SA Chamber Connect Event – 21^st February 2018 – What were Madiba and Arch really like?

Insights were shared by Chris Chivers, Tom Shore and Clive Conway and his Tutu Foundation team

President Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu – Two Nobel Peace Prize winners and global Elders – men who have had a long lasting positive influence on a racially divided country, bringing people together, teaching respect and trust and believing in equality for all.

The key points from tonight’s talks that stayed with me were firstly, how far our Rainbow Nation has travelled since the years of apartheid.  A colourful creative, lively, warm nation of can do people who have the tenacity to believe things will come right.

I could not help thinking how “normal” these two men were when you hear of the daily activities of their lives but then what stands out is their sincere and unwavering belief in people.  They could mix with anyone from child to international statesmen and they believed in equality of women and the rights of children.

Some of the personal insights gave colour to the men – a private tour of Westminster Abbey and Mandela stating that history of our country are the lessons therefore giving clarity on not removing reference to the past, even that we are not proud of, as such acts do not ensure the learnings our children should understand.

At that moment in the Abbey, Nelson said  – “We cannot undo the past, we can only transform it”.

Laughter is an uplifter, Tutu is the embodiment of laughter, a man who through his amazing intellect, can use words and laughter to empower the difficult conversations, allow us to look in the mirror and see the truth and from there we can make improvements.

We understand the value of good leadership as demonstrated by Mandela.  He hand picked Cyril Ramaphosa to succeed him – Cyril lost then to Mbeki who was followed by Zuma, who has demonstrated the outcomes of lack of leadership.

Cyril now has his turn and is espousing the values and ethics of Mandela.  With intellect and capability equally comes humility – another lesson.

Good leaders have vision, are forward thinking and put the country before themselves which contributes directly to a sustainable country (equally an organisation) beyond a single leader.

We learnt that Peace comes out of dealing with Conflict – we should address issues and navigate a journey that all parties can embody.  A lesson for us as individuals and families but equally to politics, business and today’s boardrooms.

South Africa embodies the spirit of Ubuntu and the people demonstrate the “gees” (the spirit) of the South African can-do culture and positive energy.

To me the most important lesson I gained was the value of reviewing the situation from the shoes of the other party before reacting.  Instead we can respond with greater humanity for a better outcome for all.

The South African Chamber of Commerce (UK) welcomes Cyril Ramaphosa to the Presidency of South Africa.  As a Chamber we could already sense change since his winning of the Leadership of the ANC, says Chairman of the Chamber, Sharon Constancon, “Ramaphosa’s attitude to getting things done has specifically been felt through recent engagements with the High Commission in the UK.”

The Chamber’s Board welcome Ramaphosa reverting to the ethos of Mandela – who had handpicked Ramaphosa as his successor in the late 90’s.

He too, like Mandela, had to wait his time!

As a business and trade focused Chamber, we welcome a businessman as leader – Ramaphosa has already focused in his first State of the Nation Address on job creation, internships, public institution leadership, business integrity, political behaviour – all focusing on the rejuvenating the stagnating economy and addressing large national debt.

“Guided by [Mandela’s] example, we will use this year to reinforce our commitment to ethical behaviour as well as ethical leadership. We are not merely honouring the past but building the future … South Africa belongs to all who live in it,” Ramaphosa, 65, said.  Ramaphosa promised to “turn the tide of corruption”.

Ramaphosa drew applause when he thanked South Africans for their patience during the last turbulent week.

John Battersby, Board Director of the SA Chamber in the UK, renowned SA journalist who has known SA politicians well, noted Ramaphosa’s respectful relationship with the media, the judiciary and civil society

The Chamber fully supports the restoration of economic growth, tackling of entrenched inequality and non-toleration of plundering of public resources.

Constancon says she was concerned about the future of SA which had deteriorated rapidly since the death of Mandela, “Ramaphosa gives us all a hope that an era of personal agendas at the cost of all has ended.  South Africa is perfectly positioned to gain from trade with the UK under Brexit conditions – the Chamber being well positioned to help business achieve trade between the two countries.”

