User:YusufGabier/sandbox

Yusuf Gabier is the author of the publications; “Green Democracies, Gold Dinars – A Muslim’s perspective on sustainable Development Planning and management” and “Community Design Engineering” - The C.D.E Series of Community Social Design working documents. He was born in 1974 at Saint Monica’s Maternity Hospital in the Bo-Kaap, and grew up in the suburb of Woodstock, City of Cape-Town, Republic of South Africa. His schooling started in the apartheid era, although he states that he did not even know that it existed at the time, when his parents worked in the then Bantustan of Bophuthatswana in the town of Mafikeng. On returning home to Cape Town, he attended Wesley Primary School in Salt River for sub B, English Church Primary School in Grassy Park for standard 1, Muhammadiya Moslem School in Wynberg for standard 2, 3 and 4, and then Habibiya Primary School in Rylands Estate for standard 5.

After completing his primary school education, his father, Ridwaan Gabier placed him in the care of Sheikh Fu-aad Gabier for the study of the recitation of Qur-aan with its grammatical rules and for its memorization and then also to learn Classical Arabic in the Qur-anic format, of which he managed to learn some short sections. This took place first at a community center in Mount-View and then later at a community center in Lansdowne, both in the Southern Suburbs of Cape Town.

He then returned to start high school 2 years later, doing and completing standard 6 at Grassy Park Secondary School. The following year, he was allowed to join standard 8 at Habibiya Boys College in Rylands Estate in Cape Town and then further completed standards 9 and 10 consecutively, and successfully culminating in a Senior Certificate from the South African Education Department in the higher grade with exemption.

During the years that he was at high-school, he worked concurrently for his father in a family business, while being trained and groomed in a diverse range of disciplines, including political thought, jurisprudence, mechanical engineering, local and international geo-politics and business management by his father, while being technically employed in doing menial labour, including fixing trucks, long-distance and cross-border driving, loading and distributing fish in a transport and distribution business.

Simultaneously, he contributed to family and community affairs by functioning as an advisor on views and hands-on workable strategy in creating and managing a generally prosperous business atmosphere and environment. After functioning in the capacities of heavy-duty long-distance truck driver, sales-man and operations field manager, before returning home to Cape-Town, where he was admitted into the University of the Western Cape for a degree in Public Administration, of which he completed a year and 3 months.

After leaving the University of the Western Cape, he rejoined the family business with his father and managed operations between Cape-Town, Namibia and Johannesburg, buying and selling sea-food and related products and specializing and thus further developing the market for hake as the primary sea-food for the available market to customers across the Republic of South-Africa. The availability of logistics infra-structure allowed a simultaneous development of and participation of delivering basic food-stuff to the Western Cape food industry as they loaded trucks with freight for the return journey to Cape-Town.

At the age of 22, he married Rufaidah Samodien, a beautiful lady from Mitchells Plain in Cape Town and has 3 children with her, Bilqees Gabier, Sophiya Gabier and Abdullah-Nur Gabier. He was also married with Yusra Laher for approximately 2 years and has another son, Mikaa-eel Laher Gabier, from that marriage.

After returning home to his family in Cape-Town, he was accepted to join the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business where he completed a Post-Graduate Certificate program in Business Administration. After completing that program, he was invited to consult with a group of companies called the Community IT Academy and subsequently was offered a position as a marketing director. Unfortunately, that group of companies was already in some financial trouble and had been preparing to wind-down.

As the business model still seemed to have a requirement, he and some of the existing staff ventured to reconstitute a new board of directors and management, with a revised formulation of the business-model and consequently, he was appointed and functioned as the Executive Director of a newly formed section 21 company called the Community IT Foundation.

