The highlight of my six-month long journalism fellowship in Jersey City, New York, was waking to the madness of the US 2016 election primaries. As an African socialist in New York, the campaign of 76-year-old Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Party’s unlikely socialist candidate, alongside Hillary Clinton, had me glued to my television. Sanders had chutzpah as well as frailty. Downtown Jersey City was the hub of electioneering, with youthful socialists of all skin hues, LGBTQ, mavericks and hippies, wearing Sanders badges and wrapped in flags emblazoned: Bernie 2016: Feel The Bern (with red fire). Until the late hours, in beer-fuelled jamborees, we danced in the streets to Fire Is Ours, a song by Hawaiian-musician, Makana. It was also Sanders’ anthem. I want to believe the first four lines got me hooked to the noble campaign. It reminded me of a song back home: “My mother was a kitchen girl, my father was a garden boy…”
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I’ve been lied to. Misled.
Built up by what they said,
Lifted only to be let down,
I’ve been taken for a ride.
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Sanders is an odd creature. I don’t give a fig about politics outside my motherland – Africa – but I couldn’t resist the charm of a man who showed the corporates the middle finger. My Zambian friend, Sam, who had been in the US for seven years, gave me a crash course on this Vermont senator. “Bernie will not be dictated to. This campaign is free of corporate influence,” says the man from Lusaka.
Apparently, our man refused to set up a political action committee that allows corporations and businesses to fund candidates and influence them. I was told Sanders had been a thorn in the posterior of big businesses and Wall Street, as he opted for faceless independent voter’s funding.
On June 7, a cold Tuesday, it was primary elections. I watched Sanders’ supporters accosting and hollering at voters from Grove Street train station, downtown Jersey City, from 6AM to 8PM. From my vantage point, there were no Clinton people in sight. But the opposite was true in other parts of the State of New Jersey – Clinton thumped Sanders by 63.2% to 36.8%. That was the end of his campaign, but the fire didn’t die. In subsequent rallies, Clinton got burned by aggrieved democrats who thought the elections were rigged. Sam from Lusaka was convinced Clinton was an evil politician, hence he never supported her in the first place. He thought Sanders was robbed, I didn’t. It was unthinkable that US elections can be rigged – that’s an African thing, I thought.
Fire Is Ours fizzled out. Now the spotlight shifted to Clinton and Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, whom I knew as a businessman who steadfastly refused to disclose his tax returns. I heard he was not legally bound to do so – but that’s something candidates had done in the past nine elections. Sam and I loathed the two candidates from the comfort of our street corner bar.
I was still unconvinced by Sam’s assertions about Clinton, because her husband, Bill, the former president, was a friend of South Africa and was here at the dawn of our democracy.  When he hobnobbed with Nelson Mandela, Hillary was in tow. But it took a Democracy Now! television interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, saying something about emails, to give me a change of heart.
When Assange was asked who was the lesser evil, he retorted: “Well, you are asking me, do I prefer cholera or gonorrhoea?”
Sam and his peers found the reply apt. Both the diseases and the c

