Gift of the Givers’ Imtiaz Sooliman says SA government should be built on ethics and morals

Dr Imtiaz Sooliman is possibly the new darling of the nation – a title previously used to describe former President Nelson Mandela.

Over the past few years, South Africans have been in awe over the magnitude of the humanitarian work both he and his team have carried out on a global scale.

But the Gift of the Givers founder refuses to take any credit for it. “From the mere scale of the work Gift of the Givers has done, you can see this is not the achievement of a man. This is purely the coordination of God,” he said.

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Imtiaz Sooliman’s origin story

Sooliman was speaking at the Top Employers 2024 Gala Dinner, where he related the story of how he started the biggest independent humanitarian organisation on the continent.

He said Gift of the Givers was not his idea but an “instruction” given to him by a spiritual leader. “I was a young doctor, working in Pietermaritzburg. And one day I was attending to my neighbour – a white butcher who was ill. We became friends and he told me that I should go to Istanbul to see meet this spiritual leader he admired.

“At the time, I was barely earning enough to make ends meet so the idea of going to Turkey was far fetched,” he said.

But, years later, Sooliman and his wife managed to visit the spiritual leader.

“I was surprised to see so many people from different faiths and nationalities that were there to see the same person. In that moment, my mind was open to the fact that God made everyone and everything and we were all his, no matter how or in what way we identified him,” he said.

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‘I see your soul’

Sooliman said he eventually did see the spiritual leader who told him he sees his soul. In that moment, the leader also gave Sooliman the instruction to start a humanitarian group and to specifically call it ‘Gift of the Givers’. “He told me to establish it on four pillars: spirituality, ethics, morals and values,” he said.

“I didn’t even know where to start or how to do something like this. When I asked him, ‘how will I do it and what I should do’, he responded ‘You will know’”.

“Back then, I wondered, what kind of an answer is that!”

But, Sooliman said, years later he has discovered a sense of an intuition that knows where to go, who to help, and how to help them.

Today, Gift of the Givers is the biggest humanitarian organisation in Africa and perhaps the most efficiently equipped disaster response group in the world.

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Full faith in SA

Sooliman has previously said he has no intention of running for president in South Africa, but says that he has full faith that the country will find its way to greater governance.

“As long as that governance is built on the four pillars – spirituality, ethics, moral and values – we will achieve greatness,” he said.

Sooliman says establishing Gift of the Givers came with its fair share of challenges, but the rewards far outweighed it all.