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JEREMY MAGGS: Muzi Kuzwayo is a well known enterprise chief. He’s a societal thinker and a author. In a brand new ebook referred to as South Africa’s Promise, he asks a really pertinent query: When you don’t change issues, who will? He raises points across the growth of a citizen security service, and means that our leaders ought to focus as an alternative on creating concord and never division. Simpler mentioned than carried out. Shiny concepts, he says, do make the longer term vibrant, and he’s going to share a few of these ideas with us right this moment.
A really heat welcome to FixSA. I’m Jeremy Maggs, and our visitors [will] in coming weeks be requested how they will make issues higher, how we are able to make issues higher. How will we enhance issues? How within the shortest area of time can we as soon as once more change into a aggressive and profitable nation? It’s one thing that all of us aspire to. So let’s take heed to him … Muzi Kuzwayo, a really heat welcome to FixSA.
MUZI KUZWAYO: Thanks, Jeremy. I hope I can contribute one thing.
JEREMY MAGGS: I’m certain you’ll. So let me reference your ebook initially: South Africa’s Promise: Creating the Future We Need. You say, ‘Why must you be shackled to the frozen shadows of historical past that you would be able to’t change when you possibly can bask within the glory of a future that you would be able to create?’ It’s a really optimistic line. Do you assume that South Africa proper now’s shackled to frozen shadows?
MUZI KUZWAYO: Sure, it’s simple. However I believe the frozen shadows are beginning to thaw as nicely. This jogs my memory of 1988, very a lot 1988 – and possibly even earlier.
Effectively, in ’86 I keep in mind the state of emergency was imposed and the gloom that it created, individuals not figuring out what to do, corporations closing down, township companies shutting down, all we have been ever doing was protesting. I come from Springs. I keep in mind one night about 25 individuals have been shot by the police, or that’s the variety of corpses that they launched for burial. We don’t know the precise quantity that night time.
While you look again on the place we have been in 1994, I really feel that one thing massive is about to come back, one thing that’s going to vary our historical past or the course of historical past and make it constructive.
You’ve bought to undergo the winter to get by way of spring and into summer time. We’re in a winter season proper now. A number of issues have gone flawed. Some are of our personal making and a few most likely outdoors our personal making. But it surely’s in the midst of the historical past of countries. We’re on target, I consider, to achieve success. I’ll let you know why.
I used to be chatting with a diplomat. We’ve bought a variety of South Africans who’ve left the nation, British diplomats. He mentioned to me, ‘We’ve seen this in London. When a rustic doesn’t go proper, individuals transfer to the UK, have careers, after which, when issues flip the blokes will get a name. It’ll most likely be on a wet day and somebody says, ‘Hey, we’ve bought a gap so that you can come and run our workplace in Johannesburg’. The man says, ‘Oh my gosh, this rain when Joburg has sunshine!’
And he packs up and comes again. Then we get individuals who’ve bought expertise, who’ve seen the world, who’ve bought contacts and issues change once more.
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JEREMY MAGGS: What’s that massive change that’s coming that you just foresee?
MUZI KUZWAYO: I see nice success for lots of younger individuals. I don’t assume it’ll be like a bolt of lightning and thunder, as you get on Joburg afternoons. Usually change may be very incremental. As you drive, a tree was fairly bare and, the following factor you see, it’s all purple once more. It’s Jacaranda season and oh gosh, when did it occur? That’s the way it occurs.
So I believe there are particular issues which are going to occur, clearly an awesome many past our management. We didn’t see the Berlin Wall fall till it fell, they usually couldn’t hold apartheid going anymore.
JEREMY MAGGS: A lot the identical with the Arab Spring.
MUZI KUZWAYO: A lot the identical with the Arab Spring.
You realize in a variety of situations there’ll be false dawns, and also you assume that that is it. However you’ve bought to maintain the hope alive by way of the entire different mishaps and false guarantees that occur. It’s life.
