Social entrepreneurship is becoming de rigueur as an alternative to the corporate career ladder for young people looking for work that is both intellectually stimulating and meaningful.
Three young women I know play in this space. Phillipa Wheaton (30), an Australian, is the CEO of enke: Make Your Mark. Based in South Africa, the organization supports teenagers who are proactive about addressing social problems.
Karissa Samuels (29) is the South African founder and CEO of the Ntshulisa Foundation, which aims to empower the nation, starting with children, by promoting civic participation and community involvement.
UK-raised Ruth Orbach (24) works for non-governmental organization (NGO) the African Leadership Academy as a monitoring, evaluation and learning manager – a space that is becoming increasingly important.
While all three are tired of the NGO label, preferring instead social enterprise, they are equally wary of self-titled ‘social entrepreneurs’. Samuels, who has been in the field for the past 10 years, explains: “Many people who began in the space with me have left because… of them not having a real interest in having a real social impact, but rather (using the sector) as a vehicle for their personal advancement.”
There may be goodwill, but “there simply isn’t enough interrogation of the needs”, says Orbach, who helps develop tracking systems to monitor the long-term impact of an investment on an organization.
Traditionally, the link between the success of a social enterprise and its impact on a community was presumed to be strong, but increasingly there is a need to re-examine this view. “People need to move beyond ‘something is better than nothing’,” urges Wheaton.
This desire to do more and to do better has seen many non-profits applying commercial strategies to maximize social benefits. And in fact there is significant potential for crossover of best practices in the profit and non-profit sectors.
All three young women agree we need to move away from the binary logic of the capitalist firm versus the NGO with a begging bowl. Instead, they see NGOs, social enterprises and for-profit companies as increasing points along a continuum.
Ideally, it is about businesses taking on a social element and non-profits incorporating business principles into their work. While in the long run, social enterprises could conceivably take over a large proportion of NGOs’ functions, there are limits. It becomes tricky for organizations such as orphanages, for which there is no market, in the traditional sense.
Judging from the conversation between the three, it is clear this sector is going through a number of exciting changes.
A TED Talk by activist Dan Pallotta called The way we think about charity is dead wrong has been shaking up the dominant narrative of the non-profit sector. Pallotta’s core argument is that we should not judge the effectiveness of NGOs based on overheads (salaries, rent or marketing). He claims that the non-profit sector is starved of the capital needed to adequately fuel growth and innovation, in order to fully address social problems.
Sustainability is another term that keeps cropping up in the NGO field, particularly the incidence of sustainability. The distinction between a purely capitalist business and a social enterprise is that one aims to sustain its operations indefinitely, while the other looks to sustain the impact of its operations indefinitely.
Wheaton, Samuels and Orbach agree that if they are to achieve the kind of impact they aspire to, they would ultimately put themselves out of work.
At the same time, the mantra, ‘Africa for Africa, by Africa’, is gaining momentum, resulting in Westerners and foreign do-gooders being met with skepticism.
It reminds me of when Nigerian author Teju Cole ruffled feathers with his controversial reaction to Kony 2012, the viral video calling for the arrest of war criminal Joseph Kony. Using the hashtag, ‘The White-Savior Industrial Complex’, Cole tweeted: “If we are going to interfere in the lives of others, a little due diligence is a minimum requirement.” He went on: “The White Savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.”
However, it is important that we Africanists are careful not to alienate those with experience and expertise. At this stage of the game, our collective intelligence and financial muscle may not be enough to eliminate the social problems that lie ahead.
We will need all the help we can get from those willing to roll up their sleeves and work themselves out of the system.

Social entrepreneurship, anyone

Helena Dolny has always taken the road less traveled. Currently, she heads up Grey Matters, a consultancy which focuses on leadership development, strategic planning, coaching and institutional transformation.
At 60, she is an accomplished, world-renowned empowerment specialist, writer and author of several books in fields as diverse as coaching, economics, organizational design and biography. Her vast expertise in navigating the choppy waters of corporate South Africa on the cusp of change and transformation is exactly what drew me to her as a potential columnist for FORBES Woman Africa.
I also knew Dolny had a way with words after reading her poignant account in the book Slovo: The Unfinished Autobiography. In it, she explains the context in which her late husband, Joe Slovo, wrote his memoirs, and why they were left incomplete. Slovo, one of my personal heroes, is a legend and icon of South Africa’s liberation struggle. He was the country’s first housing minister and served in former president Nelson Mandela’s Cabinet. Slovo died of leukemia in 1995, barely a year after democracy dawned. Dolny was his second wife.
