'Yes, I did,' was the answer to Bill's question. 'For twelve years I lived off those people and I hated them. Then I realised they couldn't take my mind or my heart away.'
Bill was astounded and said meeting Mandela was a seminal point in his life: 'He taught me about living.'
That must have been quite a moment: the richest human in the world talks to the most revered human and acquires a new purpose and a challenge in his life. I think it may eventually go into the history books as a turning point – the start of something big.
In January 2008, Bill Gates was a guest at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in Switzerland. He said: 'We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.' He has called this idea 'creative capitalism', saying that by harnessing the basic factor that drives capitalism – self-interest – creative capitalism can enhance the interests of the giver and the recipient.
I agree. I think capitalism is a proven system: it works. But it has got a lot of faults. Breathtaking wealth goes to relatively few people. This would not matter so much, were it not for the fact that the very poorest in society are destitute, lacking even the basic amenities for survival. This being the case, an enormous responsibility falls on a successful business leader. Leaders need to reinvest their wealth by creating new jobs or by tackling the social problems of the world (ideally, both – which is what makes Muhammad Yunus's microcredit movement so exciting).
History has thrown up no viable alternative to the free exchange of capital, goods and services, and the enterprise of law-abiding people. But capitalism as an ideology needs work and reform. Capitalism has to be more than the survival of the fittest.
My own fairly unexceptional view is that capitalism should pay far more attention to people and to the resources of this planet. I call it 'Gaia capitalism' for short, and as a tribute to the work of Professor James Lovelock, who has spent a lifetime tracing the life-sustaining connections between the living and non-living parts of the Earth. Human behaviour and human capital have to work with our planet.
More generally, entrepreneurs and wealth creators around the world must be a positive force for good. There is nothing unbusiness-like about sharing the benefits of your industry with happy, fulfilled people and a planet that is going to be there in all its glory for our children and grandchildren.
In 1997, while proposing a lottery scheme in Johannesburg, I called upon the world's business community to run their companies more ethically – and, to get the ball rolling, to adopt a zero-tolerance approach to bribery. Perhaps the most unethical and dangerous abuse of a company's financial muscle around the world is the use of bribes to secure contracts. If company directors bribe politicians they start a rot at the very top. Police, customs officers, tax officials and the judiciary will then start saying to themselves: if our bosses are accepting bribes, why shouldn't we?
In my speech, I kept my definition of ethics simple. Business ethics interest me, and ethical questions are less complex than some academics on business courses make out. I said we should all pledge to do nothing that we'd regret reading about in the press. In the developed world, we're extremely fortunate in having a free press. Being misquoted or misinterpreted can be frustrating, and a bad journalist can do a lot of damage, but set against the big picture, these are really just inconveniences. A free press is a society's conscience. You may, for instance, be trying to discourage a competitor. A scheme is sitting on your desk that would undoubtedly work. But it rides close to the wind. These things can get complicated, so you can't rely entirely on gut instinct. If the public and the media got to read this document, what would they do? Would they shrug, or laugh at your cheek – or would you and your company be vilified?
As we work to improve and reform capitalism, I think this connection between free commerce and free expression will become ever more evident. And whilst having a free press is a wonderful check, ideally it will be needed less and less as a conscience as we all start putting the well-being of people and the environment at the core of our business.
In June 1999, Nelson Mandela invited me to his leaving party and to the inauguration of his successor, Thabo Mbeki. At the banquet, my neighbour, a doctor, told me about her hospital – which receives more patients than any other in the world – and I agreed to visit.
The next morning I went to Soweto. After the previous evening's pomp and glamour, I was brought back down to earth with an incredible bump. The hospital was worse than she had described. The accident and emergency section was like a Vietnam War movie. The queue for medicines stretched for half a mile. I have a deep respect for South Africa and I wanted to help so much. This was a country with fabulous potential and people who were so warm and friendly. Yet a staggering 20 per cent of female South Africans coming into antenatal clinics now had HIV, she told me, and medicines were just not going to the people who needed them. We had already done some work with HIV/Aids in the UK and I was now determined to do everything in my power to stop this unnecessary human suffering in South Africa.