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JEREMY MAGGS: Far be it for me to prick your bubble of optimism. Let me problem you. You speak about nice issues taking place, doubtlessly, for younger individuals in South Africa. We’ve a 50%, not less than, unemployment charge amongst that cohort of individuals. They’re impatient, they’re pissed off, they’re indignant. They’re bitter and plenty of have given up. How do you carry them again into the fold to ensure that them to take part in regardless of the nice issues are that you just foresee for that group?
MUZI KUZWAYO: Jeremy, I don’t have a bubble of optimism. I’ve a metal ball of optimism. I practically died after I was three or 4 years outdated. I’ve a scar below my neck. My neck was lower open by a horse with a rope – a horse! All I keep in mind, and I requested this in one of many final conversations I had with my mother, by the best way, and it was purely coincidental – ‘Ma, do you keep in mind I bought harm by a horse?’ And he or she mentioned, ‘Sure, you have been with me’. All I keep in mind is screaming and operating again residence, after which the following factor I keep in mind was bandages throughout me. Oh, I keep in mind the ambulance and the bandages round me. So ever since that day, simply being alive – I’ve bought each motive to be optimistic.
Unemployment is excessive. We’ve by no means seen it earlier than like this. We’ve bought the worst unemployment on the earth based on the World Financial institution.
Once I began working, I can safely say there was virtually no one, no black individuals, within the center class. They usually occur now. They’re there. So these modifications occur.
I can’t provide you with ‘That is what will occur’. I don’t need to be a sangoma or an economist. [Jeremy chuckles] Economists try this. However I’ve each motive to consider. I’ve the religion. We’ve bought a largely educated workforce, [but] unemployed. I noticed this in India round 1985. I keep in mind studying this in Tempo journal – that individuals with PhDs have been bus drivers. After which when the web expertise got here it simply grew. That they had individuals who have been educated sufficient to have the ability to deal with it.
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JEREMY MAGGS: I’ll settle for the ‘metal ball of optimism’ then, however what I’ll ask you is what must occur with the intention to catalyse that change?
MUZI KUZWAYO: The very first thing that truly must go is black financial empowerment (BEE) – of which I’m a beneficiary, by the best way. I learn a ebook, Finish of an Empire, and it talked about how, after they checked out varied empires, how they got here to an finish, whether or not the Portuguese Empire, the Spanish Empire or the Russian Empire.
While you begin to exclude individuals or they really feel excluded – generally it’s notion – they depart the nation. As soon as they’ve left the nation, you endure like we’re struggling now.
So that you get entrepreneurs, nice entrepreneurs, who go and take a look at one thing else someplace as a result of they really feel excluded. Then people who find themselves not entrepreneurs – who’re employees, which many are, most individuals are – run out of choices as nicely. So if we try this and we get all people again, [just] think about if you will get a man like Elon Musk – he’s the simple one, isn’t he?
However there are a variety of different South Africans who’re entrepreneurs over there. I had a chat with any person from Israel who instructed me that they’ve bought what in Israel they name ‘Silicon Valley within the desert’, because it have been, and what he did. Any individual went to the US, got here again, invested, made big quantities of cash after which the opposite guys adopted.
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In order that’s the form of factor that we have to do. There are particular issues that have been launched, I’m sorry to say, by the Oppenheimers.
It began with the Brenthurst Initiative, which introduced BEE – which was towards the ANC’s coverage of non-racialism. However individuals noticed a chance to generate income they usually made cash.
So these are among the issues that we should eliminate as a result of they’ve modified our economic system unbelievably.
JEREMY MAGGS: That’s not essentially a preferred view in South Africa. It wasn’t widespread then. How do you eliminate black financial empowerment, on condition that the idea has change into so entrenched in South Africa? The place do you begin if that’s a technique of fixing issues?
MUZI KUZWAYO: You scrap the act.
JEREMY MAGGS: Which wants political will, which most likely doesn’t exist.