I felt the Bern

Felix Sater is not a name that has come up much during the presidential campaign. That he has a colorful past is an understatement: The Russian-born Sater served a year in prison for stabbing a man in the face with a margarita glass during a bar fight, pleaded guilty to racketeering as part of a mafia-driven “pump-and-dump” stock fraud and then escaped jail time by becoming a highly valued government informant.
He was also an important figure at Bayrock, a development company and key Trump real estate partner during the 2000s, notably with the Trump SoHo hotel-condominium in New York City, and has said under oath that he represented Trump in Russia and subsequently billed himself as a senior Trump advisor, with an office in Trump Tower.
Usually such an association would ignite a political firestorm. From the Clintons’ Whitewater deals to Richard Nixon’s relationship with Florida banker and developer Bebe Rebozo, all the way back to 19th-century industrialist Mark Hanna’s influence over William McKinley, presidential candidates
have long suffered by dint of association.
Sater has been profiled in the Washington Post, on ABC News and in several other outlets. But few have taken much note of him, presumably because Trump has said, under oath, that he barely knew him. “If he were sitting in the room right now, I really wouldn’t know what he looked like,” he said in a deposition in November 2013. Asked how many times he had ever conversed with Sater, he said, “Not many.” And asked about a previous BBC interview, in which he was questioned about Sater’s mafia connections, Trump said he didn’t recall the interview.
This past December Trump went further: “Felix Sater, boy, I have to even think about it,” Trump told AP, referring questions about Sater to his staff. “I’m not that familiar with him.”
End of story? Not quite. Looking into Trump’s deals, FORBES has uncovered numerous e-mails and sworn statements that indicate Sater was closer to Trump, his organization and his children than previously revealed. Additionally, FORBES has connected three billionaire oligarchs from Kazakhstan to potential deals involving Trump and Sater.
Why does this matter? The story of Sater and the one involving billionaires quietly backing the Trump-Bayrock deals speaks to a key virtue of any good businessman – due diligence – that seems especially relevant for a candidate running on private sector acumen and the need to do “extreme vetting” of those seeking to get into the country.
It wouldn’t have taken much vetting to get the scoop on Sater. FORBES retained a highly regarded global-risk-assessment firm to conduct a background check, using only what was available to it in 2007 – the year the Trump-Bayrock relationship was promoted. The investigative firm (it asked not to be named for fear of political repercussions) discovered many facts that we’re revealing here and others that have come out before, including felony convictions and organized crime ties. Such due diligence on Sater could have been done for $5,000.