Her inside track on the vagaries of corporate South Africa struggling to come to terms with change comes from her many experiences in the public and private sector. In 2005, Dolny served as the director of leadership development, coaching and mentoring at Standard Bank. It was a role which she says offered her the opportunity to recalibrate the bank’s delivery team. Prior to that, in 2001, she was with the human resources division of First National Bank. Her book, Banking on Change, is an engaging and candid account of her tumultuous experiences as the managing director of the Land and Agricultural Bank of South Africa. Dolny headed up the bank from 1997 until her dramatic departure in 2000, when she was embroiled in a spat over the direction of the organization and the pace of transformation.
Dolny also served as a member of the Presidential Commission on Rural Financial Services, and in 1996, was an advisor to South Africa’s first minister of agriculture and land affairs, Derek Hanekom.
Her journey towards becoming a coach and empowering women leaders in the corporate sector spans many decades. Dolny’s professional passage started when, as a youngster, fresh out of university and armed with a degree in agrarian economics, she made the journey from the north of England to the shores of Africa. Along the way, she came into contact with revolutionaries, rural peasants, presidents and academics, all of whom set her on a course that would invigorate her life forever.
The heady winds of change were sweeping across the continent. Dolny had been involved in the anti-Apartheid movement during her student days in England. Through her work in Zambia, Mozambique and later in South Africa, she soon came into direct contact with those at the epicenter of change in southern Africa.
Explaining her decision to work in empowerment and development, and the connection between land and economics, Dolny often makes reference to her parents. Both were World War II refugees; her father was Polish and her mother hails from what was then Czechoslovakia. Her folks were ‘salt of the earth’ types, she says, and could have become very different people, were it not for their class positions . While her mother, who had greater class mobility because she finished school later on in life , became a nurse in England, her father was a factory worker.
“Although my dad worked in a factory, he was very inventive and always practical. In a different society he could have been an engineer. When growing up we heard stories of their lives during the war. Given my parents’ upbringing, I am not surprised that I wanted to go into an enabling environment,” she says.
“In my gap year I travelled to Zambia. I had to come via South Africa, and eventually, after completing my studies, I ended up in Mozambique.”
Dolny’s passion for and interest in land issues was sparked in part by a friend’s father, who owned a dairy farm. She also remembers wanting to study something ‘practical’ instead of philosophy. She enrolled in agricultural economics at Reading University in the United Kingdom, as conventional wisdom at the time dictated that “because you were a girl”, it was advisable to “read economics, rather than science”.
Shortly after Mozambique won its independence in 1975, Dolny found herself designing a bookkeeping system.
“When [The Mozambique Liberation Front] Frelimo took power in the 70s it was a very powerful time. It was a time of barefoot doctors doing stints in villages among the rural masses. I remember, at that time, my first task was designing an accounting system for people who had just come off a literacy course. Then we could dream,” she says, smiling.
As an agrarian economist in Mozambique’s Ministry of Agriculture, Dolny worked with farming cooperatives on development planning and bookkeeping from 1976 to 1981. She then joined a Canadian non-profit organization called Cuso (Canadian University Service Overseas), which supported development projects in Mozambique.
Dolny has traversed both the public and private sector as an economist, banker, empowerment specialist and currently as an executive coach. However, the thread that runs through her work over the years is a belief in the need to build and develop strong and ethical leadership in public and private institutions.
“The fish rots from the head,” she says, stressing the importance of developing and harnessing credible, quality and capable leaders.
As a member of Comensa, and with a string of degrees (including an MBA and a Master’s in professional coaching) under her belt, Dolny is at the cutting edge of her industry on the continent.
Asked to explain the difference between coaching and mentoring, she says, “Coaching is customized learning. Mentoring is about cloning little mini-mes.” Coaching, she continues, allows her to develop systems that are uniquely tailored to the individual.
In the November edition of FORBES Woman
Africa, Dolny will be debuting as a regular columnist, offering insights into how to navigate corporate culture and architecture across the African continent.

Helena Dolny

Just about every self-help movement from spirituality to leadership to parenting extols the virtue of being more present. We’re told to cultivate being introspective, still, and to pay attention to what we’re doing at the time we’re doing it. If we focus on the person or task in front of us, we give them, and ourselves, a gift. I wholeheartedly believe this is a good and positive thing.