Echoed by Richard Swart, Director of the Chamber – “We are committed as a Chamber to promote SA in the UK and to champion businesses with SA / UK interests.”  Chantele Carrington, Director of the Chamber, referred to the improved environment the new leadership would offer to SA and its relations with the UK and with Africa.

The SA Chamber Board will constructively promote, facilitate and support the return to economic growth in South Africa through helping businesses trading between the two countries and engaging with government where possible to build on the fresh impetus begun by our  new President who gives us reason again to be proud South Africans.

Through the month of February, Tayport Harbour Café is hosting an exhibition of tapestry created by local artist Sue Doyle. The exhibition, of both framed prints and original tapestries, is being held to raise funds to pay for the training of local township facilitators who will deliver workshops to the young unemployed in Khaylitsha and Langa.  £900 raised so far!

In 2006 Sue Boyle was working as a Careers Adviser in Arbroath Academy when she volunteered to work for a month in a South African township school.  Over the next few years she returned, and her experience, along with the research she carried out with a South African colleague, led her to conclude that there was very little provision of careers information and guidance to help school leavers avoid joining the huge numbers of unemployed young people already in the township.

Sue is working with Friends of Eyethu Careers Point, a small charity registered with OSCR, whose purpose is to support Eyethu Careers Point.  Eyethu Careers Point (ECP) intends to work peripatetically, using township community centres and schools to hold workshops for young people in Cape Town’s townships.  The organisation has recently been granted a licence to deliver WorkNet International’s workshops.  These programmes have been specifically designed to help young people to make career decisions that not only suit them, but are also appropriate for the local, provincial and national labour market.  They also help the ‘candidates understand the ‘business culture’ and develop the ‘employability’ skills that are required by employers and tertiary institutions.

Sue loves her weaving which she feels is very therapeutic.  Whilst she does weave on larger looms, she also has a small loom which she was given following her first weaving course, a week at the Edinburgh College of Art, and which she takes with her wherever she goes.

The exhibition features colourful township schemes, and also local Scottish scenes as well other subjects. One of Sue’s tapestries, of a butterfly chrysalis, was selected to hang in the Cordis Showcase and is currently on show in the restaurant of the National Gallery of Scotland.

A world record was broken earlier this week, when Young Voices staged the largest children’s choir gathering ever seen. However, a proud Cape Town grandmother of one singer believes the event had an even higher significance.

Kae Sera is certainly a woman who believes what will be, will be. As shared by SAPeople, she filmed and uploaded a breathtaking performance of Toto’s Africa, sang by 7,800 young choir members at London’s 02 Arena.

The South African connection

The record-breaking effort took on extra-significance for Kae, whose grandson Riley is just seven-years-old. She says he’s very much aware that Cape Town could run out of water, and that the drought is indeed part of his life.

The 90-second clip is genuinely hair-raising. There’s something just so wonderful about the power of song, and the innocence of youth. And for ye of little faith, may we just remind you: A deluge of rain is coming to Cape Town this weekend. You just try telling little Riley he had nothing to do with it!

How good are these kids? We really think it’s no co-incidence the Mother City has rain coming this weekend. Sometimes, you just have to accept miracles happen.

A song for Cape Town

Well, the British kids – and a South African secret weapon – have done their bit. With the storm clouds incoming, Cape Town’s fate still depends on the actions of their citizens. Save every drop, be water conscious, and collectively, you can put this day zero nightmare to bed.

By Tom Head – 2018-02-08 featured in The South African

The Chamber, as a key player in the business of increasing trade between SA and UK over the months and years ahead, we were given the opportunity by the Institute of Exporters to be one of the Resources for the “Doing Business in South Africa” publication.

This publication, online and booklet, provides the Chamber with a great opportunity to be profiled for our support towards trade and negotiations between the two countries.

We were honoured to be chosen to write one of the forewords.

