Businesspeople from South Africa

"A big part of willpower is having something to aspire to, something to live for."

"Computer is not a device anymore. It is an extension of your mind and your gateway to other people."

"There are many examples of companies and countries that have improved their competitiveness and efficiency by adopting open source strategies. The creation of skills through all levels is of fundamental importance to both companies and countries."

"In the early days of the DCC I preferred to let the proponents do their thing and then see how it all worked out in the end. Now we are pretty close to the end."

"I urge telecommunications regulators to develop a commercial strategy for delivering effective access to the continent."

"Whenever there is a substantial change in an industry there are opportunities for new leaders to emerge."

"The future belongs to those who embrace global thinking without losing their identity and their culture."

"An experience like that changes your perspective on life and on the world."

"I pretty much don't care what the papers say about me."

"Good tourism will follow good hotels - and what could be better for our country?"

"You take a change... Calculate the odds, research the international market properly, establish the Southern Africans' taste, style, appetite and enjoyment, aim at giving them a good time at the best quality that they can afford - then go for it!"

"I'm not afraid of growing old. I'm not sure that I'll ever be an old man. Maybe in the chronological sense - but that's all."

"as remote as the rings of Saturn."

"Sol pounds the headlines with the repetition - and delicacy of a sledgehammer."

"Sol's currency is dedication, enthusiasm and commitment."

"A man with his stubby million-rand finger perennially prodding the public's pulse, his eyes constantly roving the horizons of the future, Kerzner has the power of a Prometheus unbound."

"You don't have to carry a gun to be a freedom fighter."

"Revenge should not be our motivation."

"My lord, one can perhaps be pardoned for saying that perhaps his (Jimmy Kantor) biggest crime, if it is a crime, is that he was a partner of Harold Wolpe, and that Harold Wolpe was his brother-in-law."

"My Lord, it is difficult to reply in a restrained fashion. My learned friend must not use words such as 'Communist' lightly, when he refers to Kantor. Kantor is not a Communist. My learned friend has used the tactics of McCarthyism in an endeavour to smear him. I think, with respect, my learned friend is allowing himself to run away with facts that are not there. His complaint in count one is not that they found files with evidence. Oh not, he says that we found files with nothing in them. Not in Kantor's office, but in the office of Wolpe. Then my learned friend that the practice had been ruined and liquidated Knator's practice, my lord, it is not Kantor. It is not Kantor! Why I say it is so difficult to be restrained, is that my learned friend has thrown in everything hat concerns every accused in this case, and says 'that is why I don't want Kantor to get bail'."

"I regard the Honourable member for Randburg as a friend. I regard him as a person who has done tremendous work as treasurer of the United Party on the Witswatersrand branch. The test of friendship comes in what you do as a man in adversity. I want to say, and I make so secret of it, that I am my brother's keeper and I will not be his executioner."

"It is important that in the process of change, existing institutions of value and means of production are not destroyed. The fabric of society, however critical one may be of its present structures, should be adopted and modified where required, but not destroyed."

"I make this appeal to Mr Botha: Show this statesmanship, show that at this time you will not allow our unity of purpose to overcome the real problems to be threatened."

"Laws alone is not enough to ensure that freedom is safeguarded. What is required is a sprit of freedom among the people concerned. There must be an atmosphere of respect, a feeling of belonging together, an atmosphere of harmony with fellow beings."

"The National Party does not care about people, it only cares about power."

"The mission must be adherence to and the advancement of the concept of a truly democratic political system and economic system which gives not only rights and opportunity but also security."

"Whenever I draw up economic policy I look at it from the point of view of the person who has nothing; I look at it from the point of view of my farther who tried to get a job but could not."

"Freedom is incomplete if it is exercised in poverty."

"Morality is cheap when someone else is paying."

"If we are going to have greater unemployment, if we are going to have more unrest, the chances of a negotiated settlement will be less and in a revolutionary situation the chances of a truly free democratic society emerging are reduced.'""