MUZI KUZWAYO: Effectively, the individuals concerned are creating wealth out of it. You probably did say ‘we’ – it’s not simply airy-fairy. We’ve gangsters operating the nation – beginning with the president. They’re breaking the nation aside, stealing cash. We all know that. And now he’s bought his personal personal police pressure referred to as the SIU [Special Investigating Unit]. When he doesn’t such as you, he goes and investigates you. We see what Pravin Gordhan [Minister of Public Enterprises] is doing to Mpho Makwana [former Eskom chair]. I do know him personally. He’s a kind of individuals who is simply dedicated to serving to different individuals.
JEREMY MAGGS: We’re speaking in regards to the chairman of Eskom, who simply resigned and …
MUZI KUZWAYO: That’s proper, sure.
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JEREMY MAGGS: … who has been in battle with the minister over the appointment of the chief executives.
MUZI KUZWAYO: Completely. So what we’ve bought to cease having as South Africa, I have to hope we are able to cease having – and I hold telling individuals this – there are not any messiahs.
Pravin Gordhan is just not a messiah. Ramaphosa is just not a messiah. I can’t be a Messiah. You possibly can’t be a Messiah. We should have that requisite cynicism.
In science you’ve bought to have a sure form of cynicism when any person comes up with a brand new concept or with new data, and we should maintain the identical with all individuals in public workplace.
JEREMY MAGGS: However you possibly can’t be overly cynical or you aren’t going to make any progress in any respect. So that you’ve bought to search out that stability between cynicism on the one hand and a level, I suppose, of your steel-ball optimism on the opposite. It’s bought to be tough, tough to search out.
MUZI KUZWAYO: Completely.
JEREMY MAGGS: However tough to search out.
MUZI KUZWAYO: However that’s what life is, isn’t it? It’s not as Benoit Mandelbrot noticed, timber aren’t completely round; there’s a variety of fractal stuff in it, and we’ve bought to stay with that. We’ve bought nice establishments that exist, however except they’ve bought statesmen and stateswomen who help them, nothing’s going to occur. Nothing’s going to develop. The requisite cynicism is part of it.
JEREMY MAGGS: Let me pivot to one of many concepts that you just counsel in your ebook: citizen service, you say, will vastly cut back unemployment. You counsel that candidates earn a stipend and the stipend would alleviate monetary strain at residence. It rolls very properly off the tongue. What’s citizen service, and why wouldn’t it assist? And may we afford it?
MUZI KUZWAYO: I need to begin [with] can we afford one thing? It’s one thing that lots of people expertise. You’ve bought R20, okay R25, as a result of bread is now [more expensive], and also you’ve bought to make a name: you are taking a taxi and go discover a job, begging individuals for jobs, home to deal with, workplace to workplace – otherwise you purchase a loaf of bread. These are the form of choices that usually now we have to make.
Again within the early sixties Germany needed to make a name whether or not they made college training free – for all – or may they [those wanting to study] afford it? They couldn’t actually afford it. They’d simply come out of a warfare, which that they had misplaced.
One of many individuals who opposed it was [the man who later became] Pope Benedict, [Joseph] Ratzinger – I at all times say [chuckling] he couldn’t end his papacy most likely God was so indignant with him [that] He mentioned get off my head. He actually opposed it.
Creating alternatives
You possibly can’t not educate individuals obligations and anticipate them to have the ability to deal with these obligations in a while. So how are you going to make individuals know one another? A man from Venda, for those who make him journey and go and work within the Western Cape – he has by no means seen the ocean, most likely – won’t ever get a chance to see the ocean except he will get an excellent job.
It creates cohorts and that’s the place a variety of alternatives really lie – amongst cohorts. For individuals who’ve been collectively, who’ve labored collectively, been at college collectively, at college collectively and even after they first began, as within the case of a civilian service, what it should do is that some will go on to be bankers, others entrepreneurs; they’ll have the ability to name one another.