For some years, Virgin had been investing in companies to help drive the South African economy. Virgin Unite had also started to look at creating opportunities for young South Africans. One of my favourite examples of this is the Branson School of Entrepreneurship at the CIDA City Campus. This took off when CIDA's charismatic leader, Taddy Blecher, literally chased Jean and me down the street to sell me on the idea of forming a partnership to assist financially disadvantaged young people to start up their own businesses. As I write this, I have just spent my birthday with some students at the school. Their energy and positive spirit always inspires and humbles me. One after the other, they got up and talked about their small businesses, which began as part of the Branson School and now gave economic freedom not only to these young people, but also to their families and communities. This was the best birthday gift I could have asked for! I wrote down the following quote from one of them in my notebook:
One thing that I like about the Branson School is that it's a place where you feel like when you're there you get inspired – there's that inspiration that is drawn from the Branson School. You're always excited. The moment you get there, you forget your problems, and you just focus on growing your business. To all the beautiful Virgin people, I would like to wish you guys all the best, and I need to tell you something. Please keep on supporting the Branson School. We love you. Thank you.
Even with this incredible next generation of South Africans starting to build a positive future, I could see that Aids was sapping the country's ability to function properly. A vibrant and dynamic economy needs healthy people to maintain the fabric of society for those who are ill, infirm and disabled, but there is a tipping point beyond which the levels of disease and death are so debilitating that any kind of enterprise is impossible. This was the situation that I could foresee arising in South Africa. And I wasn't doing nearly enough about it yet.
For me it was the story of Donald Makhubele, one of the waiters at our Virgin game reserve, Ulusaba, that gave the tragedy of Aids a human face. Donald was a poet and musician, a wonderful character who wrote eloquently about the local land and its people – and about his illness. His own testament was deeply humbling. He said: 'I'm a songwriter who writes about HIV and Aids . . . Let us work together as one, to be proud of ourselves and have the same purpose in order to defeat the enemy. This is not a disease but it is a war that is in Africa, aiming to destroy our continent.'
Donald died of Aids-induced tuberculosis. When he passed away I pledged that no other Virgin employee would die unnecessarily. I thought it was wrong that any of the hundreds of foreign companies operating in Africa should allow their people to die of Aids, and the same should apply to local companies.
At Ulusaba, we first had to show that we had no inhibitions about HIV. Nelson Mandela had told me about a time when he had visited some Aids orphans who lived in a hut. Instead of throwing the food over a fence, he ventured in and spe
nt some time with the girls. As he walked back to the car, his driver was so scared of catching something from him that he jumped out of the car and ran away. He said that Princess Diana had done more than anyone by cuddling a young child with HIV – this simple act had been a huge positive step forward in Africa.
So Joan and I invited a wonderful doctor and extraordinary social entrepreneur, Hugo Templeman, to come and see us. We then gathered all our staff at the game reserve and took an HIV/Aids test in front of them. We tried to encourage as many people as possible to come forward and also take the test – and most of them did. Afterwards, we invited some young people with HIV to speak to all of us about how antiretroviral drugs had saved their lives.
In 2005, Virgin Unite worked with a partner to fund two films, created by Africans and translated into multiple languages, to show how the HIV/Aids drugs worked and how the human immune system worked. In one of our African businesses we found that 24 per cent of our staff had HIV, which meant nearly a quarter would die within six or seven years without drug treatment. I was shocked – yet we were typical of so many other businesses working across Africa.
I said our organisation would supply anybody working for us with free antiretroviral drugs. And then we rolled out the 0% Challenge across the whole of our Virgin business: that no staff should ever die from Aids, that no one else would become HIV positive, that no HIV-positive pregnant mothers would pass on HIV to their baby and that we would have zero tolerance towards any type of discrimination against people who were HIV positive. The 0% Challenge is not only helping to stop needless suffering, but also makes absolute sense for our business to ensure we keep our people happy and healthy.
I went on a tour of local projects fighting the spread of HIV and Aids. We asked to spend time visiting as many clinics as possible to see first hand the medical crisis – I was already well acquainted with the facts and figures of the situation, but I was keen to gain a better impression of the scale of the epidemic.
The images of that tour are still too harrowing for words. In clinic after clinic, the vision of hell was clear for all to see. The sight of row upon row of near skeletons, both men and women, often with their babies and children by the bed, was utterly appalling. And the waiting rooms were full of people waiting to get into beds where people had died just hours before. These were not hospitals. They were places where people went to die. And yet we knew that this problem could be tackled. We even knew how.
I wrote in my notebook: 'A pregnant mother with HIV or Aids giving birth to her child is likely to give that child HIV. For as little as fifty US cents the mother can be given medicine six weeks prior to birth, and the baby can have an injection six weeks after birth, and nearly 100 per cent of such children lead a normal life, free of HIV.' Yet very few pregnant women in South Africa had access to these lifesaving drugs.
All this troubled me deeply. As I returned regularly to South Africa to build up our companies, it seemed as if the HIV/Aids epidemic was getting worse. Since the first case in 1982, millions had died and the prevalence in South Africa was higher than anywhere else in the world. By 2006, the incidence rate in South Africa was up to around 29 per cent for females coming into antenatal clinics.
