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The Shilumana Group Chairman’s Conversation. The experience…

There are moments in the life of a nation when society has to answer the question, are we on track, and can we go over the stresses we are subjected to by certain of the truths we are or have been living with? As we search for answers, events like the Chairman’s Conversation, amongst a few, create moments for selected leadership breeds to be foregrounded, and facilitated to say to the nation, ‘relax, we are on track’. These moments reassure us and inspire us with the leadership and resilience they highlight. 

In the vocabulary of Nobel Laureate in literature Toni Morrison, these events have become friends to our minds. They gather us as a society, gather the pieces we have become, and give them back to us in the right order. Through the conversation between Given Mkhari and Adrian Gore of Discovery at Discovery Place, we discovered the inner person of ‘Mr AG’ and that “the function of freedom is to free” others. 


Through the lens of ‘AG’, South Africa was reimagined as a narrative of exceptional individuals who dream and act for the collective good. The quest for a symbol of tenacity, focus, resilience, and the ability to scale may have found its answer at Discovery Place. The Chairman of Shilumana Group set the stage for us to witness his discovery, and it was a masterful execution. 

 

Out of the conversation, from sharing how the Gauteng economy has been bigger than that of Ukraine to the growing confidence of global investors in our governing order, Mr AG underscored an RSA truism that “if we are challenged to control the volatile tides of change, we simply retreat and build better boats.” The conversation warned against our coded negativity as a proxy of our being. 


At Discovery Place, after the four thousand plus people had left their offices, a select number of invited South Africans descended to listen together with the nation to what Mr AG had to converse with Mr Given Mkhari. This was, and still is, a unique way of integrating personalities that are themselves institutions, homes that switched on to ENCA, and the thousands of ears tuned to PowerFM and CapricornFM. 


The message was unequivocal: South Africa is a lekker country. It has the most remarkable personalities to converse with. It is a stable democracy in which to participate. We are now in a state where we understand our power to place and remove parties in authority. This was when talk radio mutated into a town hall conversation, instilling a sense of empowerment and optimism. Our presence completed the production and enhanced the rendering. 


Hi khensa va ka Shilumana. Hoyo Hoyo. 

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