"I have an obligation to the 37 million people in South Africa to ensure their well-being. But the road from slavery to the promised land is a rough one."

"I must and will work to ensure that the new democratic South Africa has a fair chance to succeed economically as well as politically, and to try to assist in fulfilling at least a part of the dream of the oppressed and deprived when the new South Africa is born."

"I said, 'Down with apartheid' before some of them [demonstrators] were born. I was supporting the dismantling of apartheid when America was standing on the sidelines and only a few people knew what apartheid was about."

"I believe people are not free if all they can do is cast a vote every five years to decide who should govern them. What does it mean to a man in a shack built by himself with no amenities and not knowing where his next meal is coming from, to vote? An election is about power. It is relevant to freedom only if those elected govern efficiently, honestly and carry out the electoral promises made."

"I wish my country were like I wanted it to be, but as it is not, I hope it will one day get to this way of living."

"Schwarz has not only been one of apartheid's most prominent opponents, but his ideas and the initiatives he had taken had played an important role in the development of the concept of a negotiated democracy in South Africa, based on the principles of freedom and justice. In this regard he is one of the conceptual and moral fathers of the new South Africa."

"A champion of the poor."

"The quickest analytical mind in South African politics."

"You’re the last person who will dictate to me!"

"If the 60-year old MP for Yeoville is occasionally oversensitive, it is probably because - as one of the most talented and versatile people in Parliament - he finds himself frustrated by much of what goes on."

"South Africa's most feisty politician."

"When a man who has devoted most of his life to the struggle for a new South Africa tells you that apartheid is dead and that sanctions are holding up its burial, he speaks with a moral authority that is difficult to assail"

"One of the loudest voices for the deprived emanating from the white establishment. His calls on whites to make material sacrifices for black advancement have drawn abusive phone calls. But Schwarz is not easily diverted from his chosen course and is a persuasive advocate of his beliefs."

"He is a brilliant debater with an extraordinarily acute mind. He goes for the jugular quicker than anyone else."

"We developed a mutual respect for one another. Schwarz was an extremely able MP with a good financial brain, and a hard worker who could devastate National Party members in Parliament, especially Ministers of Finance, who feared his vigorous attacks. Like me, he could be unpleasant both in and out of the House."

"To risk making predictions is rather presumptuous and unwise. If I’m wrong, it will never be forgotten. If I’m right, no one will remember."

"It is therefore important that as we put our vision to the country, we should do so directly, knowing that people out there want to be part of the process and will be responding, because in the end the drafting of the constitution must not be the preserve of the 490 members of this Assembly. It must be a constitution which they feel they own, a constitution that they know and feel belongs to them. We must therefore draft a constitution that will be fully legitimate, a constitution that will represent the aspirations of our people."

"This conference, with overwhelming agreement, unanimous agreement, has resolved that the expropriation of land without compensation should be among the mechanisms available to government to give effect to land reform and redistribution. It has also been resolved that in implementing this decision, we must insure that we do not undermine the economy, the agricultural production, and food security in our country."

"We now have a great opportunity to put land to good use, to take it out of those hands, lazy hands I might say, and put it into the working hands of our people."

"One of the other things that is going to help to give a boost to our economy is how we reform our state-owned enterprises. … The state-owned enterprises were sewers of corruption, a number of them. … There was rot, there was filth and there was deep corruption. We are rooting all that out right now."

"The last decade has seen many of the gains of the early years of democracy reversed through state capture and corruption, a failure of collective leadership, policy uncertainty and a growing distance between the people and their movement and their government. We have had to come to terms with the erosion of the values of the ANC and confront difficult questions about the quality and integrity of our leadership as the ANC."

"The manifesto had a paragraph on a wish and an aspiration, acknowledging that the Reserve Bank is independent and that there is no intention whatsoever to tamper or tinker with the independence of the central bank. The wish that is expressed is, that as it goes ahead with monetary policy machinations, it will keep an eye on employment."

"The independence, the standing and the role of the Reserve Bank is sacrosanct. It will remain independent, as clearly stated in our constitution."

