SomeSay - Flourish where you are

Allen van Blerk, Principal of St Charles College in Pietermaritzburg, runs a 151-year-old school that, in his own words, "actually shouldn't exist." He never wanted to be a principal. Sixteen years later, he says they haven't even started yet.In this conversation with Geoff Bond, Allen tells the story of a school that nearly closed twice: in 1913, and again in 1978/79, when old boys stepped in to pay the salaries and kept it alive through a couple of insolvent years. He talks about the restless childhood that taught him the value of staying put, the verse that convinced him he was called to this city, why "authority is like soap," and why he says that teaching maths is really teaching self-esteem.And his message to every young South African thinking about leaving: "If you're lazy or just want an easy life, you probably should emigrate, because Africa is not for you. But if you want to do something meaningful… it's right here."This is SOMESAY: long-form conversations with African leaders who built success from the inside. Flourish where you are.

Eddie Thomson grew up in a two-bedroom house in Observatory, Cape Town, the youngest of four children in a family split by apartheid's race classification: his sisters were classified white, he and his brother coloured. Same parents, same house. A court-ordered physical inspection later reclassified him, and his new school put him back a standard. This is SOMESAY — long-form conversations with people who have made a mark on Southern Africa. Flourish where you are.

Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng grew up in a village in South Africa's North West where he was told a teacher's "prophecy" — that he would become a truck driver. He became Chief Justice of South Africainstead.In this conversation, he tells Geoff Bond about the village that accused him of witchcraft, the mother who told him he was "inferior" to a white boy his age, the national press that called him a puppet, and the principle he kept coming back to: "I'm not going to be defined by people. I define the position."This is SOMESAY — long-form conversations with people who have made a mark on Southern Africa.Flourish where you are.

Kenny Felix grew up in Constantia, Cape Town, in a house where thirteen children shared what little food there was - some nights, supper was a single teaspoon of mayonnaise around the fire. His family was later forcibly removed to Lotus River under apartheid's Group Areas Act, arriving with almost nothing.In this conversation, he tells Geoff Bond about walking into a job interview with no ID and one baptism certificate, the forty-year career at Nestlé that followed, and what happened when he retired - a run-down park he turned into a garden, and a Tuesday morning breakfast for the local bin pickers that now feeds hundreds of people a week. "I am not here to fill up space," he says. "I am here to make a difference."This is SOMESAY — long-form conversations with people who have made a mark on Southern Africa. Flourish where you are.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━CHAPTERS━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━00:00 Open00:20 Introducing Kenny Felix02:00 Roots — Constantia, the mayonnaise09:00 Wall — forced removal to Lotus River15:00 Wall — the job interview, no ID23:00 Turn — the ladder, refusing to roll over30:00 Flourishing — Nestlé, the park, the lights38:00 Gift — the bin pickers, "here to make a difference"━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━READ THE EPISODE━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Substack with full transcript: https://substack.com/@somesayorgsa━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ABOUT THE GUEST━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Kenny Felix spent forty years at Nestlé, rising from probationary merchandiser to senior rep, and now runs a community park and a weekly bin pickers' breakfast ministry in Grassy Park, Cape Town.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ABOUT SOMESAY━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Hosted by Geoff Bond.Substack: https://substack.com/@somesayorgsaInstagram: https://www.Instagram.com/somesaySAFacebook: www.facebook.com/somesaysa

Geoff Bond interviews Andre Olivier, a great South African leader on his journey and his dreams.