Dr Judy Dlamini

Solutionist thinking with RNB for the creative minds with a passion for possibility hosted by Bruce Whitfield.

Today's solutionist thinker started her working Life as a medical doctor. On the side, she ran a business a bakery. So she's been a medical doctor. She's been a baker and after a dreadful incident outside her surgery looked to move into business and started an investment company. Subsequently, she has chaired boards including that of Aspen Pharmacare. She's written books equal but different in 2017 has just published another book called the other story and she's also the first female Chancellor at bits University. Her a name is Dr. Judy Dlamini.

I've always been very positive and very ambitious. Because I wasn't born in a Township. I was born in what later became known as a white area. So it's not like I grew up in a township where I didn't know how the other half live. I knew it. It was in my face every day. And instead of being negative and saying I'm less people who look like me. I was like, I am not less. I am going to prove to myself that I'm equal to all these people. I'm just different.

I'm Bruce Whitfield and you are listening to RMB Solutionist Thinking.

How do you define yourself?

A hard-working wife, mother, grandmother, everything else comes behind that. So I think that's the most important thing. The medical degree. I mean, you were determined from a little girl that you were going to be a doctor? Did you have medicine in the family in any way?

Not at all. Actually that's why I wrote the book The Other Story because you don't have to be inspired by pupils within your family or people that you related to, you can get inspiration from just listening to a story or seeing someone that looks like they are in charge of their destiny - which is my story. From four, my half sister used to talk about she's a professional nurse even to this day and she's to talk about everything that happens in the world and there was a major on there was a doctor and can imagine as a four-year-old. I guess. I've always loved control because it seems like the doctor had the final word. He just had his daughter figured out. And then I met the late Dr Gxabhashe and he was a medical doctor and he looked like an accomplished person and I was like I'm going to be that guy when I grow up.

But you do it from a young age?

I knew it the whole time growing up.

How long did you practice for?

15 years

Medicine seems like one of the hardest ways to make a living you never dealing with happy people. You never dealing with people who are feeling their best. You're always seeing people at their worst.

It actually is the best thing I ever did because you have the ability to have that woman or that man walking through the door feeling down and you make her feel so special because they are and they do come back happy. It's like an extended family. You become part of them. They trust you with their secrets. You feel like you making a small contribution in their life. So it's it's the best thing I ever did. It's special.

if it was so big and so special Why move out of medicine and into business?

Because it's a calling when you dealing with their calling and you seven people you need to have the passion. I had all the passion when I did it. When I lost that passion I left and that's fair to everyone

What was the loss of passion

For the longest of times. I thought it's because I was marked outside my practice I had like you said I had a bakery next to sister and I actually had a bakery next to my practice. And before we started having Fidelity come to collect the takings. I used to take the takings. On this particular day, I actually got out of my practice the car was in order, you know how it goes. They saw it somewhere it was ordered to be sold across there the country. And they came for a car and found cash. So I became a target and it was just unpleasant from that time on.

The Sizwe you refer to of course is your lesser known husband Sizwe Nxasana. Where did you meet?

At high school actually. St. Francis College a Catholic boarding school in Pine Town – a small town in Durban.

Did you know he was destined for good things?

I didn't. But we are kids like teenagers are but three months after going out with him was like, oh I would so marry this guy damn I met him too young. But he didn't know you see. I just saw the goodness in him, you know, but I didn't know he would do so well. From the shy handsome intelligent boy... I didn't know what to expect to be quite honest.

He’s still quite shy…

just loved him. He'll always be shy. You don't stop being shy. I'm shy always will be you just learn to deal with it because of the positions you find yourselves in.

In those days as you as a medical doctor, you would have been earning a decent enough income -you started the business on the side with Sizwe but what would the family finances like in those days? I mean clearly young and ambitious and upwardly mobile. That's what you were about…

Young, extremely ambitious, extremely hardworking and we were okay, because one of the things that drove me over and above purpose, which I later realized that is what it's called, and that is what it is, I wanted to be financially independent. I wanted my kids to go to the best schools that the school of the money could buy. I wanted to have holiday overseas. I wanted to be… I wanted good things and I knew you don't work hard for them. You don't get them. So you just work hard. Fortunately that was shared by my husband.

IBut you were growing up in a deeply dysfunctional Society. We're living in a deeply dysfunctional Society. This is toward the end of their budget here. I'm assuming of course, I mean those Ambitions were very real and natural in an unnatural environment. Could you feel that it would change and you would be able to exercise those Ambitions?

I've always been very positive and very ambitious because I wasn't born in a Township. I was born in what became later a white area. So it's not like I grew up in a Township where I didn't know how the other half lives. Not even half, but anyway. I knew it. It was in my face every day and instead of being negative and saying I'm less people look like me. I was like, I am not less. I am going to prove to myself that I'm equal to all these people. I'm just different. So the title of my first book is an epitome of what I believed in: what sustained me. Equal. Equal but different.