But man, do I struggle with it.
I am a master multitasker. I’m a business owner, a mother of two school-age kids, and involved in a bunch of outside activities. I feel like my days are often a race against time, with dates and details bouncing in and out of my head like super important ping pong balls. That’s not even talking about the electronic devices, social media, and emails I keep up with. (I am admittedly a news and good TV junkie. Here’s looking at you Breaking Bad.) Uh oh, I digressed.
Yes, I want to be more present. I want to tune out work when I’m home, and be more often in the moment. I’m regularly trying new ideas that push me along in that direction — and I’ve made some decent progress (with focus and effort.)
For all you sworn multitaskers, take heart. That efficiency you’ve cultivated can be coupled with an intent to be present with lots of positive benefits. Not only will being more present help you feel less stressed and promote better relationships, studies show that mindfulness can also benefit your physical health and even increase your lifespan.
Here are some ideas for how to go from distracted to mindfully present:
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<h4>1) Turn off electronics and email</h4>
No surprise that this one tops the list; it’s my own Achilles heel. The Energy Project’s Tony Schwartzhas found that 80% of us are rarely, if ever, disconnected from our email. There are many advantages to being constantly reachable, but in the long term, in addition to causing stress and unnecessary distraction, it can also alter the way we think and behave.
As Schwartz says, “it isn’t overload we’re battling anymore, it’s addiction — to action, and information, and connection, but above all to instant gratification.” We no longer know how to wait, and our activities are tainted by listening for that ping that tells us we have a message.  If you want to be more present, turn off your electronics and stop checking your email when you’re having a conversation with someone, working on a project that requires concentration, or even when you just want to enjoy the moment.
Schwartz, for example, is a major proponent of an electronics-free lunch break. Leaving your smartphone in the car until after dinner or checking it at the door are other options. I’ve learned that if my phone is in front of me, I’ll check it. Better to put it away.
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<h4>2) Center before a conversation</h4>
Centering is a key skill that coaches learn before meeting with a client. To be a good coach, you need to be fully present and actively listening — which requires tuning out any static or energy from whatever came beforehand. The process is simple. Before you begin a conversation or meeting, take a moment and get intentional about how you want to show up. I also take a few deep breaths and remove distractions. If I’m at my desk, I move so I’m away from my workspace.
This allows me to come into a coaching session calm, open and present. Consider the opposite. We all know what it feels like to have someone enter a room stressed, distracted, and still reeling from their last meeting.
When you practice active listening, it’s far easier to stay in the moment as well.  Active listening is what it sounds like: not only do you listen to someone, but you actively ask questions and engage in the conversation.  In a helpful article, psychologist John M. Grohol lays out some basic active listening tips and techniques. These include restating what you’ve just heard to be sure you understand it clearly (“So you think office policy about PTO needs to change?”) and sharing your observations about what the person has said (“You seem frustrated.”)
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<h4>3) Break from the madness</h4>
As I’ve mentioned before, studies have shown that taking a short break between tasks helps the mind recharge and refocus. Zen teacher, CEO, and author Marc Lesser has this advice for how to integrate breaks to reduce stress and a speeding mind. The first is to “rest mentally and physically in between or outside of your usual activities, perhaps instituting a regular practice of meditation, retreats, breaks, and reflection. In the midst of a busy life, a full work day, go for a walk, do yoga, read some poetry.”
If yoga or poetry isn’t your bag, Lesser suggests taking a few moments to breathe deeply and reflect. Anyone can do this without leaving their desk.
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<h4>4) Schedule important</h4>
discussions without a hard stop
When we’re in back-to-back meetings, it’s difficult to be present because we’re also thinking of what happened before and what’s next. For important discussions, leave room for the conversation. Make sure to structure a situation where you can both focus on what the other has to say, perhaps even out of the office. This also means not having a hard stop or starting a conversation at the end of the day.
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<h4>5) Consider (and verbalize)</h4>
what you’re saying no to
For everything we say yes to, we’re saying no to something else. When you reflect on that and verbalize it, the decision is much easier. i.e. “I’m saying no to my kids so I can respond to a non-urgent email” or “I’m saying no to planning this pivotal project so I can say yes to surfing Twitter.” When you put it out there, the distinction often makes the real choice laughable. What’s taking away our full and focused presence doesn’t deserve it at all.

