Think Excellence
[Applause]
africa
africa does not need pity
it needs opportunities africa
does not need the world to feel sorry
for it
it needs the world to give us
opportunities
at some point growing up as a young boy
i’ve had the privilege
of actually growing in a semi or
disadvantaged
background why do i say that
in the small town which i grew up in
it’s situated just in the north of
durban called guadalusa in the small
town
the word excellence was taboo
what do i mean when i say it was taboo
nobody mentioned it not in the school
not in the community not even
in my own family
excellence what is excellence
growing up excellence i was told that it
was this a historical thing
that only a few amongst us and
communities can only achieve it
one begs to ask themselves what is
excellence excellence is in us
africans before the skyscrapers were
raised up
in dubai before the white house of the
united states
before we marveled and admired the great
inventions that the west
and the asians invented
the african child created what you call
the pyramids of egypt without
any form of machine technology
the question is how did they do this
excellence we were born
and we were breathed from people who had
excellence what do i mean by this before
we celebrated jake
bazoff jeff bezos of amazon as the most
valuable
person living alive today there was a
man by the name of king musa
mensah the first of mali the richest man
to ever live even till to date
excellence
excellencies in our dna
as africans growing up
going to school i got to understand
that we saw excellence as getting the
best marks amongst the learners
we saw excellence as
one of the things that only only a few
could get
today i’ve got a different narrative and
i want to spark an idea and remind you
that african child before
we did it and we can do it again
right about two years ago i published a
book titled
think excellence i wanted to redefine
what we call
excellence because it’s important that
you need to understand
that for us to hurt today
to control today and create a better
future tomorrow
we need to think excellence
now one would beg to ask what is
excellence
the great ancient philosopher aristotle
defined excellence as a habit
he said excellence is what we
continuously do
therefore it is a habit jay-z
then came on a little bit later one of
the most valuable hip-hop artists
he says excellence is
being able to beat your best
when i published my book i called it
think excellence the redefinition of
excellence
so for us as african if we gonna hurt
tomorrow
if we’re gonna be better tomorrow if
we’re gonna control the world tomorrow
it begins here in the mind
if we can think it then we can become it
let’s reverse back to time and
remind ourselves that we have always
been
in the forefront of innovation
excellence in this book
i made it mine and i made it for you to
understand as well as an african child
that if you’re going to define
excellence or if you want to achieve a
great success
you need to first define excellence
to you so i redefined excellence
i said if they say jeff bezos is
excellence then for me as an african
child
coming from guadalusa a rural area or
semi-rural area now
i understood excellence as umamoto who
was my
neighbor who was able to take her five
kids
to school from primary
secondary and university
using money she got from going to the
streets and being a vendor selling
fruits
and vegetables economically if you try
to understand that and financially
it may not make sense but it’s excellent
because she was able
to do it what is
excellence to you
if a father who is a security guard
wakes up each and every day
and is able to take his kids all through
school that for me
is excellent so it begs the thought
of maybe we as african have forgotten
that we are
excellent and our thinking has
gone to average but i don’t blame you
why simply because growing up in that
small community
i was given a definition of what success
and excellence is
and this was it you need to grow up go
to primary go to high school finish high
school
if your parents are lucky enough to have
some bit of money they’ll send you to
university and
after you’ve matriculated you need to
find a job
and if you did and if you are lucky
enough to find a job in the local
municipality or one of the biggest
industrial firms
the next thing you had to do was build
your family home or build your
own bedroom at home buy yourself a golf
one and you became the man about town
we were given that and we were told that
was excellence to us
so today my thought is maybe let’s
change the way we see ourself
and actually think to ourselves that i
also deserve to drive the most famous
cars that are branded at luxury i also
deserve
to actually go into that mansion simply
because i’m willing to work
and think excellence
number two one of the biggest problems
that we have now
is that we as africans have stopped
believing
in our own solutions
we are quick to look to the west we are
quick to look to the north
even to the asian side to give us
solutions
to problems that we have
here’s a spark of an idea
majority of you here have something
special that is within you
but for some reason you’ve stopped
believing in it
i want to end with a thought growing up
in the small town of what wooza i was
the only grandson at home
my father had gone out far to try and
get job opportunities
so in the house it was just my
grandmother my grandfather
and my two aunties i was the only boy my
grandfather being old
my mother used to work she used to sell
pies for a living to help me get through
school
should come back late in the evening
where we stayed it was very dangerous
as you know some of the townships in
south africa the crime rate
is for real so i experienced this at
first hand
my mother would come back in the evening
late sometimes at night from selling
pies
and she had to get someone to go and
wait for her at the bus stop
my grandfather couldn’t do it so i had
to man up
young boy i had to man up now in the bus
stop where she jumped off
there was a huge tree under the tree was
very dark
the taxi would leave her at about an
iceland distance
i could see her standing from the tree
as she jumped off from the taxi
in that space there was a street light
but as you walk towards the tree
it was very dark and in the community
everybody like everybody knew that
people were being mugged
people were being stabbed people
one of them had lost their lives in that
tree
i had to man up as a young boy i decided
that i was going to go
and wait for my mother i was scared
i didn’t know what to do but i had to
man up
my grandfather was too old the whole
community knew that people were dying
in that place so i decided one day to
take
my grandfather’s long coat i wore it
and i took what you call an up gear
i went there short as i was the coach
could touch the floor
as i was walking it would be like i’m
the undertaker
and the people would be really scared
so i walked up i stood right there where
everybody would think you wouldn’t stand
mind will tell you go wait by the light
but i decided to stand in the dark
so even the robbers when they came they
saw
a short man with the long coats they
didn’t understand what was going on
in isis
so i stood there
and then i’ll tell you this
as scared as i was
i stood there until i finished my
matrique
not one day was my mother marked yes
there were days where she shouted at me
you go home you’re not supposed to be
here because what if they come here like
honestly if the robbers did came they
were probably gonna give me a slap and i
was gonna cry
but here’s the thing the whole community
knew
that there was robbers the whole
community knew that i could possibly get
mugged or get killed myself
but here’s the thing for some reason
i believed i could save her
i believed i could save her
so as africans today
if we could go back to believing that
our excellence is valid
our ideas are valid our solutions
are valid and begin to reverse and think
excellence again
people like jeff bezos
believe in excellence but
more so africans believe in excellence
we just witnessed the spring box
displaying a huge
excellence in the field my question to
you today is
do you think excellence do you think you
deserve to be an excellent person
to be an excellent leader to be an
excellent employee
do you believe that you are excellent
if you don’t think excellence you become
average
and in life there’s only three people
there are people who are average
that people who are good and that people
who are excellent
you need to choose where do you fall the
people
who are average focus
on just getting the job done
the people who are good focus
on making the boss happy the people
who are excellent change the narrative
and control what happens next my
question is
are you gonna think excellence so that
your future becomes
excellent thank you
you