Movement of Change

Riedwaan Benefeld is the CEO and founder of Jiracron, a South African consultancy dedicated to providing a platform for historically disadvantaged individuals to succeed in the world of data and analytics. As a co-founder of Sasuka Channel, one of the first channel partners to SAS in South Africa, Riedwaan was instrumental in creating a movement that trained and developed non-white individuals in the post-apartheid era. Through his efforts, they helped hundreds of individuals become successful data professionals. Many of whom have gone on to hold senior positions in large organisations or now run businesses of their own.

Continuing this work, he has renewed his deep partnership with SAS to make a difference to the lives of individuals who otherwise may not have had the opportunity. Together creating a deeper and more diverse talent pool to address the global skills shortage in the market.

Sponsorship

Visit www.yourheights.com and use acuriouslife10 for a 10% discount.

Transcript

Hadley Christoffels: [00:00:00] So Riedwaan, welcome to the show. 

[00:00:01] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:00:01] Thank you. Thank you. 

[00:00:02] Hadley Christoffels: [00:00:02] What we're going to do today. We ultimately want to understand the essence of you. We want to know who Riedwaan is, and we want to understand how the trait of curiosity has impacted your life throughout whether as a child, as you grew up in your career and where you're going from here, essentially, 

[00:00:16] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:00:16] I'm the youngest of nine children. I was born in a place called Albertville. Yeah. I specifically mentioned in Albertville and where I was born because I didn't stay there for a long time. Um, as you know, I was born in the heart of apartheid. I mean, the reason why I mentioned Albertville, I remember very little of it. 

[00:00:37] Hadley Christoffels: [00:00:37] Okay, cool. So, so in Albertville, in Johannesburg, in South Africa, and we're in the middle of apartheid ,

[00:00:43]Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:00:43] mid sixties to late sixties, Albertville then was declared as a white area and, 

[00:00:51] Hadley Christoffels: [00:00:51] and maybe the significance of that as well. Right? Cause I think this is actually a key part and maybe this is where you're going, but this seems like a key part of, of, of the future story, which we'll get to. Right. But, but what the impact of that, because my, like when my parents grew up in port, Elizabeth was kind of a similar thing. They lived in what was a coloured area.

[00:01:08] And we do need to get into that because coloured has a different connotation in different parts of the world, right? Not like the way we know it, for instance. So tell our listeners, just like what that means. Being classed from coloured area to a white area, 

[00:01:21] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:01:21] it means that, um, remember in apartheid, everybody everybody's segregated and it's illegal to actually live in the area that doesn't fall into your classification.

[00:01:33] So if you, you are classified as a coloured, you can't go and live in a black area or you can't go and live in an Indian area or you can go and live in a white area . So by them classifying Albertville as a white area, we had to move out 

[00:01:48]we then moved to the area called Bosmont where I'm talking to you from now. 

[00:01:54] Hadley Christoffels: [00:01:54] Cool. Back to your roots, back to my roots. 

[00:01:59] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:01:59] Yes. The funny thing is when we moved, we actually moved to a better house than what we stayed in before, but it was a house that my father and my brother built themselves.

[00:02:08] Hadley Christoffels: [00:02:08] Gotcha. 

[00:02:09] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:02:09] So Bosmont really became then the, I mean, one of the most iconic coloured suburbs in Johannesburg, 

[00:02:17]you know, so, so it's, it's it's it was a vibey area. 

[00:02:24]Hadley Christoffels: [00:02:24] My wife is actually from Bosmont

[00:02:26]Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:02:26] Oh, okay. Good, good, good. So she, she will know, you know, we, we had hardly ever, ever left Bosmont. Yeah. Okay. So I went to school in Bosmont third primary, which is grade seven in 1976. 

[00:02:44] Hadley Christoffels: [00:02:44] That's the year, I was born

[00:02:49] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:02:49] quite a significant year in South African history because that's the year that the uprising started and, um, the fight against apartheid and the fight against unequal education and things like that. So, um, in 1978, I would say I was in grade nine and my dad decided no, this is not a good idea because we were in the middle of boycotts and political.

[00:03:19] And he took me out and put me into a private school. Now. That was tough.

[00:03:26] Hadley Christoffels: [00:03:26] In what way? 

[00:03:29] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:03:29] Okay now I'm going to explain to you now, remember I'm a, uh, just the normal coloured boy from this coloured township and I'm Afrikaans and you know what that's the only language I can speak is Afrikaans. I understand a little bit of English. Yeah. 

[00:03:48] Hadley Christoffels: [00:03:48] This is at the time now? 

[00:03:50] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:03:50] At the time. Yes. I mean, Afrikaans that, that, that, that was the predominant language in, in, in, in bosmont.

[00:03:57] Hadley Christoffels: [00:03:57] Yeah. And, and, and maybe, maybe for our listeners as well, I guess the, the thing about Afrikaans and English, isn't just a language thing. There's huge cultural, political kind of connotations that's attached to it and it comes with so, so just, just to kind of give them a view. Right. So, so, so you spoke Afrikaans, you come from a Afrikaans community and now you're going to a private school.

[00:04:19] Right. And are you saying that they were English private school? 