And the way do banks make choices? It’s actually on belief. With the primary mortgage I ever bought from a financial institution to begin a enterprise, I keep in mind this outdated man saying to me, will you carry your mom to the assembly subsequent time?
So I went and fetched my mother and mentioned ‘Ma [you must come with me]’. So we drove and he mentioned: ‘Mother, we like this boy’; that’s the phrase he used – ‘we like this boy and we all know he can’t afford to pay it again.’ I didn’t have any property. I had simply began working. ‘Will you make it possible for he pays our mortgage again?’ That’s how Saambou was constructed. That’s how Allied [Bank] was constructed. That was the mannequin.
However now you’ve bought lots of people who don’t belief the individuals they see on the opposite aspect. ‘Oh, you’re dangerous.’ How I do know that is, in my youthful days, I had a personal banker, so I utilized for a mortgage. The property agent picked it up, clearly instructed any person within the financial institution. The rate of interest I used to be getting from my personal banker, from the identical financial institution by the best way, was 2% decrease than that I used to be getting from the property agent. I can’t see anything apart from the truth that I’m black, as a result of that is precisely the identical utility for a similar home.
The opposite ones didn’t know what was taking place. My personal banker was a black individual – so have been they going to offer me cash to begin a enterprise? However if you’re cohorts and also you’ve labored collectively, you have been at a civilian service collectively, you already know while you belief one another.
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JEREMY MAGGS: What would your citizen service entail?
MUZI KUZWAYO: Firstly, you’ve bought to maneuver away from residence, and you’ll run it by way of church buildings and that form of factor. Jeremy, there’s a ebook I learn – Stand Up Straight I believe is the title – [which relates that] a variety of princes from the Center East ship their kids to Sandhurst Navy [Academy in the UK], and the very first thing they need to be taught is learn how to make a mattress.
There are a variety of youngsters who’ve by no means had a mattress of their lives. How are you going to trust within the boardroom for those who’ve by no means made a mattress?
It’s all of these little issues to offer you confidence. That’s the primary intention – to show you duty, to offer you confidence and then you definitely’ll have the ability to deal with something. Confidence is the important thing.
We noticed that in Covid. I learn an article in Harvard Enterprise Evaluate that if somebody can’t present their face on Zoom they definitely don’t have the arrogance to decide. When you don’t have the arrogance to point out your personal colleagues your face, you’ll not have the arrogance to decide.
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JEREMY MAGGS: So a part of what you’re suggesting may be very utopic, it is rather aspirational.
However you additionally go on to say that Africa, and by that I imply South Africa, is – I’ve the chapter in entrance of me – a tough hood. You go on to say that now we have issues with rebels and bandits. How do you marry that imaginative and prescient of Utopia that you’re proposing with the arduous actuality that exists on the continent and on this nation?
MUZI KUZWAYO: Effectively, you begin small. You begin in a small place and also you create a centre of excellence.
I used to be studying your ebook, My Ultimate Reply, and right here is [Jeremy’s] dad considering, man, this man [Jeremy], I need him to be a banker to work in Edenvale.
JEREMY MAGGS: Thanks for studying the ebook. I respect it.
MUZI KUZWAYO: I learn it on-line. [Your response to your father was] ‘Don’t try to pressure me into banking’. However my level is the route – you most likely noticed I’m talking for him right here – after all the route was banking. However hey, you’re profitable. Not less than you don’t want his pay to care for you. However that’s the form of factor. We will’t management how individuals are going to stay and provides, and straight-jacket them. What we wish is accountable residents who don’t need to depend upon grants.
JEREMY MAGGS: Let’s transfer on to the concepts economic system, if we are able to – a spot that you’ve performed in lots throughout your profession. You speak about vibrant concepts, making the longer term vibrant. There’s little doubt that South Africa and Africa are brim stuffed with vibrant concepts. Usually the issue although, Muzi Kuzwayo, is taking these concepts into actuality. You say that younger individuals have gotten to play their half in constructing and growing the way forward for the nation. How do you optimise good concepts?