Is that what motivated this move into education? Sizwe were very involved in education now, Telkom First Rand he went to tell combine them into to first round and then was given the hospital pass of Hospital passes in terms of being told that he was the guy who somehow with the magic wand was going to need to fund tertiary education for hundreds of thousands of aspirational young people in the he took it on and then passed it on and is now trying it again in a new iteration but you've got that very strong commonality there, this drive for education.

We always have. We always have, because I knew even then, and so did Sizwe, that education is the Liberator education will take me out of this and that's how I'll prove them equal because I'll just make sure that I get educated and even as a young couple we gave back to our alma mater, and to so many other places. Even now our family trust is focus on three things: One of them. Education. And there's a big bias actually towards that as opposed to have and rural development. So one of the things that's very important to us is that the only way for us as a country as a people to sustain whatever is built is by killing inequality and the best way of killing inequality is education is telling the positive story because for a child who is in a very rural area who has no hope but doesn't have parents - there's a grandmother who can't afford just putting food put on food on the table. You have to say to that child: It's possible, you know. So that is what drives us. It's possible other people have done it you can and try and help you in whatever way you can

It puts a questions to focus on the tertiary sector with so much attention in South Africa is based in be because people see that as the possibility out of poverty; it's the opportunity to get the job but that'll take you out of your past and give you a chance at a future but this problem starts so much earlier… all the data all the statistics so well worn by now thankfully show that the developmental phase 3, 4, 5 years old the president recently in the state of the nation at news talking about we need to make the preschool compulsory. And it's a huge. It's a gargantuan task…

It is. It is. The way I look at it, because I find that people get overwhelmed when they look at the size of the problem and they think what role can I play? I'm only the small person. And I always say, each one of us just focus on what change you can make where you are. One life at a time. Because if each one of us… Because, I define myself as privileged. I have education. I live where I want to live and I do what I want to do. That's privileged. Now, how do you use that privilege to make life better for the next person, because each one of us has a responsibility. And actually, it doesn't have to be someone because they have money or they have a job… Even as a student, you know, when we are medical students when we're doing first year we used to teach math, because that's what we're good at, to kids that had failed metric and they wanted to improve their marks during our spare time. So all I'm saying is whatever you have you can share and make a difference. It doesn't have to be money if there's money to by all means but whatever you have share it with someone who doesn't have

It goes back to the 1980s cry. I mean, Each one teach one. I mean, it's all trade union crying. I mean, it's not anything new in South Africa yet we seem to have lost sight of it.

So true. Thuma Mina, we were raised that way. What can I do? It's not about what can the country do for you. Or what can other people do for you. What can you do with what you have? So Thuma Mina… I'm happy that the current president has actually reminded us that by the way, this is where we come from and this is who we are. We need to remind each other all the time.

We used to talk a lot about Ubuntu but we seem to lost focus on Ubuntu. Ubuntu has also been abused and almost no longer holds the same sort of rich value in the same way because it's just a concept that's been abused or maybe Thuma Mina’s the new Ubuntu?

I know! Change the name, but it's really about what can you do… Show humaneness and make a difference.

What made you take the Chancellor's job at Wits University. I mean, if you ever want to step into a powder keg at any point in South African history, whether it be in the 60s the early days of new COSAS and the 70s where there was a strong student movement, the politics of student politics was very strong then, through transformation of the student body through the 80s 90s and the early 2000s and now it's this call for fee free education when you've stepped into potentially, a cauldron…

You know, I look at it differently. Just quickly, as a student, I was one of them. I was one of them. I tell you when I was doing second year. We boycotted classes for 10 weeks. And you know what you were boycotting for? For education to be free and fair. We believed it. That's the beauty with being young. That's the beauty of believing in a cause. One of the things that drives me these days is how do I give back wherever I am. One of the things that I contemplated doing after finishing the book Equal but Different and finishing my doctorate was that I want to give back by teaching maybe. You know where you actually attaches a space where you're saying, how do I give back? So I'd been approached by different universities for the Chancellor position and I was like, no no because it wasn't the right time. When this came I thought this is the closest I'm going to do to teaching. I won't be teaching but I'll have access to a tertiary institution and see how I can be used. Fortunately when it comes to strikes and all those things, we have a very good management team led by our vice Chancellor Adam Habib. So there's always that confusion that people expect me to go to the media and talk about the strike but it's not in my place to do that because we have executive to take care of that. I assist where I can. I check with management what is happening and offer counsel were required but the roles are quite clear. It's an honor to actually be a Chancellor at Wits, my alma mater, and my son's alma mater - the only institution in the world that I share with my son.

What do you see is the future tertiary education? There’s so much noise around tertiary education. The idea that tertiary education is be decolonized. I mean Wits University has held its head up particular, the medical School the mining school as a global leader in many respects. Do we run the risk of undermining tertiary through a lack of funding, confused funding through this desperate desire to break with the past, to create a new future that nobody's yet defined?