The  Multitaskers’

Mary Broh stands at a dusty intersection on Tubman Boulevard, squints and surveys the scene with two sets of spectacles balanced on her head, one pair perched on her nose. Broh’s solid black Chevrolet Tahoe, with a number plate reading Mayor 1, waits by the curb as the acting city mayor paces back and forth.
“This is a special project, I need you here!” she snaps into a walkie-talkie.
“Don’t touch the paint!” she tells someone moving near the small green concrete fruit and vegetable kiosk that she is here to launch.
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Liberians jammed in vans and beaten-up yellow cabs, or cruising past in SUVs, turn their heads to see what the city’s most controversial public official is up to. Dressed in a gold lapa jacket, with her fine dreadlocks pinned with champagne diamante clips, and a clunky watch strapped to her right wrist, Broh does not look like your typical city mayor; nor does she act like one.
Broh points to a small concrete zinc-roofed building with an X marking its wall.
“Someone find out who this place is for! I’ll demolish it!”
Workers in blue uniforms wielding rakes and cutlasses arrive in the back of a pickup and sweep the area at breakneck speed. Petty traders on a nearby street pack up their goods and flee; a young boy runs holding a plastic chair above his head.
“Liberian people are too dirty!” she exclaims.
After the formalities the mayor jumps into her Tahoe and hares off.
Weeks later Broh was engulfed in a scandal that seemed the stuff of a Hollywood action movie. She had rescued her friend, the Superintendent of Montserrado County Grace Kpahn from the moldy walls of Monrovia’s South Beach prison, after Kpahn was ordered behind bars by the national legislature for failing to implement a legislative mandate concerning misappropriation of the county development fund.
The legislature branded the pair “fugitives” and voted for their arrest and dismissal. Liberian president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, suspended both officials indefinitely, but citizens and the legislature were skeptical that Sirleaf would take any serious action against Broh, her longtime friend. After all, Sirleaf pushed through Broh’s appointment in 2009 despite the fact that the Senate twice rejected her nomination for mayor, though Broh could only hold the title of “acting mayor” due to the Senate’s disapproval.
The Ministry of Justice charged Broh with “obstructing government operation and disorderly conduct”; and the legislature ordered the pair to be incarcerated for 30 days, in a separate case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Days later, Broh was met by hundreds of demonstrators gathered at the Temple of Justice, who attempted to make a citizen’s arrest. Broh was slapped and kicked by some protestors. The police dispersed the crowd.
When contacted by FORBES AFRICA for comment, Mayor Broh said she had been advised not to give interviews.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1660" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Mary-Broh_20130125_2013-02-200001-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
This is not the first time Broh has come to blows with the legislature or the public. Broh drew ire when she slapped a prominent senator’s assistant across the face, which led the legislature to pass a vote of no confidence and order her arrest for failing to appear to offer an explanation for her actions. Broh claimed the woman had publicly insulted her. The legislature called her a rebel.
Broh’s critics in the political establishment say she is rude, arrogant and untouchable because of her close relationship with the president, who gave her the nickname ‘the General.’ The two met in New York in the 1990s. Broh has been the president’s special projects coordinator, the director of the passport division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and deputy managing director for administration at the National Port Authority.
Broh, now in her sixties, lived in the United States for 33 years. She worked for a children’s wear manufacturer for 12 years, then for the toy division at Marvel Comics, managing shipping, logistics and distribution, where she kept long hours and shuffled on the subway between Middle Village, Queens and Manhattan in New York.
“If you made one mistake there would be a chain effect… everything had to be synchronized. That’s New York and you know everything is fast and I enjoy it and that’s what I bring here.”
Broh moves through Monrovia as though she is commander-in-chief of a dysfunctional assembly line.
Broh’s supporters view her as an eccentric rebel with a cause. Secretary general of the Liberia Chamber of Commerce Massa R. Lansanah says that Broh’s work has had an enormous impact on the city and made it more attractive to international investors.
“No male or female would be able to do her work. She gets into the gutters, she acts crazy but her impact is positive,” says Lansanah.
But, civil society claims Broh is creating further divisions between the rich and poor.
“She disrupts places and destroys things by instinct and that is very dangerous,” says Abdullai Kamara head of the Center for Media Studies and Peace Building.
Bestman Toe, president of The Slum Dwellers Association of Liberia says that while the city must be developed, the Monrovia City Corporation and the Ministry of Public Works, headed by Minister Samuel Kofi Woods, has failed the urban poor. Toe claims that 70% of the 1.5 million people living in Monrovia, many of who migrated during the war, live in slums.
