A local politician called to thank Dr Sooliman for this venture into the rural Karoo. “Government cannot do it alone,” said the official. “Actually, government cannot do bugger all.” A ripple of laughter through the crowd. A truth spoken in jest. Here is a fascinating conundrum I discussed with senior political scientists these past weeks: how many countries have a highly functional civil society inside a highly dysfunctional state?
Pay attention to the crumbling of the state and the despair in education alone. Young people climbing into each other in a racially dysfunctional Hoërskool Jan Viljoen in Randfontein on the West Rand. A minority of University of Cape Town (UCT) students again disrupting the academic right to learn of the majority. Durban University of Technology (DUT) students setting alight the cars of lecturers. University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) reports on violence and intimidation by student protesters.
While others are breaking down property and people and protocols in the never-ending education crisis, your government is largely absent, preferring to spend its time bean-counting the number of foreigners on the staff of universities or participating in scholarship development opportunities not meant for them. There you have it, your parliamentary portfolio committee hard at work improving the lives of others by engaging in polite xenophobia at your expense. You certainly won’t find these characters in Touws River because they are directing attention elsewhere (the non-existent threat of the foreigners) or figuring out how to stay out of prison by dodging the recommendations of the Zondo reports.
Eventually the vans take off with precious cargo, our most skilled health professionals doing what does not happen at state facilities such as Charlotte Maxeke hospital, which has been shut down, much to the distress of patients in the Johannesburg area. Later that night the exhausted team returned from Touws River having healed children, mothers and the aged who are perpetual victims of a crumbling health system.
Before the team departs on this momentous venture into the rural Western Cape, Dr Sooliman tells me his remarkable story and that of the work Gift of the Givers does across Africa, including in unstable countries such as Somalia and Guinea. His generosity is borderless. And then he slips in a piece of information that I really did not know about until that moment. “Oh, I was born in Pakistan.”
That’s right. The man every South African lauds and holds in the highest esteem is, at least by birth, from somewhere else. Think about that for a moment, you xenophobic politicians, and yes, my xenophobic government. Next time you count foreign heads on the streets and in our universities, remember this man who fills the gaping potholes of our nation because of your greed and dysfunction.
By the way, if Dr Sooliman does not win the Nobel peace prize, it would be an injustice.
JONATHAN JANSEN | While government fiddles, mere mortals put out the fires
As our dysfunctional, politely xenophobic state dodges state capture bullets, civil society steps up to the plate
Image: Fredlin Adriaan
It is just after 5.30am on a somewhat chilly Saturday morning on the grounds of Grove Primary in Rondebosch, Cape Town. As the dark breaks I can see about 20, then 30, and eventually 40 or more people gathering around half a dozen vans. I am in the middle of a South African miracle.
The people around me are health professionals — dentists, physiotherapists, paediatricians, ENT (ear, nose and throat) specialists, gynaecologists and more. They have given up a day in which they could have made lots of money, all because a boy in Touws River, 182km away, has a toothache.
One of the men in the crowd, a dentist, was in the railway town when a parent mentioned her young son needed to have his teeth attended to. The visitor suggested the child see a dentist in the town. There was laughter. What dentist? There were no high-level health services in Touws River or De Doorns or Laingsburg or on the farms that fill this otherwise scenic part of the Karoo. The nearest facility was some distance away in Worcester and such a trip costs money and time in a working week. Nothing, no health services. In steps SA’s most admired charity, Gift of the Givers.
As the excited crowd of professionals got their green shirts and scrubs, a large van pulled up and out stepped our hero, Dr Imtiaz Sooliman. What struck me immediately was how unassuming the man is, yet he projected a presence as he addressed the bubbly crowd. Himself a medical doctor, the leader of Gift of the Givers spoke with authority to his fellow health practitioners, saying something I will always remember.
Forget high-level medicine, he said. Today we are doing basic healthcare. Then this: “Touch, be gentle, and reassure.” I felt the lump in my throat as I sensed the extraordinary humanity of this saint of a man. In other words, you are not going to Touws River to extract a tooth or reset a fractured bone. You are going to give ordinary people, sorely neglected by their government, a sense of being seen, of being heard and of being healed.
A local politician called to thank Dr Sooliman for this venture into the rural Karoo. “Government cannot do it alone,” said the official. “Actually, government cannot do bugger all.” A ripple of laughter through the crowd. A truth spoken in jest. Here is a fascinating conundrum I discussed with senior political scientists these past weeks: how many countries have a highly functional civil society inside a highly dysfunctional state?
Pay attention to the crumbling of the state and the despair in education alone. Young people climbing into each other in a racially dysfunctional Hoërskool Jan Viljoen in Randfontein on the West Rand. A minority of University of Cape Town (UCT) students again disrupting the academic right to learn of the majority. Durban University of Technology (DUT) students setting alight the cars of lecturers. University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) reports on violence and intimidation by student protesters.
While others are breaking down property and people and protocols in the never-ending education crisis, your government is largely absent, preferring to spend its time bean-counting the number of foreigners on the staff of universities or participating in scholarship development opportunities not meant for them. There you have it, your parliamentary portfolio committee hard at work improving the lives of others by engaging in polite xenophobia at your expense. You certainly won’t find these characters in Touws River because they are directing attention elsewhere (the non-existent threat of the foreigners) or figuring out how to stay out of prison by dodging the recommendations of the Zondo reports.
Eventually the vans take off with precious cargo, our most skilled health professionals doing what does not happen at state facilities such as Charlotte Maxeke hospital, which has been shut down, much to the distress of patients in the Johannesburg area. Later that night the exhausted team returned from Touws River having healed children, mothers and the aged who are perpetual victims of a crumbling health system.
Before the team departs on this momentous venture into the rural Western Cape, Dr Sooliman tells me his remarkable story and that of the work Gift of the Givers does across Africa, including in unstable countries such as Somalia and Guinea. His generosity is borderless. And then he slips in a piece of information that I really did not know about until that moment. “Oh, I was born in Pakistan.”
That’s right. The man every South African lauds and holds in the highest esteem is, at least by birth, from somewhere else. Think about that for a moment, you xenophobic politicians, and yes, my xenophobic government. Next time you count foreign heads on the streets and in our universities, remember this man who fills the gaping potholes of our nation because of your greed and dysfunction.
By the way, if Dr Sooliman does not win the Nobel peace prize, it would be an injustice.
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