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Ubuntu Festival – harnessing the “gees” of the World Cup The atmosphere has been electric, the camaraderie has surpassed all expectations, we spoke to strangers- we even hugged them in excitement and Cape Town is on the map for being the ultimate host! Of course we’re talking about the “gees” that made our visitors and residents enjoy the World Cup tournament so much and added to the success that united the country. Even Banana not going through could not quell our spirits. It made us realise that the show did not stop there and we needed to go out, wave our flags more, find another team to support and shout for the world. How do you harness that special feeling? That sense of Ubuntu that united the country and showed the world that South Africa (and the Mother City) has it all? The Ubuntu Festival is scheduled to start on Friday 16 July and runs until the celebration of Mandela Day on Sunday 18 July( Nelson Mandela’s 92nd birthday). This second annual Cape Town event gears up to take that unique sense of unity forward. Presented with partners Cape Town Tourism, the City of Cape Town, Provincial Government: Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport and the Arts and Culture Trust and supported by the Cape Town Partnership/CCID, the Ubuntu Festival promotes and fosters a truly prosperous and harmonious rainbow nation where we celebrate our cultural diversity and build a spirit of Ubuntu that permeates every aspect of our lives. Epitomizing Mr Mandela’s philosophy of Ubuntu, the festivities take place in the heart of the old city from Mandela Rhodes Place across St Georges Mall and along Church Street, from Wale Street to Long market Street. This vibrant and historic part of the City will reverberate with activities that create that sense of unity experienced by Capetonians during the World Cup. Street cafes, top restaurants and elegant hotels vie with deliciously different retailers and the precinct buzzes with activity day into night. The Festival programme starts on Friday July 16 with an Ubuntu business breakfast hosted by the SA Ubuntu Foundation at the Pavilion at the V&A Waterfront. With speaker Mr. Mew Removing, Author of Waiting To Live and Prisms Of Light and National Vice President Congress of SA Writers, this will be a function that you cannot afford to miss. At a loss as to how to spend your 67 minutes of community work? On Saturday 17 July join the Giggling Gourmet, Jenny Morris from 12 to 2pm in the Atrium of Mandela Rhodes Place, St Georges Mall with celebrity Chefs and help to cook up great meals for our various City shelters. A gala Ubuntu dinner at The Rainbow Room in celebration of Mr Mandela’s Birthday on Saturday 17 July presents a line up of top musicians and divas as well as a sneak preview of the upcoming Cape Town Show with our talented youngsters. Then on Sunday 18 July sing Happy Birthday to Madiba as Mandela Day gets off to great start with the DJ’s from Good Hope FM as they bring the best of Cape Town music to the Grand Stage in St George’s Mall. Music from all genres rocks the City at this FREE music festival from 10am to 6pm. The sounds of Hot Water, Coda, Hessel van der Walt, Tina Schouw, The Gugulethu Tenors, Moreira Project and more will rock the heart of the City. Enjoy some of the culinary delicacies of the Cultural Cuisine Quarter and marvel at the many influences that have made it so unique. On Monday 19 July the Ubuntu Symposium, in association with Cape Town Tourism, aims to unpack the concept of Ubuntu and find answers to how we can practise Ubuntu at work and at home, within our communities and beyond. With facilitator, award winning actress, theatre maker Mwenya Kabwe this event will be memorable and very different. You set the agenda – you come to the solutions – this is no talk shop but a superbly interactive event. From 2pm to 5.30pm at the Taj Hotel in St George’s Mall discussion and debate will ensue and delegates will enjoy a new way to finding solutions. A panel consisting of Jenny Cargill (BusinessMap), Max Moyo (Head of Emerging Market Development at Allan Gray) and Tony Ehrenreich (regional secretary, Western Cape, of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) will discuss “where we are now” and delegates, under the guidance of Kabwe using Open Space technology, will take this forward on how we harness that spirit that has been so evident over the past six weeks. The price per person is R200 with a special concession for Cape Town Tourism members. Limited seating is available so book early. After the three hour workshop delegates will enjoy refreshments at the Taj and some hot music at The Rainbow Room in Mandela Rhodes Place across the Mall where they can relax and unwind in the cool atmosphere of this popular Cape Town nightspot. Mariette du Toit Helmbold, CEO of Cape Town Tourism says “The World Cup has shown that our spirit of Ubuntu is a unique attraction in its own right! Cape Town has won the hearts and minds of every visitor to our city during the past few weeks. Our citizens’ enthusiasm and pride is at an all-time high – Cape Town is an authentic place with so much beauty, contrast and texture, so much to love. And it is the people of Cape Town that personify the unique spirit of this city. Local citizens have been central to the success of the World Cup this far and I am confident that we will continue to embrace each other and our visitors with the same warmth as we celebrate the birthday of one of humanity’s greatest icons.” The Ubuntu Symposium is the final event and is open to businesses and individuals who are looking at how to make Ubuntu part of their daily philosophy. Bookings for the Gala Dinner and the Symposium can be made by visiting: www.webtickets.co.za or
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Enquiries: Anita 021 462 5052 More about the Symposium speakers: Mewa Ramgobin Author of Waiting To Live and Prisms Of Light, National Vice President Congress of SA Writers. He was the first caller for the release of Nelson Mandela and all other political prisoners: banned for 17 years, house arrest for 12 years, charged for treason 1985, Convener and Chairperson Committee for Clemency 1971. Member of Parliament until 2009. Founder of Centre for Learning of Ubuntu in the context of the Gandhian Trinity towards the African Renaissance for Global Co-Existence, Chairperson of Phoenix Settlement Trust, founded by Mahatma Gandhi in 1904.