[00:04:22] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:04:22] Yes. 

[00:04:22] Hadley Christoffels: [00:04:22] Okay 

[00:04:22] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:04:22] the education system is different. You are now getting taught in English, which is totally confusing. I mean, some of those. Words and things like that. You don't even understand what it means 

[00:04:34] Hadley Christoffels: [00:04:34] because it's not your first language. Right.

[00:04:38] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:04:38] It's not my first language at all. And I, uh, it was very tough and somehow I managed to pass there. 

[00:04:48] Hadley Christoffels: [00:04:48] Do you kind of put that down to, you know, determination? Do you put it down to hard work? Do you put it down to a little bit of luck? 

[00:04:55] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:04:55] you know, Hadley sometimes they say it's not good being spoiled and things like that. Now me being the baby in our family, I was spoiled. Everybody made a fuss of me and I was good at everything that I did.

[00:05:08] So everybody praised me, everybody, you know, and I was not used to failing. Failing was not part of the equation I had to pass. It's a combination of, of, of, of things determination. Um, avoiding disappointment. Although I think if, if, if I had failed that year, it wouldn't have been a disappointment to my, to my parents.

[00:05:35] Like I thought it would , it wasn't an option. Wasn't an option I scraped through, but I passed so. So from there on it went better because I went now for extra English lessons and . 

[00:05:47] Hadley Christoffels: [00:05:47] So let me, let me ask you this, right? So this is now you stayed at the school, I assume until the end of your high school career.

[00:05:52] Right? , it would be a very different people, very different mindsets. How did that impact you? 

[00:05:57] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:05:57] Hadley, I cannot explain to you because remember at the time private schools was predominantly white, so. 95% of the, of the kids were white. 

[00:06:10] Hadley Christoffels: [00:06:10] Let me pause it for a second again, just for our listeners. Right? Cause as I said, there'll be a global community listening to this thing and you have to kind of understand apartheid in that sense and what Riedwaan was talking about, you know, apartheid literally is translated into segregation and that's what it done.

[00:06:24] Well, it's segregated. So you literally, in your community, you didn't leave Bosmont.

[00:06:29] You didn't see people of other races, you know? So now not just to , go into an environment where there's predominantly white kids, the fact that it's white kids also, you know, has a significance because you're not used to mingling or even in some ways allowed to mix with white people, right? Yes.

[00:06:48] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:06:48] But as a child, you sort of get used to it quite quickly. Yeah. You know, a couple of months into it, you get used to, you get used to the barriers, the barrier starts getting broken down and you now start seeing these guys as your friends and things like that. Not as these people, the way you grew up, these are the people that are right up there on a pedastal .

[00:07:11] You know, you start seeing that I can do that. These are just kids like me. We are all people. We are the same. In fact, I'm better at certain things than them. I thought. They better at. Everything. Because you, you then realize that going into life nobody's better than anybody does. 

[00:07:33] Hadley Christoffels: [00:07:33] Yes. 

[00:07:33] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:07:33] Because remember it was, it was drilled into your head and things like that, that you also better than others.

[00:07:40] Hadley Christoffels: [00:07:40] Yeah. 

[00:07:41] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:07:41] You sort of in the middle there's people that's better than you and then there's others. Yes. So it was like an eye-opener for me. 

[00:07:53] Hadley Christoffels: [00:07:53] So, so can I say then that's kind of what, uh, you know, at least in part that sparked a sense of curiosity , 

[00:07:59] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:07:59] of course. 

[00:08:00]Hadley Christoffels: [00:08:00] So, so now we're in the high school, right? And you come and you go, you know what? Okay. There's some things I'm good at. There's some things, you know, that maybe I'm not too good at, but yeah. I can, as a kid , I fit in, I can do well.

[00:08:13] And your curiosity has been sparking you try sport and you do this and, you know, there's that. So, so that's kind of, so this is where we are now. Right? What happens from there? 

[00:08:22] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:08:22] Okay. So basically I matriculate. 

[00:08:25] Hadley Christoffels: [00:08:25] So matriculate is the final accreditation for ending high school, right? 

[00:08:30] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:08:30] Yes. 

[00:08:31]Hadley Christoffels: [00:08:31] , Okay cool. 

[00:08:32] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:08:32] So I matriculate in 1981.

[00:08:36] Hadley Christoffels: [00:08:36] I'm five at this point.

[00:08:40] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:08:40] Okay. And I want to do architecture. Okay. But, um, my marks I'm, I'm sort of three, three or four points short of, of, of qualifying and. I basically said, now, if I can't do that, then I'm not going to study. Y'all remember I'm I'm 18 years old. Right. And my dad comes to me. Okay. What are you going to do now? 

[00:09:05] So, so I then decided, nah, you know what, let me relax for this year. You know, I just finished school. Yeah. Let me see, let me take a whole year to decide what I'm going to do. So I go out with my friends and things like that.

[00:09:25] This is now early , 1982. Okay. You know, our parents, that time didn't take nonsense from us. I came home one day. This is, this is February , 1982. And, um, My mom and my sister tells me that, Oh, I'm starting work tomorrow.