MUZI KUZWAYO: The very first thing you want is the concepts.
You want a financial institution of concepts, a lot of concepts, and form of throw them on the wall. Some will succeed and a few gained’t. The issue comes when bureaucrats resolve that are nice concepts, after which they try to pressure these down.
So what you need to do is give younger individuals as many alternatives as potential to have to provide you with concepts.
I keep in mind at Hunt Lascaris, the company the place I labored and was CEO of TBWAHuntLascaris, we had about 20 younger youngsters from Soweto. They may provide you with a variety of completely different concepts. Some work and a few don’t.
However firstly, you’ve bought to offer them the chance to come back and dream, make errors.
After engaged on so many concepts, I believe it’s arduous to choose this one and say this one is going to work. You’re going to have some failures alongside the best way. I believe the web was invented within the early Nineteen Seventies after which there was a giant dot-bomb. Now we are able to’t stay with out it. So if any person died instantly after the dot-bomb and also you met them in heaven, and also you instructed them that the web was resuscitated and it labored, they will say, ‘What? I misplaced some huge cash on that!’. That’s how concepts work.
JEREMY MAGGS: A part of it, I suppose, is the flexibility as nicely to fail ahead. It’s tough to show younger individuals learn how to fail, as a result of usually there’s a despondency that units in. Once more, predicated in your massive argument that it’s as much as younger people who find themselves going to repair this nation, we’ve additionally bought to be taught, certainly, learn how to take care of and recuperate from failure. It’s simple for the likes of you and I who’ve tried issues and failed and moved on. However usually a way of demoralisation units in while you fail, and that may be very debilitating in direction of the massive repair.
MUZI KUZWAYO: Effectively, we have been younger at some stage; we weren’t born outdated [even though we were born] a very long time in the past. Once more, it goes again to the arrogance; you’ll make errors. I imply, youngsters fall on a regular basis they usually stand up after which they transfer on.
I believe South Africa is altering. There was a time when, for those who have been a failure, no one needed to the touch you. And now it’s like stand up and do it once more. We’ve seen – with lots of people going into enterprise and difficult instances coming – so many failures that it’s form of frequent now.
You realize, fortunately we don’t have the issue that we hear about in Japan the place individuals commit suicide when issues have gone flawed. Issues go flawed and also you fail, however you do know that you would be able to come again and take a look at once more.
JEREMY MAGGS: Not at all times the case in South Africa; you possibly can’t at all times simply spring to your ft once more. You realize that, Muzi.
MUZI KUZWAYO: Sure, however I believe it’s altering. That’s what I’m saying. I do know of somebody – nicely, I knew him nicely, really – who dedicated suicide when his enterprise went below. We nonetheless have a few of these issues, however I see lots of people who will let you know that issues haven’t gone nicely. I met a man whose [cell] quantity was an 082 990 quantity. The primary guys used to have a Vodacom quantity. I mentioned, ‘I’ve been attempting to pay money for you. What’s your quantity?’ He mentioned, ‘Oh, I’ve bought a 078 quantity. If a person has a 078 quantity, you already know that he has gone by way of some actually arduous instances and he has discovered and has bounced again.
JEREMY MAGGS: Muzi Kuzwayo, we’re recording this dialog in entrance of a tv display and South Africa is at present enjoying Australia within the Cricket World Cup. By the point our dialog ends, or by the point you take heed to this, clearly we’ll know the consequence.
The explanation why I raised that’s you additionally discuss in regards to the significance of sport in fixing South Africa. You say it might assist handle race points, gender-based violence. The worldwide sports activities trade is value US$615 billion. You name on authorities to put money into sport, to create employment. We’re a rustic, once more, brim-full of sports activities individuals. We haven’t seemed on the sports activities concern on the FixSA sequence earlier than. How can sport assist repair a rustic?
