2 September 2003

On 1 September, a group of runners following a very unusual, very colourful tricycle arrived in Cape Town, marking the end of the longest corporate relay Africa has ever seen. Pedalling in tandem: a business person, a government official. The point of the exercise? "Sizanani". Business, government, ordinary South Africans - working together.

The 2003 Business Trust Long Run kicked off in Johannesburg on 14 August, with roughly 600 people in 50 teams taking on a 2 300km route from Johannesburg to Cape Town via Durban, East London, Port Elizabeth and Mossel Bay - making a number of detours along the way to visit some of the projects that have benefited from the Business Trust.

The Trust, an initiative of South African companies in partnership with the government, undertakes targeted job creation and capacity building programmes while engendering cooperation between business and government.

Since its inception in July 1999, the Business Trust, supported by 145 South African companies, has secured just under R1-billion in voluntary contributions - doubled by an equivalent contribition from the government - for projects which will benefit an estimated 2.5 million South Africans.

It is to partly to celebrate and showcase this achievement that the teams of runners from government and Business Trust companies hit the tarmac, with teams of 10 tackling 10-12 kilometre stretches of each day's quota, ranging from 77km to 178km.

Pro runners, amateur runners
In 2002, a team of 10 professional South African athletes participated in the inaugural Long Run, in the process setting the fastest ever time over a distance of 1 000 miles (1 600km), a record of 99 hours, three minutes and 27 seconds that was recognised by the Guinness Book of Records.

The Long Run tandem: business, government pulling together

This year, the pro element was represented by a team sponsored by gold miner Harmony. Most participants, however, were strictly amateur, as journalist and TV personality Dennis Beckett - the Long Run's "embedded" journalist - pointed out in his daily brief on the Run.

"Some of the business teams burn up tarmac; for most it's a fun-run", Beckett wrote on the Long Run website. "Some stretches there'll be twenty or more runners, some only one. Generally the amateur teams run until the puffing & panting alarms either themselves or the para-meds. Then the pros, Harmony, take over and the escort cars triple their speed."

Stick with it, run together
What's it all about, asked Beckett. "Long Run symbolises and/or puns one feature of the Business Trust's mission: stick with it. Run, as opposed to race, another: co-operation is the name of the game. We come from a history of business and government on different sides of fences, and a largely dog-eat-dog mode intra-business."

The Business Trust, Beckett continued, "is into a big, sustained, fix-up of the things that caused the world to invent this word Afropessimism; a deep and broad regruk [pull right].

"They're saying that you ruk [pull] better if (a) you keep going when miracles don't come, and (b) you make partnership real, in the bloodstream rather than a mission-statement. The Run entails plenty off celebration of what's great about SA, a fair amount of display of projects the Business Trust has already taken on, and a degree of stock-taking through exposure to nooks and corners outside the comfort-zones of any single person."

Transforming an old prison
On 17 August - Day 6 of 19 - the Long Run arrived at Gateway, an ex-prison in Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal and the site of one of the Business Trust's projects. Beckett reports:

"When we arrived at Gateway, some things fell into perspective. Gateway is an ex-prison, one part going back to 1862. Now it's a centre of everything from a feeding scheme to umpty-something training courses to an orphans' home to an art gallery to a café (called "Jailbreak") to a history room ...

"At Gateway we meet so many people who worked on this and other get-going ventures (mainly backtracking to a church kick-off and a Business Trust hand) that I begin to picture Pmb [Pietermaritzburg] as a hot-bed of people saying 'I'm doing something to make things work'."

SA's malaria-busters
The following evening found the Long Runners recovering from Day 7's exertions in the Durban International Convention Centre, where another project that benefits from Business Trust backing, the Lubombo Spatial Development Initiative (LSDI), was showcased.

The LSDI, as Beckett discovered, is, among other things, South Africa's malaria-buster.

"To some of the mainly urban, largely Gauteng, audience, this sounded bizarre. The Business Trust puts buckets into Big Issues, like crime and jobs. Malaria? Seemed anachronistic, like campaigning against scurvy. Giggles were heard.

"Then in rapid succession three people explained: the Medical Research Council's Brian Sharp, LSDI chief; Brian Whittaker, Business Trust chief; Andrew Zaloumis, czar of the north-east wetlands. Giggles were stilled.

"Simplistically reduced: malaria has twice been nearly or semi-nearly disposed of. In the 1950s, when Europe finally kicked it out, hopes of the tropics following suit slipped away. Then in the early nineties malaria was back on the ropes until the world got a fright about DDT and banned its use. By 2000 malaria killed at least a million people in tropical Africa, and knocked the stuffing, as it were, out of another 300 000 000 or so, ie, around half the population.

"In 1999 the Business Trust helped LSDI get going. It's now going like a rocket, no longer only with business funding but with massive support from both Southern African governments and global bodies ($22-million just been put in.) Some places, like Lake St Lucia, are now malaria-free for the first time in history. Many others are going the same way."

Symbol of sustained effort
Some of the other programmes supported by the Trust:

• A set of schooling programmes incorporating over a million pupils, 15 000 teachers and 1 500 schools in all nine provinces has been launched. "These will improve reading ability by two years and writing ability by four years for a million primary school pupils and produce a 10% improvement in mathematics and science results for 400 000 high school pupils", the Trust says in a statement.

• A tourism marketing campaign was launched in the US and Europe which in its first year was seen by 60 million people. A training programme that will improve the skills of 15 000 people in the tourism sector, backed up by an enterprise support programme which in its first year assisted 100 small firms and supported 1 877 jobs. Over 1 000 firms will benefit by the end of the programme.

• A programme to support the integration of the justice system has been supported which has demonstrated, among other things, a 40% reduction in waiting trial time for prisoners in the pilot centres.

"The point is: this stuff is not all rah-rah-hooray-Business-Trust-rides-again. There are difficulties. Confronting these, I find myself not less respectful of the Business Trust involvement, but more respectful: 'Gee, despite things failing to deliver wand-waving results, you hang on it.' Not for nothing did they call it Long Run. It's a symbol of sustained effort."

SouthAfrica.info reporter

	South Africa's biggest race just got even bigger

	The Long Run athletes take patriotism seriously.

	The Business Trust Long Run  The Business Trust

The route 12 Oct Auchtolone - Askam 13 Oct Askam - midway Upington 14 Oct midway Upington - Upington 15 Oct Upington - Olifansfontein 16 Oct Olifansfontein - Kuruman 17 Oct Kuruman - Vryburg 18 Oct Vryburg - Sannieshof 19 Oct Sannieshof - Ventersdorp 20 Oct Ventersdorp - Johannesburg 21 Oct Johannesburg - Witbank 22 Oct Witbank - Machadorp 23 Oct Machadorp - Nelspruit 24 Oct Nelspruit - Paul Kruger Gate 25 Oct Paul Kruger Gate - Skukuza Graphic map part 1 Graphic map part 2