[00:09:49] Hadley Christoffels: [00:09:49] By the way,

[00:09:50] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:09:50] I said what?! I didn't even go for an interview. And the next morning, I'm up at six in the printing industry. I'm doing a trade. Yes. I look at this. I mean, it's, it's, it's an eye opener to see what people are doing out there. To earn money. 

[00:10:37] Hadley Christoffels: [00:10:37] Yeah. And look, look, there's no disrespecting anything right. In what you do and whatever. It's more about where the heart is. Right. 

[00:10:44] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:10:44] Yes. And now at the time my brother was in IT. I look at this and I think, no, man, I can't do this. I cannot do this.

[00:10:56] So I go to him, I say, please, man organise me to the job as anything as anything. Um, I'm, I'm earning 60 Rand a week. So my brother says no come for the interview. I go for the interview, you know, the interview went quite well. I didn't get any confirmation or anything. From the interview. Okay. I went straight back to the printing place and resigned.

[00:11:24] Hadley Christoffels: [00:11:24] Yeah.

[00:11:30] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:11:30] With immediate effect, with immediate leaving. I resigned. Luckily I got the job and, um, as a computer operator, it was a hectic, it was even harder than the printing because we work shifts. 

[00:11:44] Hadley Christoffels: [00:11:44] How long did you stay in that? 

[00:11:47]Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:11:47] , this is now a couple of months later. Probably about five months later. 

[00:11:51] Hadley Christoffels: [00:11:51] So a South African couple

[00:12:00] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:12:00] yeah, let's say this is about July, July.

[00:12:04]Hadley Christoffels: [00:12:04] Okay. July, but still 82. So this is now more me putting the, the age of computers and computer operator into, into context for the listeners 1982 computer operator. What do they do? 

[00:12:17] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:12:17] Okay. So remember everything is on mainframes, right? Those big, big, big mainframes. And you have these things that you call disk drives.

[00:12:28] Okay. Not like it is today at all. These drives, all of them have specific information on them, or some of them are clean. Okay. So depending whether you have to read information or depending on whether you have to write information, you have to load these disk drives when you run a job. So you have to load 

[00:12:53] this drive with the information that is going to be read. And either it's going to create a tape, you know, those big round tapes. 

[00:13:00] Hadley Christoffels: [00:13:00] So your input and output data. 

[00:13:03]Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:13:03] Yes. So now remember, in those times, all the banks, all the big businesses, had, computer operators, right? So what basically happens is at the end of the day, you shut down the system that all the users Countrywide are using, and then you start running the daily run. And then it also creates certain reports to say these are new, uh, clients and so on and so on.

[00:13:30] And so, and every everywhere you went, insurance companies, banks, everything, this process runs 24 hours. So there had to be operators on shift 24 hours a day. So you basically go in one week and work a morning shift. You'll go the next weekend work afternoon shift, and then you'll go to night shift and then you'll go back to morning shift.

[00:13:57] And it was hectic . And I didn't like it much. 

[00:14:02] Hadley Christoffels: [00:14:02] So now you've got this understanding. Look, I'm into computers. I understand a bit more about what it does now. Where do you go from there? 

[00:14:09] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:14:09] When you go from there, you resign.

[00:14:12] Hadley Christoffels: [00:14:12] naturally!

[00:14:13]Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:14:13] In that same year 

[00:14:15] Hadley Christoffels: [00:14:15] so you started july and was your resignation before, like december? 

[00:14:21] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:14:21] Yes, yes, yes, yes, it's like October. 

[00:14:26] Hadley Christoffels: [00:14:26] Okay. That was your first exposure to data as well. Right? To working with data , 

[00:14:30] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:14:30] you must remember that you, you want to run a job, okay. That reads those drives and creates those tapes and all of that, the actual job, the program that gets written, a programmer will write it and all the programs code will then be sent to what they call a punch room. 

[00:14:52] That's a whole lot of ladies that are sitting there and they copy that code and they type it. And what this does is it creates punch cards. The punch card is a card with holes, you, and depending on the pattern of those holes it represents characters.

[00:15:13] So you then have to read those cards through a card reader and the job goes into the mainframe. Now, remember also this there's no such thing as, as a editor . 

[00:15:27] On the mainframe console, you can only type in commands. You can't bring up a screen and go and change here. And there no, no, no, no. You can type commands. 

[00:15:37] Hadley Christoffels: [00:15:37] So how did this impact in the rest of the, the, the kind of the following years in your career? So this is the Genesis in your data world. Right . So how does this, this scene impact where you go from here? 

[00:15:47] Riedwaan Benefeld: [00:15:47] You know, being in that environment. You catch on what needs to be done quite quickly. And you, you, you, you very quickly realize that it's not rocket science, you know, it's, it's, it's repetitive and you sort of want more for yourself.

[00:16:04] You know what I mean? So anyway, I then went for an interview because I didn't like the shifts. The work was okay. I didn't like the shifts. I had absolutely no time for myself to myself for that matter. So it was kind of illegal, I would say in today's terms, I went in for a interview at a nice company called Anglo American life also as a computer operator, but yeah, you had to go and write tests and things like that.

[00:16:40] I went to...