy or a F at this, it demands you know who you are and what you stand for. It keeps you fit on your toes and looking over your shoulder. It steals your purse and holds your soul ransom As much as I was at times on the edge of sanity living there, I was also stimulated, driven and felt bungee jumping in alive, the shapes of happiness all and fear modelled.

Speaker 0:
I knew that leaving South Africa will be like chemotherapy for a cancer patient with two of the best things in my life as well as the worst. So whenever it's bad, go and read this. It's really gonna It's a life changing event in my life. And, um, with that, we're gonna end the seminar because say once again, thank you so much for the speakers. And please give them a round of applause.

Speaker 0:
So sorry for the guys. I don't I don't think there's brandy here today, but it's definitely some wine. Maybe there is brandy. I don't know. Um, but there's coffee. There's tea. There's cold drinks. Please move to the outside. Join us for lunch, if you don't mind. And then we can chat a little bit a little bit later. Thank you so much.