Whenever you feel disheartened about South Africa’s future, go spend a morning with the future generation. More particularly, the future leaders being produced by the nation’s great schools. It was my honour to be invited to give what Americans call the “Commencement Speech” for the Form Six class at Maritzburg College for whom today was their last day at the revered institution. When he invited me some months back, former governing body chairman Steve Colenbrander said I’d leave the room floating on air. He was right. Hopefully some of the boys found my contribution even half as inspiring as what they did for me. – Alec Hogg
Speech Day address by Alec Hogg to the 2015 Form Six (Matrics) of Maritzburg College; 16th October 2015
Good morning,
Earlier this week, I was given a glimpse into the future, the world you will soon take for granted.
Starting in the mid 1980s, American scientist J Craig Venter led a team that took 15 years and $100m to map the first human DNA – Venter’s own. For the first time it revealed the inner core of humanity, showing where his ancestors came from, what diseases he was most at risk of contracting, even the kind of foods he needed to avoid.
DNA is 99.9% identical for all human beings. But that 0.1% difference is what makes everyone on earth unique. Knowing each person’s genetic makeup is the holy grail of medical science. It will help us all to live longer, healthier lives.
The real point, though, is that in the 15 years since Venter’s discovery, having a personalised DNA map is now available to anyone prepared to pay $250 and donate a swab of their spit. The cost has dropped from $100m for Venter’s DNA analysis to $250 for you and I.
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This is a story of the abundance that lies ahead for mankind as technology changes everything. It’s a function of what is known as Moore’s Law – the thesis that because of man’s ingenuity, new technological breakthroughs give us double the benefit every year at the same cost.
Moore’s Law is half a century old and being felt in many areas of our lives. From Uber to Airbnb, from 3D printing to Facebook, ever cheaper new technology is transforming our world. It’s never been a more exciting time to live. Or to be 18.
Standing here talking to a hall of Digital Natives makes me feel a little like the old newspaper editor who came to visit my Internet publishing company that was started around the time you guys were taking your very first breath.
The ink-stained veteran suggested this “Interweb” thing was vastly over-rated. And, later, wondered why anyone would bother to share photos of themselves – and their cats, especially their cats – on that “Bookface” thing.
So much has changed already in your lifetimes. As one who bet everything he had on new technology, so forced to stay current and keep innovating, mine has been a fascinating journey. Yours promises to be even more so.
The rate of change has become exponential, something most humans struggle to fully absorb. It all happens too quickly for our slowly evolving Iron Age bodies that are expected to operate in a Space Age world.
So what does one share with young men whose fresh minds are continuously absorbing all this new data, these endless breakthroughs?
The wise shape their decisions on the experiences of others, learning before having to make the same mistakes. They practice what the great scientist Isaac Newton said when asked how he had achieved so much: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Climbing on those shoulders isn’t as difficult as it might sound. All it takes is keeping an open mind. My experience has shown there’s no better place to start on that particular journey than following the road sign which says: Before all else, invest in yourself.
All of us have two major assets. Our bodies and time. Abuse either of them and the only guarantee is you’ll never reach your full potential. Treat them with respect and who knows where you might end up?
South Africa was a very different place 26 years ago when a young guy very much like you was preparing for his final exams at Pretoria Boy’s High. His was a country where South Africans were defined by their race. White boys were sent to do national service; black boys were encouraged to leave the country to join the liberation movements.
It was a world that young man, Elon Musk, didn’t want any part of. As soon as he could afford the ticket, he headed for Canada to make a new life among distant relatives.
After arriving in North America with no more than the clothes he could carry, Elon Musk has developed into the owner of businesses redefining the way the world looks at space travel, the motor industry and solar power. His personal net worth has ballooned to R150bn, and he is described in his new home as America’s greatest entrepreneur.
The reason I share this story is because Musk is a wonderful advert of the benefits of investing in yourself, climbing onto the shoulders of those giants Isaac Newton spoke about almost 400 years ago.
As a boy, little Elon consumed books the way a chocoholic eats Toblerones. It was nothing for him to read for 13 hours a day. And when the local library ran out of books that he hadn’t read, he started on the 20 something volume Encyclopedia Britannica. Working through the entire series  – twice.
Reading is the best way to change your life for the better. The greatest investor the world has even known and the world’s second richest man, Warren Buffett, encourages us to read, read and then when you’re tired of it, read some more. Especially biographies. Not just biographies that chronicle the lives of today’s heroes. But those of those who lived before us – we can learn so very much from dead guys.