"The US has been unable to imagine a better future that goes beyond four plus one G, where they have been unable to imagine what 5G has to offer. They are clearly jealous that a Chinese company called Huawei has outstripped them and because they have been outstripped, they must now punish that one company. We cannot afford to have our own economy being held back because there is this fight that the US is having."

"In Zimbabwe, I was booed by the whole stadium. I had to apologise to the people of Zimbabwe for the attacks. I do not want to call it xenophobic attacks. South Africans do not hate people of other nations. … We had to offer an apology on behalf of the people of South Africa. We are loved in the continent. We are a sought after country. … I had to apologise because those attacks were a national shame, …"

"They were saying Shangaans must leave [Ekurhuleni]. The Vendas must leave. The next thing they will say the Batswanas must leave. The BaXhosa must leave. Who is going to remain? ... We must defeat the demon of tribalism."

"The ANC has been the ruling in South Africa since the dawn of democracy in 1994. By the time Ramaphosa rose to speak [in his inaugural State of the Nation address on 16 February 2018], South Africa had experienced nine years of destructive and devastating rule by Jacob Zuma. To give hope to the broken nation, Ramaphosa, in his New Dawn delivery, invoked the lyrics of a song by struggle and music icon Hugh Masekela called Thuma Mina, or Send Me, in a desperate but brilliant effort to galvanise all South Africans to action to reverse the negative effects of the excesses of the Zuma presidency. […] He had struck the right chord with the nation and Thuma Mina instantaneously forced its way into the social and political lexicon of the rainbow nation. […] Hugh Masekela was immortalised."

"There was a strange aftertaste to many of the calls for grand social reform in 2020. As the coronavirus crisis overtook us, the left wing on both sides of the Atlantic, at least that part that had been fired up Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, was going down to defeat. The promise of a radicalized and reenergized left, organized around the idea of the Green New Deal, seemed to dissipate amidst the pandemic. It fell to governments mainly of the center and the right to meet the crisis. They were a strange assortment. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the United States experimented with denial. For them climate skepticism and virus skepticism went hand in hand. In Mexico, the notionally left-wing government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador also pursued a maverick path, refusing to take drastic action. Nationalist strongmen like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Narendra Modi in India, Vladimir Putin in Russia, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey did not deny the virus, but relied on their patriotic appeal and bullying tactics to see them through. It was the managerial centrist types who were under most pressure. Figures like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in the United States, or Sebastián Piñera in Chile, or Cyril Ramaphosa in South Africa, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Ursula von der Leyen, and their ilk in Europe. They accepted the science. Denial was not an option. They were desperate to demonstrate that they were better than the 'populists.' To meet the crisis, very middle-of-the-road politicians ended up doing very radical things. Most of it was improvisation and compromise, but insofar as they managed to put a programmatic gloss on their responses—whether in the form of the EU's Next Generation program or Biden's Build Back Better program in 2020—it came from the repertoire of green modernization, sustainable development, and the Green New Deal."

"However, our primary focus must remain on the prevention of gender-based violence against the young girls and women of our country. Working with civil society and other partners across our society, we continue to call upon men and boys to stand at the forefront of changing attitudes and behavior."

"Just as we attained our freedom through the support and solidarity of many people and nations around the world, we continue to stand in solidarity with the victims of injustice in other parts of the world."

"As a people, our unity, determination and resilience has seen us through hard times. Just as this has been a year of great change, we look to the next year with great hope."

"Your first step, in building your startup online, should be to identify your audience and where they are most active online."

"Getting to the next level of life involves reaching another level of self-discipline."