Back at headquarters, the acting mayor sits behind an iPad at the end of an oval table in her dark, wood-paneled office. She is meeting with World Bank consultants who have been hired to help rebuild the capital city.
“We have urban growth we cannot contain and we don’t want more slums; we want to create a productive, resilient and inclusive city,” she says.
The consultants leave and Broh frantically prepares for a radio show. Three young women flit around the room searching for documents. Broh complains about her office assistants being sluggish and tells me to report on it.
She walks with swift steps down the marble corridors of city hall, her leopard print slingbacks clacking. She pulls open office doors and tells a few departments that their work has to be up to scratch because there is a journalist in the house.
“I want a clean, green city, but the people are against me!” she says as we shuffle down the back staircase.
Outside, men and women from the General Services Department sit with half-annoyed half-puzzled looks on their faces.
“I shut them down because they are inefficient,” she says.
We drive through the streets of Monrovia, past the executive mansion that is under repair, and down Camp Johnson Road. Broh’s eyes dart as she points to imperfections in the urban landscape that rolls past: rubbish on the street, buildings with faded paint and moldy exteriors, petty traders and people cooking fried plantain and kala on the footpath.
“When I don’t come on the street there is a lot of nonsense going on,” says Broh.
As the Mayor walks up to the studio of Radio Monrovia, she points to clothes drying on the ground of a construction site and market stands that she says must go. People stand outside the front of the store and begin to shuffle things off the street. Broh calls for a team to come in and clean up the area and walks up to the studio.
On air, she addresses criticism of the demolitions undertaken before the UN High Level Panel on the post-2015 development agenda that was held in Monrovia in February, she says: “They were selling their coal, they were bringing their children to bathe there, they had their slop buckets all lined up, they were brushing their teeth, bathing upfront… on the main street. Can you imagine that? Where did you ever see this?”
As Broh leaves the radio station she orders her staff to open a grubby garage, where marketers have hidden their tables and stools. A heavy man piles them together and kicks them in. She orders them to smash down a rusty roof that juts from a wall. A stout elderly woman splashes water on the ground and haggard old man runs back and forth with a small broom.
“All of these people here are illegal aliens,” she says.
A crowd gatherers around her.
“If you clean your community, I’ll respect you. Certain people can’t live in the city. You have the right to be in a city, but you can’t turn this place into a ghetto,” she says
A few days later, I asked Broh about a particular book among those lined up on her immaculate desk, From Third World to First: The Singapore Story written by Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. She opens the book to a photograph of Yew sweeping the streets of Singapore in his early days as a politician. Broh says she doesn’t have political aspirations, but the picture illustrates how public officials ought to behave: they should get their hands dirty.
“I find myself playing the role of janitor-in-chief,” she says.
While Broh was once lauded for her efforts to clean the city, public opinion has turned against her.
Kaifala Losene Sayon, a 34-year-old university student who has worked in Waterside market for the past 10 years acknowledges the impact of Broh’s work.
“[T]here was dirty water, no garbage collection, and no one painted their shops, Mary Broh has made 80 percent of central Monrovia clean,” he says.
But even Sayon says Broh must go.
“She don’t respect nobody’s rights. People close their shops when they see her. I will be happy if she is dismissed,” he says.
At the conclusion of writing this article a press release from the executive mansion stated Broh had turned in her resignation. Sirleaf, in a carefully-worded nationwide address, acknowledged Broh’s contribution to Monrovia and announced that Broh would be leading a project to create a market complex for women with a playground and school in the neighboring city of Paynesville.
“Mary’s methods may not have pleased everyone but there can be very little argument that she got the job done,” says Sirleaf.
I thought about how quickly Broh’s fortunes had turned.
“Nobody will dislodge me. They will not make it, I am here to stay,” she had said defiantly on the radio.
While Broh’s legacy will be contested on the city streets for months, perhaps even years to come, she is an acting city mayor the citizens of Monrovia will never forget.

A Brush With A Prickly Rebel  Who Wanted To Turn Liberia Into Singapore

Ghana was thrown into the international spotlight just months ago with the sudden death of President John Evans Atta Mills. The nation’s peaceful handover of leadership to the former vice president, John Dramani Mahama, underlined why the nation has long been regarded as an exemplar of democracy in the region. While the official mourning period has ended, campaigning is underway in what is expected to be one of the closest election races of the year between the two main contenders, the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the rival New Patriotic Party (NPP).
