newsmakers
THE MAN WITH A PLAN Imtiaz Sooliman’s Gift of the Givers provides communities with water, hospital patients with food, doctors with PPE. In all ways, it stands in where the state has fallen short, and is a testament to selfless service Adele Shevel shevela@businesslive.co.za
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ift of the Givers founder Imtiaz Sooliman never planned to set up a humanitarian relief organisation. It was a chance spiritual encounter that led the medical doctor to wind down his three Pietermaritzburg practices almost 30 years ago, and establish an outfit that would become a mainstay of the disaster relief landscape — in SA and elsewhere in the world. Just this month, Gift of the Givers has assisted the Southern Cape communities of George and Oudtshoorn following devastating flash floods, providing plastic sheeting, blankets and food. That’s in addition to a R5m upgrade to the Nkqubela TB Hospital in East London — one of several hospitals in the underserved province that the organisation is upgrading. And ongoing water provision to drought-stricken parts of the country. Over its 29 years of existence, Gift of the Givers has become the largest home-grown disaster response agency in Africa, delivering nearly R4bn of on-the-ground support in more than 43 countries. In large part, that’s due to Sooliman’s tireless direction. He’s a self-confessed workaholic (he recently had two stents put in, and was back at work 48 hours later). “My family? They know I’m mad,” he tells the FM. But this wasn’t his original plan. “I didn’t get up one day and say: ‘Let me get a group of people together, write a constitution, have founding principles and form an organisation.’ It never happened like that,” he says. Back in 1986, Sooliman met an Afrikaner in Pietermaritzburg, who’d recently returned from the US. He told Sooliman of a spiritual teacher in Turkey, whom he should try to meet. “I said: ‘Is this a joke?’ I’d never seen Cape Town, when would I see Istanbul? He said: ‘What God wills happens, there’s 30
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December 16 - December 22, 2021
Imtiaz Sooliman: Gift of the Givers has a policy not to ask for money
a time and a place.’” Sure enough, five years later Sooliman met the teacher at a Sufi centre in Turkey. It was just after the first Gulf war, the world was polarised, and it was a time of huge conflict. “Emotions were high — and you come to a place like this, [coming] from a place with an apartheid past … and you see all kinds of people — Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims … from all around the world. And you think, what the hell is going on here? … There are no arguments, nobody fights, everybody respects each other’s point of view. Nobody is judged,” he says. The teacher explained his world view: that there is a single deity for all of humankind — different groups just call it by different names. “[The teacher] said: ‘Any imam, priest and rabbi who preaches violence, terrorism, extremism and discord and the taking of life is not a man of God — don’t follow him,’” Sooliman says. “Immediately, all the blinkers, the tunnel vision, the prejudice, stereotypes, anything negative related to fellow human
beings evaporated … It became clear you assess human beings as human beings: the blood is the same, anger is the same, the hurt is the same.” Then came the instruction. As Sooliman tells it, the teacher spoke in Turkish — and somehow Sooliman was able to understand every word. The teacher told him: “My son, I am not asking you, I am instructing you to form an organisation. In Arabic it’s Waqful Waqifin and translated it means Gift of the Givers. “The name will be this. 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’ … Serve people with love, kindness, compassion and mercy. And remember the dignity of man is foremost. “So if someone is down on the ground, don’t push them further. Hold them, elevate them, caress the head of an orphan, wipe the tear of a grieving child, help the widow,
Sunday Times/Thapelo Morebudi
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