"Do you know that Durban has an economic output higher than some countries in Africa? There’s actually no reason why Durban should be in the state it’s in. It’s the most extraordinary thing for me…"

"A strong, vibrant city centre breathes life into the surrounding neighbourhoods, and in turn, the city itself fuels the strength of the wider state"

"To think of Durban as simply a city is to miss its larger role - it is a vital engine for the state, a bridge between local communities and global markets"

"Put it this way: you have goods coming in (through the port) from the east, going to the west.They go through Durban as a port; Durban is a mega port. I don’t understand why it looks the way it does; it makes no sense to me"

"I am often confused by people who fail to understand the importance of the city centre. The reason you build a city centre is for the rest of the city, and you want the rest of the city to reflect the state or the province"

"We don’t just don’t have the time to do the things that don’t matter. I think we are called on in this season as young Africans to seize power"

"Let me tell you, young people. There is no old person going anywhere. If you want that sit in that office, board room, chamber, or ministry, you are going to have to fight for it. Power is not given, it is taken"

"And so the question as the continent rises is: will we be men and women of courage? Will we be the generation that in 50 years time, our children reference and say ‘They did it right"

"I think the barrier to doing incredible things has been lowered by technology, which has started to reduce inequality."

"It’s really hard to wake up every day and fight patriarchy, which is why I am so exhausted. I honestly want to see women make loads of money so we can all just invest in other women and shift the power dynamics in business as well as in our homes and families."

"Engineers design our world and our society, and if we don’t have women at the design table, we exclude 50% of the population."

"“We are thrilled to open WomHub and provide a space where women can grow their businesses and hopefully make more money,” our mission is to empower women to pursue their passions and achieve success on their own terms.”"

"“ For women who are breastfeeding, we’ve got a wellness area where women can do yoga, meditation and prayer. We’ve also got what we call the junior engineer hub. It’s basically a co-play space for kids that when you are working, your kids can co-play in the space and also learn about STEM and tech,”"

"“I think this is so important because none of this means anything unless we can move the capital into the hands of women so that they can grow their businesses. And so, this is why my business partner and I have been so focused on raising the venture capital fund so that we can start to not only create the spaces for a woman, literally and figuratively, but give them the capital that they need to thrive,”"

"Women have been largely excluded from an industry that literally designs and supports the building of cities, countries and the virtual world. When women are excluded, we have a world that was not built for us and we see gender bias persist in everything from infrastructure to virtual safety. The way we combat this is through bringing more women to the design table."

"I’m blessed to have a network of incredible women entrepreneurs and team members who inspire me every day to get up and fight."

"With WomHub, I’m particularly excited about our work supporting female founders, especially given the lack of capital that goes into female-founded businesses as well as a general lack of support."

"I think the barrier to doing incredible things has been lowered by technology, which has started to reduce inequality. Before, you needed an Ivy League education, where now you can learn cool things online from those institutions, tinker with technology and develop cool things, connect to others and have your voice heard, and that excites me for young women in STEM."

"“Don’t take life too seriously. You don’t need to figure things out right away. Figure things out along the way…“"

"In business, it’s crucial to learn from those who have succeeded before you. Their experiences can provide valuable insights and shortcuts to achieving your own goals"

"And we are now in what we call the golden period, the revolution that’s taking place in African football"

"but we also recognize that at the highest level in the world, we have to compete against the best in the world and win."

"We remain deeply committed to upholding the highest standards of corporate governance, transparency, integrity and accountability across all aspects of our business"

"It’s really important that we, as Africans, can benefit from the value of the resources on the continent"

"I end up being questioned a lot about my knowledge of wine … I have to try to build that trust"

"It takes a village to raise a business that can be sustainable"

"We need to learn the trade of diamonds, the business of diamonds, and we need to challenge the status quo"

"Living your best life doesn't mean splashing out, yes we all love nice things but there is more than the price tag"

"See, the way I feel about it is, for example, if Messi (touch wood) were to pass away, Cristiano Rolando would possibly feel a certain way… he’d probably stop playing soccer"

"You know, the people you actually compete with are the reason why you go a little bit harder because they keep raising the bar but in the same breath, you’re not aware that you’re positioning yourself to be great or elevated as an artist"

"Whenever AKA would drop something, I’d be like, ‘Man, how do I come up with something stronger?’ Kiernan [AKA’s birth name] would always keep you on your toes. So, when such starts diminishing, whether by an unfortunate passing of a rapper or rapper’s tenacity to keep going, it makes it hard for one to keep the bar high"

