Catching the sun – speech by Jabu Mabuza, CEO, Tsogo Sun Group written by Charlene Smith (c)

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, fellow dignitaries, members of Abasa and the executive of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University branch of Abasa…

It is an honour to be with you this evening at such an important event. I am very proud to be speaking at the invitation of an organization that does so much to nurture and advance the talents of black men and women.

Those of us here tonight, who are among the most privileged in our great nation, have the advantage of education and many have one of the most sought after degrees in this country.

But a degree nowadays is not a guarantee of work, it is an enabler, there is lots more you need to do. It is sobering to reflect that in 2004 Stats-SA reported that there were 60 000 graduates without work in South Africa. Last year that figure had jumped to 200 000 graduates who could not find a job. And this, in a country with one of the most serious skills shortages in the world.

What’s the problem?

Some time ago, I spoke to a human resources director who said that HR people are spoilt for choice when they seek to appoint someone. There are so many people looking for work. He said that having a degree doesn’t mean you can do the job; all that it says is that a person can complete an assignment. He said that there is more to work than donning a gown and saying I graduated.

Tshidi Mokgabudi who is a director of KPMG and was this country’s first black woman CA, last year obtained a list from the President’s Office of unemployed graduates. She interviewed dozens of hopefuls with degrees in advanced tax, accounting and finance, but most failed the interview. In a report to the deputy president she noted: “It is not enough to just have a degree, people have to have life skills to get jobs. There were many that, despite having a degree, were not work-ready and lacked the soft skills of interpersonal communication, comprehension, listening ability, assertiveness or self esteem. Almost uniformly the graduates came from backgrounds of extreme poverty – and spoke of sacrifices often made by single mothers to send them to university.”

This is a serious situation.

Chantyl Mulder who heads the SA Institute for Chartered Accountants, Thuthuka bursary fund, which is run with Abasa, says they interviewed more than 2 000 students to find 50 suitable to give grants to. She says she doesn’t “believe the quality of degrees now is as good as five years ago. Some cannot even read a bank statement and tell if a person is in arrears or not. Students write in sms shorthand and their English skills are poor.”

Ladies and gentlemen, globalization is making the world small and there is one language used most often in business, trade, politics and law – it’s English, if you cannot speak, read and write good English, you will not communicate effectively (you will NOT hear NOR be heard, only seen).

Peter Drucker the US management guru says that “there will be two kinds of CEOs who will exist in the next five years; those who think globally and those who are unemployed.” We have to do everything we can as individuals and corporates to be globally competitive.

You know when you enter the world of work, often all that you focus on – is the job. But to be really successful you have to understand the golden triangle of family, business and your social life.

It is imperative that you pay attention to all three. John D Rockefeller who was the richest man in the world and whose family is still among the richest people in the world once said: “I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.” Harsh words. His conclusion? “If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.” There is more to life.

Not all of you are parents, but many of you will be. As parents we should have English books at home, we can speak our own language during the day but at night at the supper table we should speak English. And here is another important point we often neglect: it is by a family sitting together at a table at night that values are shared, children hear how parents solved problems either at work or between the neighbours. But too often nowadays the children eat in front of the TV and the parents grab a meal at some other time. If you cannot eat together every night – and here we are away from our families tonight as an example – then ensure you schedule at least two days of deliberate family sharing time each week.

How can we instil values into our children if the only opinions they hear from us are orders, or if they cannot witness us living our lives in a respectable manner?

You come from a university named after a man, Nelson Mandela, who represents values that the whole world is impressed by. But in our country at this time massive rates of corruption and crime signal a society that is losing its values. This country will not continue to progress if we are seen as people with poor ethics and low values.

At Tsogo Sun we list four values that every employee of the company is expected to stand by, these, the Four E’s are:

EXCELLENCE – Unsurpassed customer service

EQUITY – Fairness in all interaction

ETHICAL - Business practice

ENVIRONMENT - Sensitivity and sound management

Without a strong value-system you will simply not make it. As accountants (we) are the ones who can be the whistle blowers to the corruption that is undermining our society. It is rarely popular to do this and it is often painful, but those who steal are thieves of our future.

The influence of parents is important. A young Thuthuka bursary fund recipient, Siyabonga Mtshali from Soweto, has a father who is a cleaner at a major mining house in Johannesburg. He told Thuthuka that his father used to tell him “to learn English, because not knowing how to speak it kept him back.”

The youngest of five children, Siyabonga is the only one to go to university. At his school in Soweto, Siyabonga says there were students who wanted to do higher grade Maths of 178 matriculants, but no teacher with the skills. And so he and a few others taught themselves. He voluntarily teaches matric students Maths and Accounting at his old school, he complains that none of the pupils “have textbooks, only the teachers have a few.”