Social welfare provision and economic policy, coupled with the traditional emphasis on party politics and personalities will define the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections to be held in December.
Boasting one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa and having achieved (low) middle income status last year according to Word Bank figures, the continent’s newest oil producer is among the few Sub-Saharan African countries likely to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by 2015, according to leading economist Jeffrey Sachs.
“[The government] has been investing for a long time in health and education, gender equality, and it has made a lot of progress. But there are parts of Ghana that are extremely poor and really need a lot of accelerated investments,” said Sachs in an interview earlier this year.
This is the challenge that lies ahead of presidential candidates Mahama and opposition candidate Nana Akufo-Addo: managing the economy in a way, which ensures that growth stimulated by oil, mining and cocoa production, benefit all Ghanaians.
But with oil production far lower than projected, Ghana’s economic growth rate, which skyrocketed last year, is expected to halve to 8.2% this year, slowing further to 7% next year, according to a Reuters poll. This coupled with the sharp depreciation of the Ghana cedi against the greenback by 18% over the past year; a failed multi-billion dollar government housing project deal and millions of cedis paid in judgment debts, will mean the NDC government will have to work hard to prove it can drive the economy forward.
The 58-year-old incumbent Mahama, fares from Ghana’s northern region, served as the minister of communications for the government of Jerry John Rawlings and has supported development initiatives in Ghana’s poor and deeply underdeveloped northern region. Mahama will come up against opposition leader Akufo-Addo, 68, a British-educated lawyer turned politician who served briefly as the attorney general and the minister of foreign affairs under the NPP government of John Kufuor. Both candidates have picked senior officials in Ghana’s central bank as running mates for the vice presidency to bolster their credibility.
Akufo-Addo was defeated in 2008 in the second round vote by less than 1%. While tensions were high during the run-off, Ghanaians accepted the results and there was a peaceful handover of government. But civil society groups have expressed concern that acrimonious debate between rival candidates—for which Ghana’s political culture is notorious—could flare up conflicts, particularly in the north of the country where tribal, ethnic and land disputes persist.
“My biggest concerns are the politics of insults and vindictive language, at all levels. We are afraid that might influence people to act violently,” says Justin Bayor, the national coordinator for the Ghana Network for Peacebuilding.
While the distinctions between the major political parties are minor—the NDC is generally regarded as more social democratic, placing a greater emphasis on the role of state institutions, than its counterpart, that is regarded as more “business friendly”. Both parties have the goal of lifting Ghana out of its economic dependency on revenues generated by natural resource concessions and creating a middle-class industrialized society through using oil revenues to jumpstart the manufacturing sector.
The NPP has kicked off campaigning throughout the country and has outlined its goals for industrialization and trade policies that will encourage the growth of domestic business and industry. Mahama just finished a tour of the region and has hit the campaign trail, but the NDC is yet to release its policy document. With only two months left it is either party’s election.
“We are expecting a very close race. At this stage it’s difficult to know who will win,” says Selorm Branttie, a researcher at the Accra-based policy think tank IMANI.
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Clair MacDougall is a journalist who is based in Monrovia and covers West Africa.

Ghana, Make Your Mark

Outside Sandton Convention Centre a handful of protestors declaimed his name; inside former British Prime Minister Tony Blair strolled up to the microphone, in the glare of stage lights, for one of those moments politicians refer to as emotional docking—that connection with the mood of an applauding audience.
“It’s amazing how people start being nice to you once you stop being prime minister, except for archbishops!”
<div id="attachment_1228" style="width: 213px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1228" class="wp-image-1228 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/144649913-203x300.jpg" alt="" width="203" height="300" />Archbishop Desmond Tutu</div>
Most people laughed, if slightly nervously, to the reference to the refusal of Nobel Peace Prize winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, to speak alongside Blair because of the Iraq war in 2003. One bearded heckler in a suit at the back, shouted something at Blair, before storming out in high dudgeon.
“A bit of protest there, just to make me feel at home,” quipped Blair, ever the smooth one.
Blair hasn’t changed that much, apart from the grey hair, since the last time I interviewed him on a freezing December morning in 1985. That was in the rugged industrial town, Spennymoor, in the heart of his Sedgefield constituency in the Durham coalfields in the north east of England, which I covered for my evening newspaper. I remember the generous grin and the bright eyes; he was a bit like your elder brother’s best mate. On that day, we spoke of plans to create jobs in a region where unemployment had replaced coal mining. The word was even then that he would go far and he had the look of a man with a winning lottery ticket. As far as I know, people still do not have enough jobs in Spennymoor.