Mwenya Kabwe is a Zambian theatre maker and facilitator currently living and working in Cape Town with other home bases in New York and Lusaka.
Kabwe is currently a lecturer and course co-ordinator in the Drama Department at the University of Cape Town. Kabwe is also an independent trainer and facilitator with 6 years of staff training curriculum, design and delivery experience for a number of international programmes affiliated with the American based NGO, The Association of Hole in the Wall Camps, in their American, European and African programmes. Kabwe is a recipient of the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees (KKNK) 2008 award for Best Upcoming Professional Artist and the 2008 Fleur du Cap award for Best Actress for her performance as Alma in Yellowman. She is also one of the seven Spier Contemporary 2007 winners for a collaborative performance work titled unyawo alunampumlo and was on the Spier Contemporary 2010 selection and curatorial team. Her original performance work has been showcased at the Drill Hall in Johannesburg (Please Do Not Leave Your Baggage Unattended, 2007), Out the Box Festival (for nomads who have considered settling when the travel is enuf, 2007 and 27 Windows, 4 Doors & 2 Taps, 2010) and the UNESCO Chair International Festival of Theatre Schools, Barcelona Spain (AFROCARTOGRAPHY: Traces of Places and all points in between, 2008). Kabwe is a co-founder of manje-manje projects, an arts collective that was launched with an exhibition at the Association for Visual Arts (AVA) Gallery in Cape Town, titled SCRATCHING THE SURFACE VOL 1. Kabwe is also a member of The Bonfire Theatre Company, Phakma Projects and UNIMA South Africa. Besides writing original poetic texts for her own performance work, Kabwe’s publications include an article in the South African Theatre Journal (SATJ) Vol. 21, (2007) titled Transgressing Boundaries: Making Theatre from an Afropolitan Perspective; as well as Untethered in a Performance of Afrohybrid (April 2008), published in a catalogue for an exhibition titled FLOW at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Kabwe’s writing has also featured in Rootz Africa Magazine Volume 21, 2008 with an article titled Afrophobia Exposed. Jenny Cargill (CEO Business Map) Jenny is an author, a protagonist in an award winning film on the struggle against apartheid, founder of a think tank as well as a specialist in transformational investment and black economic empowerment. Jenny is the author of Trick or Treat: Rethinking black economic empowerment, published in 2010. She offers a unique experiential and analytical journey into the controversial policy to promote black corporate ownership and the mega deals that have characterized South Africa’s efforts to reverse the legacy of apartheid and bring its black citizens centre stage in the mainstream economy. Her book is underpinned by the same principle that motivated her to join the African National Congress in the early Eighties – notably, that all South Africans should have the opportunity to participate equitably in their society and economy, guaranteed of their human rights and respect. Her experiences as an underground operative, first inside South Africa and them from exile in Zimbabwe, are captured in the film, Memories of Rain, released on the 10th anniversary of democracy at the Berlin Film Festival. On returning to South Africa, Jenny picked up on her former career, financial journalism, and in 1994, founded BusinessMap SA, which monitored the economic transition as the country sought to integrate into the global economy; and organized dialogues between business and political leaders. BusinessMap became internationally renowned for its penetrative reviews and publications as well as foreign investment and empowerment databases. Regularly quoted in the media, locally and internationally, Jenny was a weekly commentator on an anchor talk-radio show on SAFM. During this time, she was also a guest lecturer, conference speaker and an initiator of an annual international investment conference, Europe-South Africa. In 2002, Jenny placed Business Map’s research activities in a not-for-profit foundation. Since then she has focused on advisory work, in the main, structuring BEE transactions for South African and multinational corporations, such as BP SA, BHP Billiton, Sasol Mining, Impala Platinum and Discovery Holdings. Her expertise lies in strategic perspectives on economic and investment sustainability, with particular emphasis on societies in transition and people who are economically marginalized. Jenny was born and educated in Natal; a head girl of her senior school; a mother to one son (Marc 19); an avid gardener passionate about environmental sustainability, as well as her dogs, who are her constant walking companions; swimmer and scuba diver. She believes that South Africa’s future will be defined by how it treats its young citizens and so she focuses her voluntary work on children. Tony Ehrenreich Regional secretary, Western Cape, of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) Max Moyo
Head of Emerging Market Development at Allan Gray. He talks around the country on the relationship between money and identity from the African perspective. Has been in position for 4 years – previously Sales Director of Charter Life: prior to that Deputy GM at Discovery Health and Regional GM at Sanlam Life. Originally from Zimbabwe he came to SA as a young missionary for 7th day Adventist Church then moved into the Business world. His career started with Old Mutual, he then became Marketing Manager at BP, followed by E-Plan at Std Bank and from there moved to Sanlam.
Max describes himself thus: “I am a public speaker and coach focussing on personal Identity, igniting your potential and the relationship between identity and wealth. Who you are determines what you do with your life, and what you do with your money. When you find yourself unable to make meet your bills at the end of the month, your problem is not money; its identity. A fool and his money are soon parted. Foolishness is not in the mind but in the heart.
If you do not know who you are you will look for identity in position or possession. When you know who you are, you know your talents and capabilities and therefore are in a position to ignite your full potential Through the Allan Gray Circle of Friends I speak to thousands of people across South Africa on Investments and investing. I think Timothy Maurice Webster captures the essence of who I am and what I do: Meet Max Moyo of Allan Gray. Max is a 'Wealth Catalyst' who focuses on helping individuals secure their futures by understanding their identity and its relationship with their finances. He is a thought leader at seeking African principles to drive investment models and economic frameworks.
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