The Spirit of South Africa!

Who would have thought it would be so cold in South Africa! Not me, that is for sure. We have hit the coldest period of the year on the Southern hemisphere and with Johannesburg being far inland the temperatures get quite low, around zero degrees Celsius at night and around 15 degrees during the day. That does not sound particularly cold, but in South Africa the houses do not have any heating!! The argument appears to be that this cold period is so short – max. 2 months – that it is not worth to put in heating. Most people therefore wear their jackets indoor these days. We have learned to adopt that fashion.

We have continued our work with Peter – the owner and manager of the company we work with. We visited three of his customers yesterday and have also had two meetings with his bank. Eric – our financial wizard - have been digging into the numbers, while Stone – our engineer – have had a look at the machines and the manufacturing processes. Meanwhile Shibu and I have been trying to combine input from the customers and Peter’s vision of where he wants to take the company into a coherent strategy with a very concrete action plan. The trick is now to bring all three pieces together into a package (in the form of a business plan) that Peter can use both for his own reference and to raise capital for further expansion.

Today we had our second guest speaker, Ivon Johnston, who has been working in and with the South African government for many years. She told some moving stories about what South Africa has gone through, but most of all she told the story about what all of us already have felt – the spirit of South Africa! It is a spirit of optimism and joy that will not let itself be held down by the many very serious problem the country is facing. It is a spirit of reconciliation and compassion, not about revenge, hatred or blame. It is a spirit that recognizes what happen in the past while insisting on focusing on the future.

There is one name in particular that embodies this spirit. We keep hearing it again and again. It is mentioned by our guest speakers, by the entrepreneurs and workers in the companies, by our drivers and by other people we meet. It is used to name everything from streets to shopping malls. The name is Nelson Mandela. He is nothing short of a prophet here. His birthday is a national holiday. Had it not been for his vision South Africa would not have achieved the tremendous improvements that it has over the past 15 years and it would not be heading in the positive direction that it is. I cannot imagine what South Africa will look like in 15 years, but it will for sure be an amazing place!

Thorsten

Shibu James [India] having Chicken Licken (the South African equivalent of KFC) for lunch.

Stone Gao [China] and Peter discussing the manufacturing process of a particular component.

Stone and Peter discussing manufacturing while Eric is crunching the financial numbers.

The modern version of the classic problem of ‘how to fit a square stick in a round hole?’ This one is called ‘how to fit a Swiss electrical plug into a South African socket?’

Yesterday our team had Indian food for lunch. From left it is our driver Sharl, Stone Gao [China], Thorsten Boeck [Denmark], Eric Vergara [Thailand], Peter and Shibu James [India].

One of the teams is working with a company that has developed a special x-ray machine. They had pictures taken of them selves and asked the class to guess who is who. A very entertaining exercise!

Ivon Johnston telling the story about Justice Beki-beki, who was given the death sentence, but saved by the fall of the apartheid regime. He later became a lawyer, a leader of the election process in the Northern Cape province and a member of the international body that monitored the elections in the US.

Tonight’s sunset over Johannesburg as it looked from our hotel. The sunsets are very dramatic and beautiful in the way they paint the whole sky red. The picture does not do reality justice at all.