In June and July 2010, Joseph Blatter will finally achieve his long-standing goal of bringing the FIFA World Cup to South Africa as a country and Africa as a continent. Joseph Blatter proudly spearheaded the campaign to bring the World Cup to South Africa and Africa in order to make it work for some of [...]

Some people, including experts, regard human beings as being wired for catastrophe. They argue that human beings, although a highly gifted species by the Father of creation, are given to comfort and often move to do the right things only after some serious catastrophe or calamity has taken place. Currently, there is a serious question [...]

The society
I believe that whereas many homes, churches, schools, workplaces, playgrounds and other places where members of our society converge are engaged in good work, too many people continue to fall through the cracks primarily as a result of the long-term effects of apartheid.

Montshepetja Academy, which started operating in 2003 in Limpopo, acquired premises in Gauteng in the middle of March 2010. That coincided with the first anniversary of MoAc Online on 13 March 2010. Eric Mbuyazi and Kabelo Sakong, Marketing Manager and Brand Manager of MoAc respectively, did an interview with Gibson Sakong to shed some light [...]

A very concerning statement I frequently hear or read about in South Africa relates to how good the people of South Africa are. This statement is commonly made in reference to the way South Africans dealt with the daunting challenges they faced when their society changed from being the monster it was prior to 1994, [...]

Human stability and progress depend on a concept called co-existence. Co-existence means living together in harmony or peace. The best known form of co-existence is interdependence, which refers to when people identify and respect the fact that nobody can provide for all their needs and that we depend on other people to satisfy some of [...]

Montshepetja Academy utilizes companionship and mentorship to help people balance their skills baskets with knowledge, consciousness and all-round competence while teaching them to take responsibility for their success in complex operating environments.

As a society, we are still very far from entering an era of being able to put our best foot forward through proper people management in general and talent optimization in particular. Our society is dominated by people who wield positional power and possess material assets. There is a crying need to accommodate – in [...]

Leadership is the glue that brings individuals together, focuses them in a particular direction and keeps them moving. Leadership is neither a person nor a position. Leadership is the link or connection between those in positions of power and those at the mercy of that power. The higher the quality of the link or connection, [...]

South Africans recently had a very rare opportunity to meet in person and listen to Professor Muhammed Yunus. He talked as a guest or keynote speaker at the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in July 2009. The talk dealt with his unconventional views and strategy on dealing with poverty. Professor Yunus is recognized around the globe [...]

One major obstacle in the lives of our people when they want to pursue their dreams is fear of criticism. Montshepetja Academy wants to use this part of its website space to allow people, especially young people needing companionship, to share stories about their lives, successes and aspirations in order to get used to the [...]

The science of warfare teaches us that even the most strategically competent of generals, who go to war with a significant chance of winning, must still carry out or perform one heart-wrenching exercise. That exercise involves determining how many soldiers they are prepared to lose to injury, or even death if necessary, in order to [...]

It must certainly rank among the most painful aspects or experiences of human life. Many people in our society, especially those from its impoverished segments, discover the missions of their lives only when they no longer have the time needed to accomplish those missions. What makes this even more painful is that more often than [...]

A powerful example of how poorly our society`s talent management systems are functioning is to be found in how many people it takes to produce just one winner or successful person. You see … human beings are animals that naturally hunger for praise and recognition. And there is no better praise or recognition than that [...]

There are a few critical issues that pick themselves to be given proper attention by our womenfolk during and beyond their month, August 2009. The first issue must be the matter of where exactly their liberation is to come from. This is made an important matter by the array of challenges confronting women, especially young [...]

A few years after I obtained my first full-time employment, I started to have some interesting encounters with my mother. I was working almost five hundred kilometres away from home and would visit home once every three or four months. Normally, the visits would be around month-end when I had received my salary and could [...]

I get vilified and pilloried often for my unorthodox views on talent management in the South African context. People are irritated mostly by my insistence that a mutually beneficial balance must always be found between the needs of a team or organisation and those of the individuals within it. But June is a youth month [...]

Bill Gates makes many instructive remarks in his 2008 annual letter as chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I have singled out a few of those remarks for discussion in this article. Before I start to discuss the remarks, let me say a couple of things about Bill Gates that will make it [...]

My acquaintances and I debate fiercely about a perspective I strongly hold on the definition of success. My definition of success derives from or is informed by the dual-context of the history of our country as well as the formidable challenges our society currently faces.

Each time I read about or see children attending classes under trees I am reminded of the long journey our country still has to traverse to rid itself of the scourge of poverty. I admit that I am not among the new group of people recently mandated to go and sit in parliament for the [...]

Many people I speak to pose the following question to me on a frequent basis: What can I do to ensure that I achieve success in my life? There are normally two things I mention first when trying to answer the question. The first one is that it is good for our society to have [...]

Many people are quite agreed that one potentially effective way of dealing with the plight of the youth from our country’s historically marginalised communities is to provide them with role models. Few people, however, seem to have a good grasp of how role modelling functions.

Many years ago when I was at high school, I had a particular difficulty with my teachers. That was as a result of my teachers wanting me to take part in athletics even though it was distinctly evident I did not possess any meaningful talent to pursue a career in athletics. I also argued that [...]

There can be no doubt that formal schooling will always form the centre of educational systems in modern societies. However, there are real challenges associated with the formal school as a system of passing knowledge from one part of the population to another in the current South African scenario. Firstly, there are countless people in [...]

The world-acclaimed British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, offers a perspective on democracy: “Democracy does not guarantee good governance, it merely makes it possible.”

There is a serious need for communities to start working on projects to produce top-class individuals. They need to produce high calibre individuals characterised by courage and creativity instead of hankering after comfort and security.

Drawing on more than two decades of experience in various organisations, among my personal aspirations is to build an institution that excels not only as a builder of strong and successful teams. I cherish a dream to see my academy demonstrate a capacity to grow and develop high calibre individuals. Those individuals must be capable [...]

The improved resources, especially financial resources, which have become available to people from previously marginalised communities need to be used creatively so that more people can benefit. In the same way that the struggle against illegitimate political domination was championed by its victims, the fight against poverty will have to be driven by its victims.