All The (Potential) President’s Men

Regardless of whether Hillary Clinton becomes the next president of the United States (US) or not, women are slowly but steadily taking up political power.
The numbers of women leaders are still relatively low – only one-tenth of all leaders of the United Nation’s 193 member states are women and Clinton would be only the 19th female to currently govern her country. Research shows that over 60 of 142 countries have had women leaders at some point over the past 50 years, although most have held power for less than four years. Recent figures from UN Women also show that only 17% of government ministers are women, with most of their portfolios relating to social issues. And only two countries have a female majority in Parliament – Rwanda and Bolivia – although many countries have reached the one-third mark.
Clearly, there is still a long way to go. But here in the US, findings by the Pew Research Centre show that most women believe that whether Clinton achieves her second run for the presidency or not, a woman will be president at some point in their lifetime. According to one CNN poll, eight of 10 Americans think the country is ready for a woman president, but only one third think it’s a priority. Younger American women, it seems, take for granted the growing role of women in positions of power – both in government and business.
Among Clinton’s many detractors are those who would like to see a woman president but don’t necessarily believe she is the right woman for the job. Others are more appreciative of how much has changed since women first got the vote in 1920 (black women from the South faced voting hurdles until the 1960s), and are impatient to see Clinton in the White House as another important milestone on the path towards gender equality.
“When any barrier falls in America, it clears the way for everyone,” Clinton said when accepting the Democratic nomination for president in Philadelphia in July. A woman in the White House, she said, would be “another step in our journey as a nation”. She also said that her election would give “other women and girls the hope that, whatever their goals, they can achieve them in this country”.
Some political observers believe that when Barack Obama felled the race barrier by becoming the first black president of the US in 2008, the sense of urgency around getting rid of the gender barrier by appointing a woman president dissipated. Clinton has also struggled to overcome deep unpopularity among many voters – both men and women. Her alliance with big business has left many working class voters feeling that she does not have their best interests at heart.
That said, the blatant sexism shown by her rival, Republican nominee Donald Trump, has shined a bright light on the status of women in the country.
When Trump accused Clinton of playing the “woman card”, her quick online reply was seen as a boost for her campaign.
“If fighting for women’s healthcare and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the ‘woman card’, then deal me in,” she said. In no time, a plastic “support Clinton woman card” became another must-have accessory for her supporters.
Trump’s glamorous daughter Ivanka, a powerful businesswoman in her own right, has tried to cast her father’s macho politics in a more woman-friendly light. When she introduced him at the Republican convention in Cleveland, also in July, she listed a host of Democratic-sounding, pro-women policies on childcare and family leave that she said her father would introduce, even though none of these policies are on the Republican agenda.
Clinton’s daughter Chelsea, similarly, has tried to show Clinton’s softer, more human side, describing her as her “wonderful, kind, thoughtful, hilarious mother” when she introduced her at the Democratic convention.
The friendship between Ivanka and Chelsea is much in the media spotlight. Both are powerful, accomplished young women who have made the most of their highly privileged backgrounds. Despite a bitterly-fought election campaign and the obvious rancor between their parents, their friendship supposedly endures. “I’m not running for public office, and neither is she, so of course we’re still friends,” Ivanka said in one interview.
Ivanka is vice president of her father’s real estate empire, the Trump Organization, and Chelsea is vice chair of the multi-million dollar Clinton Foundation. One of them will play a pivotal role in the new presidency. And, whatever the election outcome, both these young mothers are likely to be highly-influential individuals – whether in business or politics – in the years to come. The same could apply to Obama’s two young girls, Malia and Sasha, who will come of age in an era where race and gender won’t be the obstacles they once were.
Elsewhere in the world, progress on narrowing the gender gap in political leadership is being made. Women are at the helm in powerful countries like Germany and the United Kingdom. Although none of the frontrunners for the next United Nations Secretary General are women, it is still possible that a female could land the top diplomatic post. Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, who is head of the world’s largest humanitarian agency, the UN Development Program, is a formidable leader who has her hat in the ring.
At the recent Social Good Summit in New York, Clark discussed the role of women in political power with another former woman president, Malawi’s Joyce Banda. Speaking to Barkha Dutt, an award-winning Indian television journalist, the two former state leaders shared their wisdom and advice for other women eying political office. They pointed out that many other countries have made more progress than the US in this regard, with Dutt reminding the audience that in Asian countries like India and Bangladesh women, have held office for years.
Clark, who campaigned in a climate where bumper stickers like “Ditch the Bitch” prevailed, said women in pursuit of political leadership had to brace themselves for many obstacles.
“Don’t accept people are going to roll out the red carpet for you. You have to roll out the red carpet yourself and kick the door down.”
Clark said women had to “turn a deaf ear to all the frankly misogynist things that are said about you. Everyone will have an opinion on how you look, how you dress, whether your teeth are crooked. You just have to look straight ahead, put your earplugs in and say I believe I can do this,” Clark said. On the UN Secretary General position she said she believed she had the right profile for the job. “So I’m standing my ground and saying I’m available.”
Banda, who walked out of an abusive marriage before becoming a leading politician and president of Malawi from 2012-14, said she did so at a time “when you didn’t walk out – especially in Africa”. Banda said she strongly believed that more African women had to become leaders. “Number one, because we have been leaders before. If you look into the history of the world before colonization we were already queens and leaders; we were leading our nations,” she told the audience. She also said it was crucial to support other women in their pursuit of top political jobs and not “dropping the ladder once we’ve arrived”, as former South African First Lady Zanele Mbeki once put it.
While Dutt wondered why so many successful women seem to feel the need to apologize for their ambition, Banda said she believed African women could benefit from a softer, more diplomatic approach or they would lose the battle before it had even begun. “Do I want to be shouting and antagonizing the people who need to open the way for me? That is the decision that we African women have to make.”
Banda, who herself lobbied for gay rights, recalled the time in 1995 when Clinton said that “women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights”. At the time, Banda said she thought Clinton was “out of her mind”.
“I didn’t think I would see in my lifetime a time when everyone would accept that women’s rights are human rights”, but Clinton was right ahead of her time, and that time has arrived.