It is hard for me to conceive how much poorer my life would have been without lessons from the greatest Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius; the great American Benjamin Franklin; the greatest politician and philosopher Cicero. All of whom were just names before accessing their wisdom through the written word.
Were it possible to climb into a time machine, the second message I’d share with my 18-year-old self is to learn that a successful life comes from learning how to live and let live.
I was raised in what psychologists would call a dysfunctional home. Like a lot of you, I was sent off to boarding school as a seven-year-old and three years later, just when I’d finally started settling at Merchiston, for reasons he never shared, father decided to take me back home to Newcastle.
So I never did make it to College. In a life with very few regrets, this is one of them.
My environment was custom designed to create an anxious, insecure, aggressive person. It succeeded.
The costs were high. Sure, I had friends, but they were mostly the wrong kind. I drank too much, smoked too much, played too hard. Only when I hit 30 did it dawn that my life had been going in the wrong direction.
Fixing what had been hard wired into my head took time and required help from many different sources. But the most important lesson from that experience is that it is not the smartest or best looking who succeed in life. Nor those who inherit the most money or the most athletic genes.
Rather, it is the person who cares for others, the one who gets along with his fellows, who stops to think how his actions will affect the people around him. For many of us, this doesn’t come naturally. But there are great rewards from unlearning that behavior, from finding the habit of live and let live.
The last of these life lessons I’d like to share is the law of second chances; that it is never too late to start again.
After a decade in newspapers marked by money-driven job-hopping, I decided to start a financial news agency which produced articles for my former employers. It was hard, boring and poorly remunerated. So in due course we decided to try selling our services into the exciting world of stockbroking and investment.
After being kicked back by a few stockbrokers, I met Jannie Mouton, the managing partner of one of the bigger stockbroking firms of the time, Senekal, Mouton and Kitshoff. It was soon obvious that Jannie thought differently to most of his peers. Whether he really liked the idea or just wanted to give me a leg up I’ll never know. But he gave my little business its first big break by commissioning the quarterly DCM Focus that we produced for his firm for some years.
Read also: Jannie Mouton: 20 lessons from building PSG, my R44bn business
Jannie faced his own challenge a few years later. He arrived at work one day to find the rest of his partners gathered in the boardroom. A group of them told him they didn’t like the way he was running things and after a vote, he was fired. A few months from his 50th birthday, Jannie Mouton’s life was in tatters. He was so embarrassed that for weeks he told nobody other than his wife, dressing as usual for work every morning to go nowhere.
At the end of next month, I will be among a couple hundred of Jannie’s guests who are going to celebrate with him at the Arabella Resort in Hermanus. The event is to mark the 20th anniversary of the company he started after being kicked out of that stockbroking firm.
The business which Jannie Mouton started just before he turned 50 has given birth to the revolutionary Capitec Bank; the disruptive education company Curro; and of course PSG itself, one of South Africa’s best performing financial and investment companies. Jannie Mouton’s business is worth R55bn. That’s enough money to make everyone in College’s First, Second and Third rugby teams into billionaires – plus the backline of the Fourth’s.
Before you get the idea it’s all about money, here’s something about love.
At one of the AGMs I attended in Omaha, Warren Buffett was asked what would be the very best investment one can make. He never hesitated: The time you invest in deciding on the person you marry. Because that will be the most important decision of your life.
Selecting partners in business or in life is the one area where you really don’t want a second chance. So listen to the wise old owl, the man they call the Oracle of Omaha. Before getting carried away by the moment, before slipping a ring on her dainty little finger or jumping into a new business partnership, seek counsel far and wide.
In the end, when you’ve given it enough time, follow your deepest feelings. Because, as with all matters of the heart, you’ll know it is right when you find it.
So if I were about to walk a lifetime in your moccasins, I’d try to remember three simple things: Invest in yourself; Live and let live; and know it’s never too late to start again.
The world is your oyster. Provided you stay hungry, stay foolish as Apple’s founder Steve Jobs described it, the opportunities will keep coming. It has never been a more exciting time to be young and curious. And if you stay away from people who churn your stomach, you’ll keep tap-dancing through life.
I wish you well in your challenges. May you leave here to make your family proud. Your nation grateful. Your companions more fulfilled.
And be a constant reminder to the faculty at College to continue their work in the confidence that helping others, especially the young, is the best service anyone can give. Reminded, through your example, that the time and energy they have invested in you and those who follow, will continue to generate huge dividends for our society and the world at large.
Thank you.
* Alec Hogg attended Merchiston Prep, the feeder school for Maritzburg College, between 1967 and 1969. He is the founder and editor in chief of Biznews.com