Siyabonga is the sort of young man I admire, but the difficulties he and his friends experienced in getting ahead is cause for concern. Earlier this year, Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor told us that less than half of those who begin high school complete it. Just under half of those who began high school in 1999 (675 132) made it to matric (322 492) in 2003.

Are we as parents sufficiently supporting our young?

Recent research from the University of Cape Town tells us that South Africa’s black elite grew 30% in 2006/07. Our spending power increased from R130 billion at the end of 2005 to R180 billion in 2007 and accounts for 54% of all black buying power.

Research published by the SA Institute of Race Relations (last weekend) told us that there are 48 586 dollar millionaires in this country. This country is the world’s fourth largest creator of new US dollar millionaires. The middle class or those who earn more than R12 000 a month is growing fast, there were 185 000 black middle class in 2004 and that has now almost doubled to more than 322 000. But they warn that such growth is not enough nor is it necessarily sustainable.

We have to make it sustainable by taking responsibility.

We should all be giving back to the schools we were educated in. If we have, we should share - but are we?

There is a Nguni saying: Ingane engakhali ifela embelekweni - which translated says: The child who doesn’t stir while upon its mother’s back gets suffocated. Meaning: if you don’t speak up, you will be ignored.

Write those words on your heart, they are important. It is not just speaking up, but it is how you speak, what you say and how you present yourself. It is also how much you believe in yourself.

Beware of the blame game too. Your belief that you will be discriminated against because you are black/female/Jewish/Muslim/disabled/a white male, can lead to your own fears realising themselves, not because of the discrimination of others, but because of your own negative self programming.

Know yourself, know the things that you do to hold yourself back and work on changing them.

Ensure you have mentors and advisers. There is a profound Xhosa proverb which says that: No genius is so clever he can scratch his own back. I learnt how true this is when in 1993; one of the wise men of South African business, Meyer Kahn approached me to join South African Breweries as group advancement manager.

Here I learnt a number of powerful lessons, one of which is that in today’s world it’s not so much what you know, but who you know. I learnt that profits are derived from relationships, and NOT from transactions. Networking, therefore, is critical. Keep in touch with the friends and lecturers you have today, if they like and respect you, they can become great allies and business partners in the future. This is why too it is very important to join organizations like Abasa to meet people working in the same field as you, to keep up to date with new trends and to learn of new opportunities.

At Tsogo Sun we ensure that 35% of opportunities go to black entrepreneurs, but how well you manage opportunity is up to you. When we started Tsogo Sun in 1997, we undertook to have 30% of all our employees being individuals who had never worked/ been employed before. This was one of the ways we could introduce fresh, new and energized ideas. Now, 10 years later, the Tsogo Sun Group boasts 5,000 (five thousand) personnel; 80 hotels; and 5 casinos; over 5 billion rand in Revenue; a market cap. of just under 20 billion rand and 2,5 billion rand EBITDA. 51% black controlled, Tsogo Sun pays dividends of 1 billion rand per year; and has free cash of 1 billion rand!

Yet, with all this, Tsogo Sun does not harbour any primadonnas – just hardworking men and women, who laugh together as much as they cry together! We remain market leaders in our business.

And it is not enough to say that the business of business is business. We cannot ignore the fact that according to the Human Sciences Research Council 54% of our people live in poverty. You can’t have a chopper that takes you from your nice office to your nice house and ignore the society you live in.

Business is about People. If you are not in touch with people’s needs whatever you produce will not be in touch with them. Never before has it been important to be in touch, not just through Facebook or emails, but to be in touch with the person sitting right next to you.

In Sepedi they say, “Mphiri otee ga olle!” which is the essence of Ubuntu.

Let me give you a few more tips for success before I close:

Henry Ford said: “If you think you can, or you think you can’t – you are right both times!” It is amazing what we can achieve when we truly believe in ourselves. The key is to develop a balance, so that not only are you good, but you know you are good at what you do. Grow confidence by setting goals and believing without a doubt that you can achieve them… and you will.

Turn failure into a friend. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Learn from those lessons to improve yourself. Know that a lesson will be repeated until it’s learnt, and if you don’t learn the easy ones the challenges get harder.

A can-do attitude inspires confidence. Take reasonable risks, be goal-directed, have initiative and a positive outlook, be creative and inspire others.

A few months ago our own Minister of Finance, Trevor Manuel observed: “We need to recognise the importance of pushing our limits, of identifying and testing new relationships, of finding causal linkages between economic outcomes and inputs of less clear, social and political origin. We need to work harder on drawing out the links between institutions, their effectiveness, what goes into creating them and the ways in which they affect long-term economic outcomes.”

You have begun a great journey; I wish you success and good luck on the road ahead.

Thank you.