“Culturally and physically diverse, a large country situated at the tip of Africa, a gateway to Africa and an East West shipping and telecoms link. South Africa boasts a sophisticated communications, road, rail and port network, first world cities and an energy to do business, a sound legal, banking and financial system supports investment in the country. Areas of growth include agriculture, agritech, technology, clean energy, mining, manufacturing, tourism and commerce” writes Sharon.

Read the rest of Sharon’s wonderful foreword HERE.

See the feature on the Chamber HERE.

We have copies of the book so please advise if you would like a copy.  The pdf can be downloaded.

Andrew Henderson will be sorely missed by all his many South African friends made during his five years as UK Trade Commissioner in South Africa and subsequently in the last two or three years in the UK through his association with the South African Chamber, Brand South Africa, the South African High Commission and as chair of the board of directors of TransactSA.

Andy, as we all knew him, was the embodiment of life, positive energy, social grace and his own brand of charisma.

He was a huge friend to South Africa and always at hand to advise, make connections and advance projects in spite of the increasing demands of his own business set up since his retirement from the Foreign and Commonwealrh Office in February 2016.

As recently as mid-October last year, I spent three enjoyable and stimulating days with Andy at an investment conference in Klerksdorp in the municipality of Matlosana in the North-West province of South Africa.

We were invited by my ex-boss at Brand South Africa, Miller Matola, who is from the nearby mining village of Khuma.

I was devastated to hear of Andy’s death after a short illness on 30th December and our deepest condolences go out to Andy’s widow Julia and their two daughters, Emma and Amelia.

We will miss his exuberant presence greatly.

By John Battersby

The Big Give Christmas Challenge launches on 28^th November which happens to be #GivingTuesday.  For one week November 28th until December 5th, all donations made through the Big Give UK platform will be matched in £££s by the Big Give.

We have been awarded a matching pot of £35,000 by our Charity Champions – The Waterloo Foundation and the Brenley Trust – and if we are successful in securing individual giving, will raise a total of £70,000 which will help fund the expansion of our Literacy Tutor programme to an entire new community, reaching over 1,000 more children in 2018.

We would love to know if you would be willing to get behind this campaign.  Every £1 will be matched to the target and will help us to reach our target.  By making a pledge to give and helping us spread the word, we are sure to reach this goal. It costs just £5 per reading contact session per child in our Literacy Tutor Programme.  Your £5 will thus help us give two young child the help they need to learn to read, changing their lives for good. Forever.  By pledging now we can send you a reminder email at the start of the match, or accept a post-dated cheque to ensure that your donation is matched – it’s all very exciting. Last year we raised almost £60K and you can read below the difference it made.

Excitingly, this year is the first year that the campaign is also running on a South African ZAR based platform through the giving portal GivenGain. This allows our South Africa based supporters to donate in RRRs and get matched in RRRs. If you are willing to help us, please also share the news and the link with anyone in your networks who might like to take part.

As ever, thank you for your continued and heart felt commitment to changing the future for the children of South Africa.

With best wishes

Zofia Sochanik
Relationship Manager

+44 (0) 7825 871 839

www.help2read.org/donate

Follow us on Twitter @help2read

Join us on Facebook facebook.com/help2read

Here’s what we did with the Big Give support we received last year:

In November 2016 generous Big Give donors and our pledge and charity champions, the Waterloo Foundation and the Brenley Trust generously committed £56,000 to support our work engaging 20 young adults from Wemmershoek Township with the dual objective of developing their employability and skills whilst providing dedicated one-on-one reading help and literacy skills development support for learners in this under resourced township community.

Our aims were to:

• to recruit and train 20 youth as Literacy Tutors to provide reading help and develop literacy skills and a love of reading in primary school children attending the township State school;
• to develop the professional and personal skills of our Literacy Tutors to increase their career choices and employment opportunities in the future; and
• to establish safe, educational and recreational community based infrastructure in the form of after school and holiday community reading clubs for young children in Wemmershoek township.