Yusuf served on that board with the then Governor of the South African Reserve Bank, Tito Mboweni, the Provincial Manager of Standard Bank, Ashiek Manie, the Director of Southern African Operations of Shell oil-company, Sadiq Samodien and the then South African Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdul Hameed Gabier, the Director for the Faculty of Humanities for the University of Cape Town, Professor Willile Mazamisa and the Director of the Teaching, Learning and Technologies Unit for the University of the Western Cape Dr Karolina O-Donoghue. The company was further supported by a reputable legal firm, Bardien & Higgins Attorneys and by acclaimed media consultants Benjamin Gool and Rodger Friedmann from Oryx Media, all working closely with government and many community-based organizations across the breadth of the City of Cape-Town.

Before accepting the position in that company, he had already simultaneously and successfully completed further academic achievements; “New Directors Workshop” through The University of Stellenbosch’s Graduate School of Business and an associated training academy La Vita Nova and then also successfully completed a training course through the financial group Sanlam, and was subsequently registered with the Financial Services Board of South Africa and the Association of Unit Trust investments, as a qualified financial advisor.

After a relatively successful campaign of building computer labs at schools with refurbished equipment, the company managed to wind down and the delivery-model of the business and was absorbed into the Provincial Government’s own Education Department, Project Khanya, as a direct free service.

At about this time, during 2002, he was introduced to Scottish nobleman, Shaykh Dr. `Abdal Qadir as-Sufi (Ian Dallas) and joined a Sufi movement, the Darqawi Shadhili Qaadiri Tariqah, under the guidance of the Shaykh and then regularly attended his gatherings on spirituality and also actively promoted his teachings on socio-economic revitalization and environmental rehabilitation. He then moved-on and ventured to develop, in conjunction with his family, a grocery wholesaler in Mitchell’s Plain, which proved to not be too successful and then again attempted to develop and manage another grocery wholesaler and distribution business from a factory complex in the Philippi industrial area of the Cape Flats, which also proved unsuccessful. He then also had a very brief business relationship, working with a pharmaceutical and commodity trading-house, Generics, and was based at the Water-Club, at The V&A Waterfront.

For the purpose of recreation and fitness, he has also done basic martial-arts training with the Royal Panthers kick-boxing academy in Salt River and with the South-African chapter of Gracie Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu academy in Cape-Town, as well as SABI Certified fire-arms training with Collins Weapons Training academy in Epping and Deep-Sea Scuba Diving with International NAUI Certified academy in The Strand. He have also maintained a cordial relationship, with the Phillipi Reservist Program of the South African Police Services, under the leadership of Sergeant Philander, who managed the program at that time. He has traveled extensively to most of the Southern African Development Community countries including Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Mozambique; and have also visited the countries of the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Israel, and Lebanon while en-route to and from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to perform the obligatory pilgrimage of `Hajj and `Umrah.

He has also visited Qatar, while en-route to Indonesia, accompanying an official South African trade delegation which was headed-up by the then Deputy President of the Republic of South Africa, Mrs Phumzile Nguka and attended functions hosted by Indonesia’s Royal families and business community and was hosted by Indonesian business tycoon, Mr Eddyarto Harryono.

He again visited Indonesia to research the possibility of importing branded FIFA items ahead of the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup tournament held in South Africa in 2010, which unfortunately also was unsuccessful. He further visited Kuala-Lumpur in Malaysia with a business delegation to facilitate the formation of a gold-mining operation in Zimbabwe, with Malaysian, Emirati, European and South-African partners; unfortunately, he was excluded from most of the outcomes of that venture and cannot comment to its success.

He was also invited to Spain to attend the opening of the new grand mosque of Granada and then also to attend an Islamic Conference and participate in a spiritual gathering of Sufi’s and took the opportunity to also experience a little of the beautiful South Coast of Spain, the Costa del Sol.

He joined the University of Stellenbosch for a Masters degree in Sustainable Development Planning and Management, and although that program of study has not as yet been completed, it has prompted and inspired him to pursue a new direction of research and community development...

Yusuf currently continues to live and work, as a home-executive, a home-school teacher, an independent research-fellow, an independent business-consultant, a mechanical engineer and a farm worker, from his home, "Bloemendal Farm", a small farm in the Southern Suburbs of Cape-Town, in the Republic of South Africa.