"I think it’s still fresh in our minds, just the fact that he’s gone and the way that he left. So Hip-Hop is not in its best state right now. But as far as us getting together and making music, I think it’s in a good place sonically"

"The word ‘Phara’ has long carried street weight, often linked to outcasts and survivors"

"But I’m here to flip that narrative. A Phara isn’t just someone who gets by; it’s someone who rises, builds, and dreams despite the odds"

"A Phara is anyone who refuses to fold, regardless of background or circumstance"

"What’s a Phara? It’s the genius of turning pain into power, hustle into legacy"

"Phara City is our reality, the scars we carry, the victories we earn, the hope we hold onto"

"That spirit lives in every street, in every story. That spirit lives in this album"

"This song is a hustler's prayer and is very close to my heart,” he said. “I'm basically pleading with God to spare me because I still have so much that I need to do. The year [2022] has been hard on the hip hop community, and it's hard not to be conscious of how heavy the energy is around all of us. 'Emoyeni' is also a reminder that, even in trying times, we should not be ruled by fear and take a moment to celebrate"

"I am a result of coming from a poverty stricken background, to where I am today. So my life is a motivation. If you were to look into my life or watch my interviews, with that I don't even have to motivate you. My life itself is a clear indication that if you dream, you become what you want to be."

"Everything that you want to do you need some sort of education for you to excel in it. So, with just great talent you can only be just that great... But with that great talent plus schooling, you become even more amazing. It's like greatness on steroids"

"You don't want to be called a one-hit-wonder and fall out on any business you've embarked on because of no educational background of understanding what it is that you're doing"

"The reason I decided to enrol at the business of entertainment, media and sport at Harvard Business School was because we just launched a new company that represents athletes and entertainers."

"I always say that a song really makes itself; you have to allow a song to speak to you and just follow its calling. An idea will come to you as just an idea"

"I think what sets South Africa apart is that we really are a dancing nation, so when it comes to dance music, it just makes sense. Just go onto TikTok, and you will see South Africans straight up running the TikTok dance challenges. We love dancing in South Africa, so it makes sense for us when it comes to dominating dance stages"

"Music itself seeks to collaborate. Every song has collaboration—every instrument collaborates with another to make a song. Drums collaborate with a bass, with a voice, with strings, to make a song. I love collaborating; you can’t make music without collaborating instruments and minds"

"You cannot work as if you are an island; you will not get the best results. You will get the best music when you open yourself up to learn and to teach, which is what I have done, and it has worked"

"I would encourage everyone to try and collaborate as much as you can because when you do, everyone in the studio will aim to push the envelope. You will never be able to compete with my creativity when you want to work on your own because I have a team of people who make me great, and who I make great. I am in such a sweet spot because I accept that music has to be shared"

"Most mining companies, government and big businesses do not procure from local women-owned businesses. Yet, I resigned from a well-paying job to create a private business in steel and metal manufacturing. I’ve hired four women in my company so far and I want to create more jobs for rural youth and women"

"[I’ve connected with] women’s networks and learned that for women to succeed in the industry, we must not be afraid to take risks"

"It is a fundamental error in estimation and points to a fundamental flaw in the revenue estimation model of Nersa"

"More importantly it points to the fundamental flaw in the operating model of Eskom"

"About 85% of energy comes from coal, by the amount of energy that is produced however by value, in rand terms coal is about 90% in Nersa’s revenue determination model so if you tamper with any of the other things you are not doing anything and you have to go to the source, being coal"

"Eskom should not be a price taker in the coal industry but rather it should be a price maker. In reality, the opposite is true as Eskom officials rarely stand up to the bullying by rich mining companies who do not hesitate to use political and other methods of pressure to force exorbitant prices down the throat of Eskom officials"