shutterstock_490441729-Gregory-Reed-Shutterstock.com-

From  The White House To The World

On the day President Barack Obama made his State of the Union address earlier this year, American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton brought together almost the full complement of an elite group of 24 women in Washington D.C. It was the inaugural meeting of the International Council of Business Women’s Leadership. Among them were vice chair Cherie Booth Blair, a top lawyer and wife of the former British Prime Minister, and South Africa’s Wendy Luhabe, chair of Women Private Equity Fund.
Seated at a U-shaped table, Clinton outlined the purpose of the group: “…to hear from you and to get very specific ideas about what you think can help us boost growth, take some of the untapped resources and mobilize them, follow smart strategies to increase productivity, and add new value to companies and economies. Now, everyone is searching for answers to those questions, but not enough people realize that part of the answer, a large part of the answer, lies with women.”
Wendy Luhabe is already “hard at work with some totally radical ideas”. Within six months of the initial meeting, the women will report back, through four committees, with their findings on Access to Capital, Access to Markets, Capacity Building and Leadership Development.
A respected business woman, entrepreneur, board director and free thinker, Luhabe first drew attention when, along with three other women, she launched the first female-only black economic empowerment company in 1994, Wiphold—Women Investment Portfolio Holdings.
“Wiphold was really a response to our democracy, and observing that men were organizing themselves and they were excluding women. It felt like a perfect opportunity to do something for ourselves. It was a moment of choice—either we waited for some man who felt generous enough to invite us or we actually found out whether we could do it on our own. And the irony is that some of the initiatives that started then, the first generation of empowerment companies, don’t exist anymore. Wiphold is the only surviving initiative from that first generation of economic empowerment initiatives. With our initial offer, we were able to bring in 18,000 women as shareholders and investors for the first time. And it was unprecedented anywhere in the world,” says Luhabe.
The empowerment of women is very much a part of the mandate of the Clinton-initiated group, International Council of Business Women’s Leadership.
At the inaugural meeting the US Secretary of State told the women: “We all know the numbers. About 3% of the CEOs of Fortune Global 500 companies are women. There are still a lot of obstacles to women entering. It depends, of course, on national, cultural, ethnic, religious reasons. But it cuts across all of that, and it is, to a greater or lesser degree, present in every society. So the challenge before us today—as we represent government, business, NGOs, workers, institutions—is what are the ideas that we can promote that can help women be able to fulfill their own potential. How do we widen that circle of prosperity to lift the entire global economy, women and men alike, and how do we, within our own organizations, do more to train and promote women to positions of leadership?”
Asked why she thought there were so few women in leadership positions, especially in business, Luhabe replied: “Because there are not enough women in the pipeline.”
Men have traditionally had a different, more defined road to the top. They started at entry level, and moved through the rungs into middle management and then senior management. Women were often uprooted from entry level and expected to cope at a level they had little or no experience with. Women should be encouraged to go through the same steps.
Then some industries attract more women than others. “It is not every industry that is attractive to women and it’s not every industry that wants to work with women. So I think we should accept that the opportunities exist for women and that women can choose what they want to study, which was not the case when I was at university, there were very limited options for women. And women can choose what professions they want to pursue, so we shouldn’t use the fact that women are not in those positions as a failure. Maybe women are just not interested. I’m sure there are instances where women are not rising through the ranks, but we are changing attitudes and stereotypes that have been around for many, many generations. It will take a while but women themselves have to believe that they can do a good job if not a better job and whether they want to do it. When they want to be in these positions, I think the opportunities are there for them.”
From an African perspective, Luhabe believes the time is right for a revolution of entrepreneurship, and that women are well placed to lead.
“My sense is to leapfrog the economy of the country in terms of growth, and in terms of creating new opportunities for future generations to participate; we actually don’t have an option but to generate almost a revolution of entrepreneurship. It already exists, but it is not formalized, it is not properly channeled, it is not properly resourced and supported. So my very naïve view, maybe romantic view, is that if you see what women already do in Africa, that they intuitively become entrepreneurs, I always wonder how much more we could realize as a continent if there was a systematic approach.
