JOHANNESBURG — What a difference a day makes, lyrics popularised by Dinah Washington in the 1950s, only for Jamie Cullum to bring them into the 21st century. And words that rung true for the Biznews team on day three in Davos as it saw a marked change in how the community was viewing South Africa. Alec called it a veld fire of change, as deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa and his delegation became highly sought after. This is Alec Hogg’s Davos Diary Day Three. – Stuart Lowman
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Welcome to Davos Diary Day 3. We are coming to you from the middle of the congress centre. Gareth has been getting pictures of interesting people walking past. It’s towards the end of the day, so people are leaving in relatively large crowds but this has been where a lot of action has been going on today. We’ve had a fantastic Davos Day 3. It’s been extraordinary – highlighted briefly by Yuval Noah Harari, the man who wrote Sapiens and Homo Deus – one of the bestselling authors in the world. He’s in Davos. He’s treated like a rock star. The intellect of the professor from a university in Israel is quite exceptional and unfortunately, a lot of the challenges that he was articulating are going to be very difficult for mankind to get to but he did come up with the solution in the end, when he was pressed on it – that there is reason for hope – and that is that we overcame the potential nuclear holocaust during the Cold War and the ability of mankind to have wisdom has not ever disappointed us, to this date. Apart from that; as far as my program was concerned, I got to meet quite a few South Africans. We’ve had a couple of terrific interviews and the whole spirit of South Africa…
Yesterday I was getting the feedback from the international community that things were looking a little negative. Today it’s like there’s a veldfire that’s taken over. The international community now can’t get enough of Cyril Ramaphosa. They just want to find out more and more about what is going on with a South Africa that is rejuvenating and is going into their future, so that’s very good news. I also got to learn a little about Gareth’s expertise, which is blockchain. I was up very early here – before dawn – listening to some of the experts in that field and putting those kinds of stories together but the main thing about Davos is you come here to learn, to absorb, and to understand the big pictures so that you can then shape the way that you see the day-to-day news on a much more informed basis. That’s really what the great value of this is. That’s been our Day 3.
We’re now off to the SAHQ. It’s the Kirchner Museum where South Africa will have its annual dinner. We’re expecting, despite his popularity, that Cyril Ramaphosa will be coming to the Brand South Africa dinner. We’ll give you feedback from there tomorrow on exactly what went down. Till then, so long.
This podcast was made possible by Brightrock, the company that introduced the first ever needs-matched life insurance.