Those who know they have HIV must be given hope. They can't be consigned to a living death and told that their life will be extinguished in a horrible way in five years – seven if they're lucky. Antiretroviral drugs are a lifesaver. Before our zero tolerance campaign had started, one of our employees at Ulusaba had been reduced almost to a skeleton – he was barely a day away from death – when we managed to obtain the right drugs for him. A month later, he was back to normal weight. Three months later, he was back at work. If antiretroviral drugs are used properly, a person can live a full life. The drugs also cut dramatically the chance of that person spreading the disease. We decided to use our business skills to partner with some great organisations and come up with ways to help stop this health emergency. One of my thoughts was to help build clinics that can sustain themselves over time and start to administer drugs and ensure that condoms are distributed. Virgin Unite teamed up with Hugo Templeman, plus Brian Brink from Anglo American plc, the South African government and the US President's Emergency Programme for Aids Relief to set up the Bhubezi Community Health Care Centre in Mpumalanga – a brilliant example of the kind of public and private partnership that really works, where local health officials and the business community are working hand in glove to fight Aids more effectively.
Hugo's idea was to create a one-stop-shop for primary health care, to include a pharmacy, X-ray and obstetrics facilities, an HIV/Aids patient care clinic, and a laboratory. Hugo had not only built such a centre; he had helped create an entire economic infrastructure with basic utilities such as water, electricity, roads and even a bakery, a car wash and a nappy-manufacturing factory! Bhubezi was a great opportunity for Hugo to develop and extend his ideas.
In 2006, I returned to open the Bhubezi centre. In the interim, thousands more people had suffered and died from Aids and thousands more had become infected with HIV. Of course, I wasn't alone in my concern. There were dozens and dozens of worthy and learned organisations and donor countries working to eradicate Aids. In fact, the number of organisations actually helping out was crippling some of the effectiveness on the front lines. We spoke to one doctor who said that 40 per cent of his time and his staff's time was spent on managing over a hundred different funders. With this in mind, I worked with Virgin Unite to look at how we could set up a 'War Room' for sub-Saharan Africa to help better coordinate and mobilise resources in the fight against diseases.
During my trip in 2006, after some incredibly emotional visits to hospices and still angry at myself for letting Donald die, I decided that I could no longer be silent about the issue. Much to the dismay of the Virgin Unite team, who were worried that this would slow down or shut down our ability to progress with some of the projects, I went on national TV stating that I felt the leader of South Africa and his health minister were guilty of genocide and should be tried for crimes against humanity.
The next morning – 27 October 2006 – the Financial Mail reported: 'British billionaire Richard Branson has slammed President Thabo Mbeki and health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang for presiding over "a government [that] is effectively killing its own people".'
I stared at the report. Here I was, a supposedly non-political industry figure, commenting on key political figures in a country where I was doing business. From a purely commercial perspective, it certainly wasn't wise. But I felt, and still feel, it's more important to do what you believe to be right in life, and if this contradicts your business interests, so be it. Business can't be allowed to float above ordinary morality.
But this wasn't about me. This was about a country and a people and, yes, a leadership that I loved. I wanted the ANC to be remembered for the good work it had done for the country, not for turning a blind eye and effectively killing a large percentage of the population by refusing to accept that HIV and Aids are linked.
I immediately received a letter from President Mbeki and, much to his credit, he did not condemn me for speaking out, but instead engaged in a dialogue about what he felt needed to be done. He also offered an honest perspective on his views of the issues that South Africa was facing, from HIV to the lack of job opportunities. After several open and frank communications, we both had the guts to put our differences aside and agree to partner up on building the war room to tackle disese in sub-Saharan Africa. This was the first step on a journey that we hope will make a great difference. As I write this, I have just joined Priya Bery and Jean Oelwang from Virgin Unite for a week of meetings with the ANC government, some amazing South African entrepreneurs and many other health partners to prepare for the launch of the war room.
The war room will become a memorial to Donald Makhubele and all the countless others who have died of disease in Africa. It is also another example whereby entrepreneurial skills coupled with health
expertise and knowledge from the front lines will together build a powerful force for change.
One day in April 2006, I received a copy of the starfish parable – from Starfish, a charity that focuses on the Aids orphan crisis in South Africa.
A girl walks along a beach, throwing starfish back into the sea, when she meets an old man. The man asks the girl why she is throwing starfish into the ocean. She says: 'The sun is up and the tide is going out, if I don't throw them back they will all die.' The old man says, 'But there's a whole beach and it runs on for miles. You can't possibly make a difference.' The girl picks up a starfish and throws it back in the sea. 'It made a difference to that one.'
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