“Let us cultivate what already seems to have a seed, rather than be something that we’re not… We’re a mining economy—let’s see how we can leverage the mining economy and everything else that exists to start a completely new foundation for our economic existence that is not based on what MBAs or highly educated professors tell us what needs to be. I think we should always start from reality and say: What can we do with what we have?”
So often lately, Africa is optimistically labeled as the ‘next frontier’, but what exactly does that mean, Luhabe asks. Does it mean raping Africa of its mineral wealth, much more deliberately than in the past? Or does it mean enabling African people to find their place in the world?
“We need to define it ourselves, rather than wait for others to define it on our behalf. Maybe we should ask ourselves what we see as the potential of the continent and where we want to take it. You know visionary leaders who really have what it takes and who have the courage to take Africa to where it really deserves to be.”
Personally, Wendy Luhabe has taken a new direction in her career. After almost 20 years of sitting on boards as director or chair, she felt she was not really enjoying it anymore. The free-spirited Luhabe found private sector boards to be set in their ways.
Public sector boards were more appealing as they were more open to change and to the participation of women. “And their mandate since we became a democracy was a transformation mandate, so I found that in those boards I was able to do much more and contribute more and to change things a lot more than I feel I have been able to do in private sector boards.
“My philosophy is to be involved in things where I feel that I’m adding value, where I feel that my contribution is valued,” she says.
Although the development and empowerment of women and enabling them to find the courage to live their best lives on their terms is close to her heart, Luhabe is open to mentor young people, irrespective of gender: “If people find me and give me the honor of mentoring them and guiding their lives, I have a duty to respond to that.”
<div id="attachment_533" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-533" class="size-large wp-image-533" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Membership-photo-clinton-icwbl-1242012c-1024x681.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="315" />Members of the International Council of Business Women’s Leadership gather for their inaugural meeting</div>
Luhabe’s involvement with promoting women in business has also extended to the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards, an international business plan competition. As jury president of the sub-Saharan African panel, she has been part of shaping of the evaluation criteria that prioritize creativity, sustainability and social impact. Through the Initiative, Luhabe has witnessed the creative genius of hundreds of initiatives steered by women in different parts of Africa over the past six years.
Entrepreneurship is something that needs to be modeled. “When people look at what we’ve achieved as women, then they begin to believe that there are possibilities for their own lives. I think we should not underestimate how effective role modeling is. When Obama became president, can you imagine what it did for black people everywhere, not just in America? So there is an enormous power in when people who have been previously disadvantaged and who have not had access to certain positions assume those positions.
“But then, they also carry a huge responsibility because they have to consciously use those positions to not only be an inspiration as to how they conduct themselves, with respect to what they achieve through those positions, with respect to how they use those positions to change circumstances for the majority of people who will never become presidents. But maybe they can change the environment for a lot of people to achieve their own dreams.”
“In corporations, where people who have been exposed the most—generally white males get the most exposure at corporations, but when black people, black women and white women are exposed to the same opportunities or even projects that white males are, they develop much quicker,” she says.
She also believes that a sense of curiosity and adventure should be encouraged in young people, so that they can see the world and how it works and decide where they want to live and work.
But don’t discount the advantages of working in Africa. Looking at South Africa specifically, a lot of people who were educated here and ran various industries here have gone on to become global CEOs.
“We should not underestimate that South Africa offers an enormously fertile training ground for people because we have to deal with so many issues,” Luhabe says. “Our circumstances are very different from issues that people have to deal with in other parts of the world. People who studied overseas hopefully bring back some value, but I don’t necessarily think that they have such a huge advantage over people who have studied here, or whose work experience has only been here.”
Because education is so important to her, she formed the Wendy Luhabe Foundation shortly after writing the book Defining Moments. Royalties from the book, as well as other funds, are channeled into the Foundation and are used towards the education of disadvantaged people.
When she reports back to the International Council of Business Women’s Leadership, with her strong financial background, she will give input into insurance for women, among other things.

Tag: Hillary Clinton

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

I felt the Bern

All The (Potential) President’s Men

From The White House To The World

Women Should Lead The Revolution Of The Entrepreneur