Home-grown humanitarians
SA sets the standard of giving
● It would take R100m — a paltry sum when you consider the billions being bandied about at state-capture level — to fix the water crisis in SA. Imtiaz Sooliman is adamant that, used wisely, this would be enough money to solve the thirst problem plaguing our country, and when Sooliman says he can do something, he means it.
“If you gave me R100m, I’d solve the problem,” he said last week. We spoke in the office of the Gift of the Givers depot in Bramley, Gauteng, while trucks were being loaded outside with pallets of bottled water, food parcels and other emergency supplies destined for disaster areas such as George and Khayelitsha.
“With money we could put boreholes everywhere,” he said. “We could get more trucks and more fuel to deliver more fodder. We’d save a lot of farms, save farmworkers’ jobs and save animals.”
Gift of the Givers already does a lot of saving — by the end of the year it will have drilled 300 boreholes in drought-stricken areas — but the help is not always in time. “By the time our truck got to Laingsburg yesterday, 100 sheep were already blind,” Sooliman said. “There’s a certain type of plant that causes this, that they go for only when it is dry. We need to do this fast.”
The humanitarian organisation started 26 years ago by Sooliman operates in response to disaster, and part of disaster response means assessing how to avoid a recurrence, so among Sooliman’s many meetings are discussions with the government and other bodies to discuss policy.
Easing a great thirst
The intervention carried out by Gift of the Givers during the drought has been staggering in scale. Apart from drilling hundreds of boreholes (with filtration systems designed and built at a fraction of the commercial cost) and sending 300 shipping containers of bottled water to Cape Town (where the city made 12 warehouses available for distribution), 383 truckloads of fodder have been delivered, and the work goes on. Transnet provided another 160 freight wagons to deliver fodder. Sooliman said his organisation will do it again if it has to, but he would prefer that preventive measures were taken.
“We’re going to have the same problem next year unless we do something about it now. We have spoken to the Western Cape education department and said we need 3,000 water points, not 300. The best thing to do is put boreholes in every school, then the school takes care of its children and the people living around the school. We put taps outside the fence so even when the school is closed the water is available. The education department is thinking about that idea — hopefully we will start putting boreholes in schools during December, so when the drought comes next year at least we have 70-100 schools that can take care of 20,000 people around each school, which will take a lot of pressure off the system. And the model we build in the Western Cape is the model we will use for the whole country.
But it needs funding.”
Well-oiled machine
If every student of logistics did an internship with Gift of the Givers, SA would undoubtedly have the most efficient logistics managers on the planet. Even though most of its trucks were out on the road, last Thursday the depot was thrumming with activity as packages were assembled and the remaining trucks loaded.
Depot manager Allaudin Sayed, one of the few people who can match Sooliman’s energy, led a tour of the warehouses, pointing out hundreds of boxes of blankets donated by Foschini and Shoprite; towers of tinned food from Rhodes; pyramids of tents given by Absa. Unilever, Makro and Nestlé are also major donors. A separate warehouse was lined with emergency search-and-rescue equipment, another with all the gear needed to set up a mobile hospital at a moment’s notice. Trucks had arrived from Massmart’s Fruitspot and fresh produce was being apportioned to several dozen smaller NGOs which collect food every day for their own feeding schemes.
Everything is immaculate and everyone has a task. Sooliman said Gift of the Givers keeps its structures lean. Just 120 permanent staff cover the entire country from offices in Bramley, Lenasia, Pietermaritzburg, Durban and Cape Town. Additional work is done by volunteers, including 10 professional counsellors who run the organisation’s Careline service.
Two things the organisation needs more of are vehicles, particularly trucks, and fuel, their major expense. Apart from the
Bramley depot there is a storage facility in Cape Town and a warehouse at King Shaka airport, provided by the KwaZulu-Natal government. “So in times of disaster, when we need to move things quickly, we are 300m from the runway,” said Sooliman.
Gift of the Givers also has offices in Syria, Yemen, Gaza, Somalia, Mauritania, Malawi and Zimbabwe and sends teams to wherever in the world they are needed. One of its driving principles is to provide top-quality assistance in all areas.
“We do everything at cost, we find ways to save money but we don’t cut corners,” said Sooliman. “I believe in the best. We do things properly. If you’re going to do it halfway, rather don’t do it. A few years ago we were building houses in Khayelitsha after fires and I asked the project managers to build and break a prototype house as many times as they needed to, no matter what it cost, until they came up with the best model. And we did it. Then in Alex we came up with a better model. The next one will be even better. We keep upgrading because you save in the long run and you give people quality. You give them dignity. You can’t put a price on dignity.”