MUZI KUZWAYO: Effectively, it’s an enormous trade. The tail finish of the trade is massive. There’s broadcasting, there’s a variety of different issues. Firstly, now we have lots of people who haven’t completed matric or for whom I believe [some]one will repair our training system.
So we have to construct sports activities academies. Now, not all people’s going to be a cricketer, however there’ll be groundsmen, cricket groundsmen. They’ll be taught, they’ll know learn how to care for the grass. They’ll know learn how to care for the stadium, learn how to construct a variety of these sorts of issues. They’ll know learn how to broadcast.
That is significantly necessary now that there’s been the democratisation – excuse the cliché – the democratisation of media.
So that you’re going to most likely have very localised sports activities corporations or organisations. These issues hold individuals employed.
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The very first thing to think about is that we wish individuals off the road. They will not be mega-millionaires; that’s all proper. However they’ll have the ability to be someplace between seven within the morning and 9 at night time, they usually’ll have some cash to have the ability to purchase their very own bread and afford a spot to remain. In order that’s what we’d like in soccer.
When you go to a variety of townships the place there was once sports activities grounds, now you discover procuring malls and a few RDP homes and squatter camps. These issues are actually crucial, however they’re not creating jobs. Soccer fields and cricket grounds are pretty much as good as factories. They’re completely necessary.
JEREMY MAGGS: You possibly can learn to fail while you play sport, and you’ll learn to have a good time success. I suppose you be taught the ability of collaboration. It’s a metaphor for a lot of issues in life.
MUZI KUZWAYO: Completely. When you take a look at Larry King [host of Larry King Live, CNN’s most-watched and longest-running programme] – Larry King turned an awesome broadcaster. He used to take a seat up there whereas his mates have been enjoying sport and he’d be the announcer. It excited him. So he didn’t find yourself in sports activities as a sports activities broadcaster, however he ended up within the media enterprise. So these are the form of alternatives it affords.
JEREMY MAGGS: I met Larry King many, a few years in the past. I did {a magazine} interview with him and I used to be fairly amazed as a result of he got here right down to the interview carrying a dressing robe. I believed to myself, come on man, you’re doing an interview right here. And he completely insisted, he gave me 10 minutes to do the interview as a result of he needed to go to the spa. I’m not speaking about S-P-A-R, I’m speaking in regards to the spa. I by no means forgave him for that.
[Chuckling] Muzi Kuzwayo, sadly like all good issues we’re restricted by time. We’ve come to the tip of the dialog, however I need to finish with this.
You conclude in your ebook that individuals by nature are each fragile and fallible. You go on to say: ‘Don’t let the cracks and crevices of human imperfection imprison your spirit.’ Let me have some closing ideas right here. You’re assured we are able to break the shackles of that jail and enter your iron dome of optimism.
MUZI KUZWAYO: For sure. I believe we –I do know that we – are going to be one of many biggest nations on the earth. It’s a query of time. I imply, we punch approach above our weight within the type of people that’ve produced and the form of politics we as soon as commanded. We’ve slipped, undoubtedly. However that’s what occurs.
That’s why the liberating events usually lose after 30 years, as a result of there’s a era that doesn’t perceive what the organisation was about, its beliefs inside the organisation and outdoors, who don’t have the sympathies for the issues that precipitated the liberation within the first place.
JEREMY MAGGS: Do you continue to experience horses?
MUZI KUZWAYO: No, I’ve by no means ridden horses. I used to be outdoors, simply standing with my mother. It was only a horse. Only a horse, only a wayward horse.
JEREMY MAGGS: [Laughter] Muzi Kuzwayo, thanks a lot for becoming a member of me on the FixSA podcast right here on Moneyweb. I loved the dialog. I’m Jeremy Maggs.
Take heed to earlier FixSA podcasts right here.