Twenty seven years on and Blair is a world name, with that laddish charm polished to perfection. He is understood to earn $300,000-a-time for gigs like the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit in Sandton on August 30. On this one, he needed his boyish charm and nerve amid days of hostile headlines. After all, Archbishop Tutu wanted Blair hauled before the International Criminal Court in The Hague, rather than a stage in Sandton, for his hand in the Iraq war. Writing in Britain’s Observer newspaper, the Archbishop said: “The then leaders of the United States and Great Britain, fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart. They have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand—with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us.”
The Archbishop was referring to the phantom weapons of mass destruction, the grounds for war that could launch an attack on London within the hour, which nine years later have yet to be found in Iraq.
If Blair were a boxer, he could slip a punch; if he were a footballer, he could ride a tackle with ease. The former prime minister sprinkled his speech with safe statements like: “Democracy is not a way of voting, it is a way of thinking.”
Then there were the anecdotes. Blair said he was a technophobe and was not allowed a mobile phone while in office and got one only when he stepped down in 2007. The day after, he sent an SMS to a friend, with his new phone, forgetting that it did not yet carry his name.
“My friend sent me back message saying: ‘Sorry, who are you?’ I thought, ‘It has taken less than 24 hours!’”
The audience laughed along, but went quiet when Blair answered questions from the floor over why he sent the British Army into Iraq.
“I took the decision in good faith and I didn’t take it because I didn’t believe this was a right thing to do I knew it was controversial decision, but I thought it was right. In the end, that is what we elect leaders to do&#8230; I never regret removing a brutal dictator, who was a threat. The intelligence reports are on the website before you ask me questions go and read them and see what I was given at the time,” says Blair.
<div id="attachment_1227" style="width: 214px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1227" class="size-medium wp-image-1227" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/000_DV1182822-204x300.jpg" alt="" width="204" height="300" />Tony Blair</div>
Then there was the question about how he felt that protestors outside the building wanted to make a citizens’ arrest.
“Why don’t they go and protest against the people doing the killing and the bombing and the suicide attacks,” says Blair to a ripple of applause.
There was more applause earlier in the day for Pravin Gordhan, the South African finance minister, and his call for a fight against corruption.
“Let me tell you very clearly, from where I stand and what I see, this is a disease our hospitals are not going to solve. It requires a set of decisions we need to make morally. In South Africa, when you see a bribe it is not the head that must turn, it is your gut. With your guts, you can do something about it,” says Gordhan.
“In South Africa we have too many pretenders who say something in public and another in private. We need to act… We have to fight greed, we have to fight conspicuous consumption… It is the honest people who must come to the front line&#8230; To quote the words of Nelson Mandela, ‘A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination’.’’
One of the surprise packages was former world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, who proved to be a chirpy chap when he is not frowning across the chess board. He opened by congratulating the South African cricket team for beating England, even though he confessed to not knowing the rules.
Kasparov told us his mother put a sign over his bed, when he was a child, saying: “If not you, who else?”
It seemed to work. Kasparov learned from his father how to play chess by the time he was five, by the time he was 12 he was Russian champion and on November 10, 1985, he became the youngest world champion ever—a title he held for 20 years.
In the 1980s, computer pioneers, IBM, pitted its Deep Blue chess-playing computer against Kasparov.
“I won the first match and the second one and then IBM decided to retire Deep Blue. I always wondered what happened to it, I understand it is directing traffic in Philadelphia!” says Kasparov.
The former grandmaster is now a campaigner for democracy on the chess board, that is Russian politics. He told the conference how on, August 17, he was arrested outside the trial of the Russian punk rock band, Pussy Riot.
“You had young girls in an empty church, I stress that, praying to the Virgin Mary to drive Putin away and they got two years in prison. I was there giving an interview to the press and they came to take me away. They threw me in a van and used violence to keep me inside,” says Kasparov.
“The difference between chess and politics is, in chess we have fixed rules and an unpredictable result, in Russia we have the opposite.”
Kasparov hopes chess, with its patience, analysis, strategy and concentration will take the imagination of the young away from video games; like democracy in Russia, this too is a dream.

Tag: Leadership

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