Sticking to this policy means that aid cannot be spread too wide. “When I go to a disaster, I go there knowing I can’t save 200,000 people. I can maybe save only 10 people, so that will be my focus. If I save 20 it’s a bonus. Maybe we can only save one street, but we save it completely, then go to the next street. If you try to do a bit here and there, you help nobody. Go to one farm, do it properly, then the next one, then the next one.”
As for the decision about where to go and who to help, Sooliman believes this is Goddriven.
“It’s not theory, we’ve lived it. I went all over Syria in 2012, I wanted to build a hospital but I couldn’t find a doctor. On my last day I’m in a remote place and a cardiac surgeon walks down off the mountain. And he speaks English. I said let’s not waste time, is there a building we can use as a medical facility? He shows me a building, in good condition, but too small. I said if we start a medical facility the whole of Syria will be coming here, can we expand it?
“He says OK, but we’ll need an engineer. Another guy pipes up and says he’s an engineer. There are 27-million people in Syria and I need an engineer and there is one standing right there. He says we can go up two floors with this building and put in a lift.
“I said, ‘How can you know this?’ He says: ‘I built it.’ So we went up two floors, forwards, sideways and backwards.”
There are now 230 medical and support staff running the hospital in Syria. Sooliman finds it amusing that until recently, however, many locals did not realise the organisation was South African.
“Since the Knysna fire, it’s like the corporate world suddenly opened up to know who we are. They didn’t know we were from SA, maybe because media focus has been more on our international stories.
“The other problem is that people thought we were a Muslim organisation and we only deal with Muslim countries … but Haiti is not a Muslim country, Philippines is not a Muslim country, Nepal, South Sudan … what are you talking about? When we came to Knysna they said: ‘You guys are involved locally too?’ ” He throws his hands in the air and laughs: “Our biggest projects are local!”
It was not just its presence in Knysna but the way it ran the operation that got people’s attention.
“The whole project was run by two women,” said Sooliman. “Shoprite gave us a big double-storey car park to use as a warehouse and we brought in 20 staff, but a lot of Knysna people volunteered. Our trucks and DHL trucks were collecting goods from all over the country but you can’t bring a superlink truck into a car park so people helped offload with their own bakkies.
“We had food parcels and feeding centres. We brought in our own search-and-rescue firemen, life-support ambulances and paramedics. We brought in 13 medical specialists to help at hospitals and clinics in Knysna, George, Sedgefield and Plettenberg Bay. We brought in medical equipment and supplies, blankets, mattresses, hygiene packs … and then we started building houses.”
Independence is the best policy
It has sometimes been suggested to Sooliman that he would do well in a position where he could help formulate state policy, but he’s having none of it. He is vaguely embarrassed about having appeared on the 1994 ballot paper as the face of the Africa Muslim Party.
“I was out of the country; I didn’t even know they had appointed me,” he said. “They persuaded me that people wanted me, but when we didn’t make it I was the happiest man alive. I can do a lot more from outside government than from inside government.”
And a lot more is what he does. His day starts at 3am with prayer. Then he deals with hundreds of WhatsApp messages — his preferred mode of communication — on three phones, touching base with staff members in every office locally and abroad. The day before our meeting his first outing had been to the public protector’s office, at her request, to give a presentation to her staff and executives. From there he went to the department of international relations & co-operation (Dirco) to discuss hostage negotiations — as a humanitarian organisation, Gift of the Givers is able to go where soldiers and diplomats fear to tread; it orchestrated the release of Yolanda Korkie, Stephen McGown, and many others kidnapped by extremists.
The work never stops
“We are currently busy with four hostage cases,” Sooliman continued, recounting his day. “From there I saw another department of Dirco to talk about issues relating to our international work when we respond to disasters, what type of support we require. Then I went to see a donor who wants to help with our relief work in Syria. Then I had to see Universal Studios about a movie involving us. Then I had a meeting with Microsoft about new programs for medical equipment that can be very beneficial for hospitals and clinics and in disaster emergency services. Then I came to the office and had six more meetings into the night. One was with a hostage negotiator trying to resolve a situation in Mali, one was about our famine relief work in Yemen, one with members of our medical team from Syria. We are busy with a lot of things.”
His family, including five grandchildren, live in Pietermaritzburg, but since August Sooliman has been able to spend only two nights a week at home.
“I’ve been doing it for 26 years,” he shrugged. “I live it. I don’t do anything else, I don’t belong to any societies or organisations, I don’t do any sports. I’ve got one focus and that’s Gift of the Givers. I live, sleep, eat and drink this.”