Our achievements include

• We trained 41 young people in Wemmershoek, Franschhoek and Paarl in the help2read methodology and deployed them as Literacy Tutors in 3 under-resourced schools
• Over the course of the year, our 41 Literacy Tutors have provided
  • dedicated one-on-one reading help to 451 learners in 902 reading sessions across Grades 2 to 7, meeting each learner twice a week for at least half an hour at a time
  • after school extra mural reading club activities every Monday to Thursday in the school week serving 150 children in each school each week
  • hosted more than 670 learners in the first holiday reading clubs in these three township communities in July and October. We are looking forward to our third holiday programme in December.
• Our Literacy Tutors participated in ongoing training and development programmes throughout the year with various NGOs and specialist training providers, enhancing their personal and professional skills, building their confidence and exposing them to new opportunities for their futures.
• A generous donation of books and LEGO play boxes has given great joy to all learners at the school and each and every child participating in the holiday programmes was able to choose a book to take home and keep. For some the first book they have owned, Ever.

Dear All,

I wanted to personally thank each and every one of you who supported me and donated towards achieving our goal this November during the Mellon Educate Building Blitz 2017. And share with you the team photo below – as an fyi those dressed in yellow shirts are first timers [100 in all] the various other colours are based on the number of years you’ve been on a blitz – purple are 10 years plus !!!! true legends ! …

Moi in Blue – 2-4 years service… I go onto green next year I cant wait !

Even though a lot of abuse was thrown in my direction – I made every donation count – one more block moved – one more wheel barrow and naturally just one more photo !:)

Thanks to our hard graft and your very kind donations, our 2017 Building Blitz week was a phenomenal success and 3,650 learners – aged from 4 years to 18 years old – and their teachers are now benefitting from the classrooms, kitchens, science laboratory, playgrounds, sheltered areas and sports field – not to mention their enjoyment of the brightly painted artwork adorning the walls or the wonderful toys hand crafted for the little ones!

All of it is all YOUR doing and you should be very very proud of your achievements and your support in your donations.

We are so grateful to you for helping us to give these children the chance of a better brighter future – THANK YOU!

In summary the MBA team raised in excess of £20,000 from just over 200 donations…. What a great achievement !

And more importantly I wanted to get the thumbs up from at least 10% of all the donations to SAY YES I will join you next year ….Looking back on the comments there were at least 10 of you that said YES they like to do it next year …..  You know who you are so please reply to me saying YES  i want to join you next year and then we can start the process to get your interest secured for next year !!!  MAKE THAT LEAP BEFORE CHRISTMAS !

Please Do Visit the website – www.melloneducate.com to see all the pictures  and videos on the home page – our team music video is a classic ! We also had the pleasure of being the charity partner for the B2B Marketing Awards which was fantastic and great to see 1,000 get the message loud and clear J 2018 is going to be our best blitz ever !

THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart …. And each and every one of you have an amazing December and hope to see you all in the near future and you got it – ON THE BLITZ IN 2018 !:)

Mike XXX

Next week Mike Butler and Roger Cooper will join 300 Mellon Educate volunteers who are travelling to Cape Town to renovate and improve facilities at 3 schools in Khayelitsha, South Africa’s second largest township and an area of great deprivation.  In just under a week, new classrooms, kitchens, a science laboratory, playgrounds and sports facilities will be built and upgraded benefitting a total of 3,650 learners currently attending the schools – Sosebenza Primary School, Usasazo High School and Sobambisana Primary School.

Many of this year’s Building Blitz volunteers are from large corporations based in the UK and Ireland including Oracle, Google, Linklater’s LLP, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and McDonald Butler.

Each volunteer has personally raised approximately 4000 euros ZAR 60,000 to participate in the organisation’s annual Building Blitz, a sizeable proportion of which goes towards building materials for the schools as well as towards Mellon Educate’s school based programme which commences in each school post building works and in partnership with both the school management and the Western Cape Education Department.  Mellon Educate provides holistic support over a 5-yr period and thereafter advisory mentorship and guidance.