Ian Macleod: St Stithians, Warriner and suicidal empathy

Energetic lobby blocks expulsion of convicted fraudster Craig Warriner from the Old Stithian Association. Old boys are up in arms and fighting back. But why did it happen at all? And what next?.Key topics:OSA vote keeps convicted Ponzi fraudster Craig Warriner as member.“Suicidal empathy” used to justify leniency sparks alumni outrage.Committee failures and procedural errors worsen the crisis..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Ian Macleod*.Evolutionary biologist Prof. Gad Saad defines suicidal empathy as “the inability to implement optimal decisions when our emotional system is tricked into an orgiastic, hyperactive form of empathy, deployed on the wrong targets”. I fear we’ve just seen an example from a corner of the Old Stithian Association (OSA), the alumni club of St. Stithians College, a large independent school in Johannesburg.As an old boy myself, I led a cohort who invoked the OSA Constitution to force the committee into a special general meeting (SGM), held online last Friday online to consider voting on a motion to expel Craig Warriner from the association. Warriner, an old boy, has been convicted of running a multi-billion-rand Ponzi scheme via his sham BHI Trust. The SGM was held online last Friday evening.It is common cause that the unlicensed operator targeted the Saints community – teachers, parents and alumni. He is also a former chair of the OSA committee and a benefactor, who donated large sums to the school (including for a top-end gym, since renamed from the Warriner High Performance Centre) and the OSA..Read more:.St Stithians Old Boys vote to keep BHI Ponzi mastermind Craig Warriner in alumni ranks.At the time the Ponzi collapsed, well over R2 million of the OSA’s non-profit money was held by Warriner. That is unlikely to be recovered. Requests for information on who decided to invest with BHI and how those decisions were made have been ignored.The full motivation for demanding the SGM and details of the matter are available as a PDF here. Shock resultOnline voting saw 18 OSA members vote against expelling Warriner; 16 (including me) voted for expulsion; and 6 abstained. As is often the case with votes, this is a small sample that is unlikely to represent the stance of the whole electorate.The upshot of the vote is that while Warriner wallows in “Sun City” - the moniker for one of the country’s most notorious prisons - deemed by the courts unfit to walk among us in society, he remains a member of the OSA. 1 The OSA is distinct from but closely related to the school itself. It is open to alumni to join on a fee-paying basis. The OSA declined to comment on this piece.The vote has sparked outrage and shock from the Saints community. WhatsApp groups are lighting up. My classmates from 2002 are reuniting. I am fielding calls and emails from old boys going back to the early 1980s asking why and how this happened. The near-universal call to arms is to defend the institution and protect the reputation of the school and alumni – many of whom hold positions of professional trust and refuse to be tarnished by one rogue criminal and a small activist group.Why?I don’t for a moment believe any OSA member condones Warriner’s behaviour. As the committee’s post-SGM letter says, “the Association wishes to state clearly and without ambiguity that Mr. Craig Warriner’s conduct is condemned in the strongest possible terms.The financial harm caused to members of the St. Stithians (Saints) community, the loss suffered by the Association itself, and the reputational damage to the wider Saints the community is serious and real.”I question the letter’s later claim that “nothing in the outcome of the meeting should be interpreted as… minimisation of the conduct”.The perplexing logic presented by some ‘don’t expel’ voters is that Warriner ought to be severely sanctioned but kept as a member because membership is for life, through thick and thin. Punishment would be to effectively exclude Warriner from all OSA activities and, as I see it, call him naughty while keeping him in the club.This approach seems to attempt a half-pregnancy. Warriner would remain a member, but with none of the rights, privileges and obligations of membership. This would be a waste of time at best. More likely, it would amount to the worst of both worlds – failure to properly denounce this criminal behaviour and, alongside failure to show empathy, mercy or whatever is intended by this convoluted and indecisive formulation.Many of my fellow old Saints have expressed confusion over this vote. Small, unrepresentative sample aside, I think I have the framework to understand it. This is an example of “suicidal empathy”. This model, outlined by Prof. Gad Saad, captures the way the very important and evolutionarily indispensable trait of empathy can be hijacked.When our hard-wired capacity to show empathy becomes dysregulated – be it turned up too high or down too low – we get suboptimal outcomes. For example, a lobby group resisting the expulsion of a convicted fraudster from a club after said fraudster has preyed on that very club.Here it should be noted that suicidal empathy is not empathy. It is the dangerous distortion of empathetic capacity into something that undermines genuine empathy. It exerts something that feels like empathy (but isn’t) on a subject that doesn’t deserve it.So far, so badThis comes in the context of systematic and longstanding failures by the current and prior committees. As I outline in my SGM motivation, the OSA committee has failed to publish final financial statements for a number of years (those available are labelled “draft”). It has also had these “independently reviewed” financial statements reviewed by a member. 2 The committee has taken action against precisely zero office holders for actions relating to the Warriner Ponzi and has accepted no responsibility. Nothing resembling an apology has emerged. 2 A complaint has been submitted to SAICA.This fits with the committee’s handling of the entire Ponzi matter. It has refused to answer most questions (including in this petition from November 2023) and rebuffed any hint of an external view on the matter, preferring to investigate itself and produce a report replete with vague promises that appear not to have been actioned.In the OSA’s December 2023 newsletter, the committee told us it had “taken several corrective steps and measures in the light of this event regarding its investments and finances.” Requests to share these or steps towards such measures have been ignored.Regarding the SGM itself, several committee members of the OSA were in their positions when at least part of the fraud was ongoing. Such people are currently marking their own homework. They ought to have recused themselves from any participation in the SGM.Additionally, the very process leading up to the SGM broke the OSA Constitution. Having committed on 3 December 2025 to hold the SGM, the Constitution demanded the meeting happen within 21 days. It was held on 20 March 2026. Very late, the committee attempted to remedy the tardiness by voting on a resolution to condone the lateness during the same SGM last week. A simple vote is insufficient to condone a departure from the Constitution.One may also point to procedural failures during the online SGM itself. The link for the meeting was changed two days before the meeting. Voting procedures were also altered during the meeting. Starting with online polls, the chairman verbally changed this to counting comments in the chat. Then a show of hands was suggested. It was settled upon that the the secretary would tally votes in the poll and the chat and then remove duplications. In other words, a shambles at best.What next?The alumni body has rallied. The process of calling a new SGM without Constitutional, logistical and procedural flaws have begun. Legal and financial skills have been offered pro bono to evaluate the entire saga and help formulate solutions.I am informed that the ‘don’t expel Warriner’ lobby is preparing its alternative resolution that would sanction him (as far as an alumni association can sanction a man serving a long jail sentence) but keep him as a member.I am privy to more than one OSA member instructing the committee to terminate his membership, taking, in some cases, substantial charitable contributions to the OSA, the school and associated charities with them..Read more:.BHI Ponzi kingpin Craig Warriner sentenced to 25 years.I’ll continue to address this matter as a member. If it becomes apparent that the institution cannot be saved from capture, I’ll follow these fellow alums and terminate my membership.Battling to save institutions is important. Directing energy towards the ones that can be saved is key to battling well.My sense is that this crisis will spark an often complacent alumni body (myself included) into action and enable a turnaround that will set the OSA on a new path.

Ian Macleod: St Stithians, Warriner and suicidal empathy

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