"The outcome of this is that the resultant high price of electricity is in fact a transfer via Eskom and Nersa of money from the clients of Eskom especially the poor to the rich coal mining companies that feed their insatiable appetite for profit"

"To put it crudely, Eskom and Nersa are just conduits that extract money from poor South African citizens, who are surviving with minimum starvation wages to give to the rich called mining companies"

"In South Africa, we don’t have courts of justice. We have courts of law. People don’t go to court to get justice. They go to court for a judge to apply the law, whatever the case may be"

"If you are an ordinary person, a worker, working a menial job and the most vile deed is committed, just the cost of getting an application going, a notice of motion or founding affidavit, can run into thousands of rand"

"As long as you are black and poor, forget about justice"

"When I was at Transnet, I said South Africa must stop buying trains everywhere. We must manufacture our locomotives"

"South Africans must stop consuming only. We need to get into the habit of making things as a country"

"We have come a long way since we started with this project. We shall not falter. The people of Gwanda have been good to us, and we owe it to them to succeed"

"although the renewable sector has a vital role in the country’s energy future, it is essential to address concerns surrounding the lack of baseload in renewables — the amount of energy available at a certain time"

"despite solar and wind technology becoming more affordable because of the technological innovation happening in the value chains linked to green energy, it primarily benefits households instead of the energy grid, as Eskom must prioritise supplying power to charge inverters during peak hours"

"Solar is becoming cheaper and must be used for distributed generation. In other words"

"households and commercial entities must use solar, not because it’s going to keep the system stable, but because it’s cheaper now"

"if Eskom’s financial situation improved, it would proceed with its initiative to install 11 synchronous generators across all its power stations as an alternative baseload solution"

"This approach is crucial for ensuring grid stability, as relying solely on wind, solar and batteries might not be sufficient"

"This includes taking all power stations as they are to use the current turbine for the synchronous generation to keep the grid stable. So, the whole story of shutting down everything to build green and solar, it’s a political thing. It’s not an engineering thing"

"the generators could be unaffordable for the utility, which announced a staggering loss of R23.9 billion for the financial year ending in March 2023, caused in part by a significant increase in load-shedding, a growing municipal debt burden and soaring losses attributed to criminal activities"

"Now the new struggle is to spruce up our towns, to remove grime and collaboratively work together with members of the Knysna community to fix potholes"

"This is what we do in Knysna, which must be seen as an offshoot of what the Presidential Operation Vulindlela seeks to achieve — to fix the infrastructure. We need to all, as South Africans, consistent with the offerings of the Freedom Charter, to debunk this rubbish spread by some organisations, peddling untruths about our country"

"We need to work together, work hard, all the people of this country, to fix our country, to get it where it should be, and to encourage as many people to do the same, in little and big ways, and this by each doing little things in our localities"

"We are committed to fix broken roads, closing potholes and fixing bursting sewer pipes, which spill human waste in the streets, with the potential of spreading diseases among communities"

"Talk to these guys, and hear for yourself what kind of commitment they have to mobilise community work to ensure that Knysna becomes a functioning council, and attends to infrastructural defects for the good of the ratepayers"

"It is not an exaggeration to say that the board was astonished by the widespread corruption and disregard of the rules which pertain to policy on procurement and processes that must be followed by various procurement and supply chain management structures"

"We go further to say that the situation of disregard for systems and rules suggests that there is a state of paralysis that has set in. The way in which money was syphoned off and nothing being done to stop it could be described in what I call a horror show, a movie or a theatre and the managers of this corruption were the protagonists"

"There were logistic companies and one which had a big metre warehouse and there was no lease agreement between them and Transnet and Transnet was not getting money into its accounts. There were others there who were running events management companies. The management including the then-chief executive Mr Siyabonga Gama pretended that they did not know that the land is occupied illegally"

"We asked ourselves that these people must have been paying money and they were reassured that you can build a factory here and nothing is going to happen to you. That factory was probably built for close to R15 million and nobody would spend that much money if there is uncertainty"

"We could not get information and no employee could simply talk to directors. It made it difficult for us as the board"