You know, I think it's always important to understand that Tertiary Institutions, all institutions, exist within a context. Right? And each institution has to be relevant to the context. Who are we? Why are we here? How can we work together to make it a better country? Each institution has this that responsibility. Now when it comes to Wits, what I like about Wits is that they prove that transformation doesn't have to be at the expense of Excellence. Because they prove that transformation actually enhances excellence, if done correctly. It has to remain relevant relevant to all stakeholders: business, communities that's important. So I think we need more collaboration with other institutions within the continent as well as in the first world. I start with within the continent because it's quite important to know who we are what we're trying to achieve individually and collectively and I think right now Wits is doing what's right. There's always room for improvement. But yeah, I'm happy with what's being done.

You mentioned your son. I understand he tragically died…

Seven years ago. It was the 7th anniversary this year…

But that doesn't rocked your vision of the world. I mean as traumatic as painful and as you Revisited every single day and every single day, it seems to have galvanized rather than broken you who changed your view of the world.

You know, I think that one of the best things that maybe I give credit to to my parents, it's just having a positive attitude even at the worst of times. When I met the deepest of my sorrows, I actually say to my creator “What do you want me to do? How can I turn this and make it better a for myself and the next person?”. Because if you were to look at what you don't have and to look at the losses that you've had in life and I'm actually the only survivor out of my full siblings and my parents… I have to have siblings. But that is actually very painful and lonely. But if you are to delve in that you will achieve much because you'll be pushing yourself. You actually say look I'm here. My son was such a better person than I could ever dream to be. What can I do to make it count for him, you know. And if life can be cut so short what can I do in the day that I have? Or a week? No one knows how much you have. How can I just make it better? So I think things like that, tragedies, focus you.

We are made by the people we interact with. Made by the people who are in our lives and people who have been in our lives as traumatic as it is they've contributed to who we become.

Oh, yeah a lot and those challenges contribute to who you become

You are a very quiet activists on gender issues, but a very firm activists on gender issues really firm believer in the equality of genders; the right of women to have their place at the table and you demand that they have the rapid you do it very gently and very subtly and very forcefully and purposefully.

I'm very shy and I don't like noise. I just don't like noise…

You in the wrong place. If you don't like this is crazy for noise.

It depends. It depends on how you look at it because you can be in a room of a riot and be at peace. And just focus on what it is you are there for and what it is you can do. I believe in equality across all social identities. Gender happens to be one of them. You know, race your sexual orientation. Who cares? How does it affect the next person you still equal to everyone else. So I just believe that people are born equal and that has to be respected. And I think when you don't utilize all the resources that you have and respect them equally you lose out as a nation. You lose out as an economy. It's not just the women that lose, it's the economies that lose. So I truly believe in that.

Is there a place for noisy agitation? Is there a place for noisy activism?

There is. I think each one of us has to work to their strength. It's not every one of us is going to stand on the podium and shout those that can. By all means whatever resource you have whatever strength you bring to the table use it if it's going to make the society better. For me, I work with my strength. I'm more Hands-On. I tried to make the change every day. It might be small. No one might notice, which is great because I also love my privacy which is kind of weird because when you write books, you actually lose a part of yourself, but if it's going to make a meaningful change for just person, it’s worth it. So I just try to focus on what I can impact on. On what I can change. And run with that.

A lot of people sort of like to say I did it myself. I'm a self-made person. A self-made woman. A self-made man. You're not that person?

Even now starting with my parents who made me who I am who influence the way I see the world and I thank them eternally for that. My husband, who was been my partner now. I've known him for 45 years. I think… yeah, it's actually 45 years, though we haven't been married for 45 years. But my team at work, you know… You are able to do the things that you love - writing books and there's business on the side - because someone else grabs the ball that you drop. Because you drop balls, that's just life you like. Oh my goodness, I shouldn't have done that. But you know what, life happens. And I'm at an age where I'm like, I'm lucky to be here. What do I want to do today? What do I want to do in the next five years? And there is so much other things that I'm committed to but I have to do this because it feels like it's a purpose I have to serve before I'm called. So I run with it, and other people make sure that my other commitments are taken care of. You can't do it alone. You just cannot.

Who's your greatest collaborator?

Sizwe is. And our daughter has joined. Sizwe runs with the special learning group, which is education at tech, Sfiso Publishing and stuff. And she's there. And also Mbekani. Actually it's mainly dad… you know their girls… But I'm there too. So I'm not complaining. Yeah.

What is next for Judy Dlamiini? I mean the mere fact that you kept your name in South Africa at the time, that you and Sizwe got married says a lot about your sense of Independence… A sense of forthrightness in your sense that you don't need. Anybody else's identity. You have an identity were bored you to let me near Judy's. I mean in this world of collaboration and to dependency you're very much individual.

I am when you come together and form a team, the strength of that team is the strength of each member of the team. You have to know who you are, be comfortable with you are, then we are better contributor to the team. You know, as opposed to when you actually don't know who you are you are expecting the other team member to tell you who you are then you have a problem.

Judy Dlamini, thank you very much indeed for that. The businesswoman the chancellor at wits University - big job on her hands in that particular role. Former director of Aspen Pharmacare, co-founder of Future Nation's schools with her husband Sizwe Nxasana and of course the chairperson of the Mbekani -Group and Investment Company, that invests across Industries too. And oh yes a medical doctor too.