My Morning with Madiba

The passing of Nelson Mandela is creating the irresistible urge in countless people around the world to recount their personal experiences with this great man. The McCann's are no exception, and unapologetically so. Mark asked me to post this on the blog for him.

Hamba kahle, Madiba

My Morning with Madiba

 I was lucky enough to spend the morning, as a sixteen year old boy, with President Mandela on the 13^th of May 1995.

A close friend of the family (Beryl) was one of his personal assistants and asked if I wanted to assist in helping President Mandela sign copies of his newly released autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom”. These copies were specifically going to be sold at the Rugby World Cup final to raise money for the Nelson Mandela’s Children’s Fund. As I recall, this was the first fundraiser for the fund.

I woke up early that morning, as we had to be at President Mandela’s house by 6:30 am (he was apparently an early riser!).  I was a little nervous during the drive as I was not sure what to expect when meeting the president of the country. Do I call him Mr. Mandela, President Mandela, Madiba; do I shake his hand? These were just a few of the thoughts that ran through my head.

At around 7 am we were ushered into the dining room where all the books were piled. The next moment President Mandela walked in, tall, commanding and in his pyjamas. I will never forget them: light blue flannel pyjamas. He immediately put me at ease coming over, thanking me for helping and excusing himself for still being in his pyjamas. It was early he explained, he hadn't had breakfast yet, and they were quite comfortable.

There was another boy around my age there to help too and the three of us came up with a strategy to make the process efficient. I would put the book in front of President Mandela, open on the page he had to sign, and the other boy would take it away and stack it once is was signed. We worked like this for about an hour and a half until all the books were complete. In this time President Mandela chatted to us about our lives, family and school. Thinking back it was amazing how calm and relaxed he made us feel around him.

Once we had finished signing all the books he looked at both of us and suggested we join him for breakfast. This will forever be one of the most surreal experiences of my life. There I was eating bacon and eggs with Nelson Mandela in blue flannel pyjamas. He was at the head of the table, I was on his right, and the other boy on his left: just the three of us. I recall quite vividly trying to keep up my best manners, answering his questions, making conversation, all while his 2-year-old grandson was playing with my feet under the table.

Being a Saturday, I guess all the fun presidential decisions needed to be made. The reason the date is so clear is that during breakfast there were a number of people coming and going trying to figure out who of the family was going to join the President at the soccer that day. Bafana-Bafana, the South African national soccer team, were playing Argentina at Ellis Park. I recall thinking “ask me, ask me!!”. I never did get the invite J.

At the end of breakfast President Mandela got up and went to the phone in the corner of the room. There he had a little red phone book. Picking it up he asked us for our telephone numbers. “I always want to keep in contact with my friends”, he said while writing the numbers down.

At this point it was time to head out and with a quick goodbye my morning with Madiba was over. It is a morning I will cherish and forever be privileged to have had.

Madiba, I consider you a friend too. You are humble and have no prejudices.  South Africa and the world are a better place because of you and you will be sorely missed. In your passing I am brought back to these memories and want them to inspire me in how I live my life.

Madiba, hamba kahle, go well, keep on dancing and hopefully, one day, the whole world will be dancing with you.

Mark McCann

5 December 2013

Always Leave the Office On Time?

I came across this poster from a friend and former colleague:

Bear with me as I give you my reflections.

Commuters queue for minibus taxis
in Johannesburg.
Picture: SUNDAY TIMES

This sounds wonderful, difficult not to agree in principle. No offence intended, but I'm afraid that it is a first world luxury that goes with a home swimming pool and a jacuzzi. The Toronto Star recently ran a series on Third World sweat shops. This poster for them is the stuff of dreams. The same goes for farm labourers and peasant farmers, and for thousands of Black South Africans who stand in queues for an hour or more, literally, for their turn to get into a minibus taxi that will take an hour before they get to their place of work or home again. As for the large numbers of unemployed, most would love to have the opportunity to work overtime - at least until they've had to do it through the winter.

If you can always leave the office on time, thank Heaven for the privilege, but spare a thought for the overwhelming majority of the earth's workers whose only choice is to work for as long as they are told or beg on the streets.

These people are not fools or losers. They are fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters who are modern day saints helping to keep their families alive. The bad news is that a lot of these overworked and underpaid workers are the reason for much unemployment in Europe, the US and Canada - among others. I give up. I have no idea what the solution is.

Remember, Remember the Month of Movember

If you haven't noticed yet, this is the month of Movember. Once again the gallant Mo Stashed Hairiers are covering their upper lips for the cause of raising funds for men's health, notably prostate and testicular cancer research and men's mental health. Please go on over to the Mo Stashed Hairiers blog which also has some information on prostate and testicular cancer and some common sense, health precautions that men can take.

Here is a video we made three years ago.

Joop Schats, May 1923 - October 2013, R.I.P.

Langzaamaan raakte je geest al verder van ons vandaan.

Na een goed leven is op de mooie leeftijd van 90 jaar overleden onze lieve vader en opa

Joop Schats

Johannes

Hilversum, 16 mei 1923      -      Huizen, 24 oktober 2013

Rob in herinnering en Wilma

Reinoud, Laura

Sonja en Giljam

Rebekka, Daniël

Ingrid en Terry

Miriam, Mark, Sean

Stephen, Judith

Reinier en Heather

Maia

Vincent

Marjoke, Ruben

Jeroen

Levien, Sera

Martijn in herinnering

en achterkleinkinderen

Correspondentieadres: Sonja Schats
Caro van Eyckstraat 81
1507 SC Zaandam

De crematie zal in familiekring plaatsvinden.

U kunt een herinnering of condoleance plaatsen op www.rebel-uitvaart.nl/requiem - inlogcode: JSchats

Cost Benefits of ISO 9001 Certification

Somebody posted the following discussion question on a LinkedIn group that I am following:

Hi I am collecting all the reasons for obtaining ISO 9001 accreditation. I am especially interested in the cost benefits of having the accreditation. Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Firstly, as an aside, accreditation goes to an auditor, a quality system gets certified or a certification.

Here is my response to the question.

If I may go beyond cost benefits to include all financial benefits then: 

1. The certification on its own will have some limited financial benefits, mainly for marketing and sales: 

   a. Your company brand is enhanced. 

   b. Some companies will not source from suppliers who do not have ISO certification. 

   c. Many potential customers will prefer an ISO certified company over one that is not certified. 

2. The real benefit to your company is not in the certification itself but, if done rightly and for the right motivation, in the improvement to the quality of your company processes, resulting in the improvement to the quality of your final product or service and enhanced customer satisfaction. Here is the real cost benefit: a reduction in your cost of failure. It is generally accepted that the later a failure or defect is detected, the more expensive it is to correct. A good, effectively implemented quality management system (QMS) will help reduce your cost of failure by reducing the occurrence of defective work and helping you find any defective work before it gets to the client. A QMS built on ISO 9001 principles has a built in feed-back mechanism for continuous improvement; you should see your cost of failure reduce over time. 

3. This, however, comes at a cost: the cost of prevention (implementing and executing on your QMS) and the cost of appraisal (quality records and audits). It may well be that these costs initially exceed the offset from the reduced cost of failure, but you should definitely get a return on investment over time if you ensure that you put in a good, effective QMS and do not merely go for ISO certification for its own sake.