Winner: Imtiaz Sooliman of Gift of the Givers; Runners-up: Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo & The Vaccinators

When Dr Imtiaz Sooliman hears his phone ring, he looks for it in at least four different places. That’s because he has four phones.

It’s no surprise, really, given that the founder and chair of Gift of the Givers says he knows where every single grain of rice is being delivered at any given time. It can seem like superoversight or micromanagement in overdrive, but for Sooliman the foundation’s work remains spiritual instruction, so there’s little room to drop the ball.

This year marks 29 years of the foundation, which translates to R3.8-billion in aid reaching people in need in 44 countries. Over the years the organisation has earned deep affection and respect. Sooliman has also racked up awards and honours, including the presidential Order of Baobab (silver), and this year he was named Social Justice Champion of the Year – an award coordinated by Professor Thuli Madonsela as law trust chair in social justice at the University of Stellenbosch. The Twitterverse nominated him for everything from president of the country to a Nobel Peace Prize.

He can take it or leave it, though – because his purpose, he says, is to follow instruction from a spiritual teacher he first met in 1991 in Turkey.

A year later this teacher’s mystical but divinely clear instruction to him was to start an organisation for unconditional humanitarian benefit for all people everywhere, not to seek recognition and to trust that the money and funding would flow.

“I don’t speak a word of Turkish, but I understood everything he said to me and when I asked him why it was so, he said to me: ‘When the hearts connect and the souls connect, the words become understandable,’” Sooliman says.

Gift of the Givers started with providing tents, clothes and food for people affected by natural disasters and conflict around the world. Since then, it has built up teams to target all kinds of needs. This has included drilling a borehole at Rahima Moosa Hospital in June this year, when water supply was interrupted for weeks. It has worked in drought-stricken areas in the Southern and Eastern Cape. It has even worked on producing enriched pellets for sheep feed in the Sutherland area, where farmers have battled to keep livestock fed.

“For the first time in four years, the sheep count is starting to climb and farmers are starting to employ farm workers again,” Sooliman says.

Gift of the Givers has always managed to give actual meaning to yawn buzzwords like “agility” and “pivot”. In these past two years of Covid-19, the organisation has supported 210 hospitals nationwide, provided infrastructure builds, sourced PPE and made oxygen delivery devices available. There are also smart networks to get equipment and supplies into rotation to reach as many people and facilities as possible.

With Covid-19 came lockdown and spiking hunger levels. The organisation has responded by providing more than 400,000 food parcels to date. “We’ve been involved in all the waves, we continue to be involved, we are going non-stop,” says Sooliman.

Even two heart operations in October and November this year haven’t slowed the 59-year-old who grew up the son of a grocery and clothing shopkeeper in Potchefstroom in North West. He says he helped out in the shop and was always a good, disciplined child – one of seven.

He went on to finish high school in Durban and qualified as a medical doctor in 1984 at what was then the University of Natal Medical School.

He didn’t specialise as he had hoped, though, so he ran a GP practice for some years instead. But his heart wasn’t in it and so he hung up his stethoscope.

In the years that followed, there would be about 15 minutes of political life too, when he was the head of the African Muslim Party that contested the 1994 elections.  “I actually was not interested in politics at all and I wasn’t even in the country when the party was formed. And then they pleaded with me to stand as the leader and so I did,” he says of his short-lived political life.

Leadership now is creating strong teams – all those people on his four phones, building networks and being the kind of person, he says, who doesn’t dwell on disappointment and doesn’t get upset too easily. But he has no qualms about calling a spade a spade.

“I can be brutal and very frank. I will say to politicians and officials: ‘You guys are bloody caught up and messing up the country when a lot of people are going hungry and suffering. You can’t say it’s very nice that you are corrupt.’”

Still he tries to see the good in people rather than their bad behaviour. He also hopes that doing more good becomes contagious.

It’s what he works to impart to his children too. He has two wives, five children with his first wife and one child with his second wife. The two households in Pietermaritzburg are just 800m apart, he says.

It’s family that gets him to sometimes sneak in a break, or get out to somewhere where there’s greenery.

For Sooliman though, holidays are not his thing. “I like to do it for the family but if I have time – and balance is not always possible – I prefer to watch action movies.”

It’s Bruce Willis, Sly Stallone and Steven Segal in action that makes for the good doctor’s guilty pleasure. That, his Tex bars and a handful of dried salty-sweet-sour “China-fruit” – hua mui.

Together they’re his recipe to recharge so he can get up each morning with gratitude and start all over again.

“People associate Gift of the Givers with hope. So, so long as we can provide that in some way – and sometimes it can just be a voice on the phone – then they can find their own way.

“I don’t look at what can’t be done. I look at what can be done – that’s where you can make a difference. If I focused only on what can’t be done I would do nothing,” he says. DM168

Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo. (Photo: Freddy Mavunda / Financial Mail)

Professor Linda Gail Baker and Professor Glenda Gray, heading South Africa’s subteam of Covid-19 pandemic research advisers, arrive at the Khayelitsha District Hospital, where the first Covid-19 vaccination took place on 17 February 2021. (Photo: Xabiso Mkhabela)

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• South African Person of the Year – a person who has had the broadest or most significant impact on the country as a whole.


• Africa Person of the Year – a person who has made an outstanding contribution on the African continent this year.


• International Person of the Year – a person who has had broad international impact or made an outstanding contribution this year.


• South African Villain of the Year – there was no shortage of suggestions in this self-explanatory category…


• International Villain of the Year – as above, but drawn from foreign fields.


• South African Businessperson of the Year – not necessarily the person who made the biggest profit, but someone whose influence went beyond the balance sheets.


• Community Champion of the Year – someone uplifting, defending and representing ordinary South Africans, often against all odds.


• South African Polluter of the Year – individuals and entities which have succeeded in further dirtying our environment this year.


• Our Burning Planet Heroes of the Year – the green warriors fighting for our planet’s survival.


• South African Youth Champion of the Year – young people working to improve the lot of other young people.


• Sportsperson of the Year – a sportsperson whose positive impact has been felt either on or off the field.


• Sports Team of the Year – a team that has stood out from the rest in 2021 either on or off the field.


• Artist of the Year – a hitmaker whose musical or social influence has towered above others.


• Moegoe of the Year – someone whose behaviour perhaps falls short of Villain of the Year, but who has in some way acted idiotically.


• Grinch of the Year – someone who qualifies as a spoilsport or killjoy. - Rebecca Davis/DM168

Zapiro-2021