EP 046 Andre du Venage: Protecting Cargo In The Most Dangerous Environments In The World

About

WHAT I DO: I systematically analyze the risks in your operations, design and implement solutions in context covering the areas where risk exposure has been identified. 

WHY IT WORKS: High-value cargo losses are mostly a result of organized crime and insider collusion. These risks can be greatly reduced by using the services offered by Secure Logistics designed as a multi-layered approach to protect staff, management responsibilities and high-value cargo.

WHAT MAKES MY COMPANY DIFFERENT: Secure Logistics' service solutions have been carefully designed by utilizing 25 years of industry experience paired with the knowledge of specialists to provide our clients with the most effective solutions to protect their high-value cargo. Secure Logistics has a proven track record of 99.9% in securing clients' cargo since its inception in 2009. Our holistic approach to cargo protection is what separates us as a leader in our industry.

We are a TAPA EMEA member and Andre is a member of the African Association of Threat Assessment Professionals ( AFATAP) and the TAPA WG Lead for South Africa.

Andre’s Profile

linkedin.com/in/andre-duvenage177

Website

• securelogistics.co.za (Company)

Security Circle ⭕️  is an IFPOD production for IFPO the International Foundation of Protection Officers

Transcript

Yoyo 0:15

Hi, this is Yolanda. Welcome. Welcome to the Security Circle podcast. If poe is the International Foundation for Protection Officers, we are dedicated to providing meaningful education and certification for all levels of security personnel and make a positive difference to our members' mental health and wellbeing. And today, I have a very special guest. Now, it depends where you come from and how you know him. So apparently here in the UK we would say Andre Duana, but apparently back at home in South Africa, your name is pronounced Andre Duana. How was that Andre? No, that is right on. That is right on. Thank you. Andre is an experienced leader, advisor, negotiator, team builder, investigator, mentor, speaker, and solutions driver on his subject matter expertise, which is cargo protection. And we know, don't we, Andre? Through the rise of organized crime, cargo protection is now becoming very much upfront and center. So we're gonna learn the journey around how you got into this. And so let's start off with, how did you come around to working in the security industry? Andre. So back in the nineties, I started to think about a career outside of the police services, which I was enjoying at the time. Very much I was working with organized crime related to cargo crimes coincidentally. And I thought maybe, I should try my end at opening up my own business. And I did some work and it started out as. Specialized Investigations consultants in 1996, and I did the investigations work and and so on. And then it acquired down for me on that side and I was still having my main job in the police services. But then when I left in 2000 I re revisited that again and had a number of jobs. And in 2009 I was phoned by a contact from Europe. And he asked me whether I would be interested in opening up my own business, securing I value goods in South Africa. And I said, I think I said to him, yes, but give me two days. How's that? And he said he is. He's in South Africa at the moment. We need to make a decision fairly quick. No, it didn't take me long to make that decision. And I'm very satisfied that I did because it brought me back to, my passion. My passion is curbing crime, investigating crime making a difference really. It's not a, it's not a cliche, it's really just what I was meant to do, I believe. And today I've had the business now for 14 years as secure logistics, actually 15 years. And we have a very exemplary. Track record of 99.99, success rate in delivering cargo. Wow. That's a pretty high rate and you're in South Africa. Some of us will know very well what sort of challenges you are facing and some of us won't have a clue, so we'll definitely need to explore that. But in, in the, you did well to get through the police, didn't you? Down in South Africas, cuz we hear that it's a pretty, pretty challenging environment for to even be in the police in. Yes. Even in the late nineties, it became clear to me, and at the time I was a detective captain, I worked to have a career inside the police services, and that's what I always thought I would've. But then things changed unfortunately, and I realized that, uh, unfortunately I was no longer seeing my vision. I was no longer seeing my vision and I had to do something else. And I just one day took my I took my closed my laptop and I left. And I didn't go back. So sometimes you have to just dive into the deep end and yeah, it forced me to look at things differently, but I. I feel very much for those that's currently in the police services because it's really in a totale from the from the head. There's so many examples of corruption and least generals being corrupt, locked up, et cetera. It's just total false. Give us an idea about, what that's like to be in that environment or some kind of experience that you have so we can understand what that corruption means and how it can just destabilize the whole status quo. Without being involved in corruption, you start to lose very quickly. You start to lose integrity. With the general population, people look at you differently, and I realize that very soon, uh, at those changing stages of the police services dismantling the specialized units which stall this to up till today, it's been 20 years, 23 years. Experts are questioning stall, but obviously the government's not even listening to that. And we all understand why corruption. It's so part and parcel of the decision makers nowadays that the and the involvement and all these expose have proven to us why these specialized units might be a threat to them in the late nineties and two thousands. It just doesn't make sense. If you think about family violence, why not have a unit that focuses on that? Because those people are emotionally strong to deal with those type of situations. Not everybody can do that. to Be working with organized crime, you have to be a strong individual as well. You have to know your investigation skills. You have. You're not, you should not be afraid of being intimidated and the structure around you should be supportive in that. You don't have to fear criminals. Nowadays, we see all these assassinations taking place with whistleblowers, so unfortunately it's just been this frog in the in, in the boiling water scenario. Where things have slowly but surely crept up. And those that realized it very early, there's only so much you can do. So as a result, our security industry is very strong in South Africa. People are really skilled and they're dealing with situations at a different level than most other company countries. Sorry. YoU have to deal with what difference you can make in your immediate environment and not be concerned about what the police does or don't do, uh, because that we can't control. So control a corporate environment, control your area of concern and make a difference there. And in that way contribute to the greater society. And that, from my perspective, that's a huge learning point. Cuz I had no idea. And the transference of that skillset that was in the police is now working in the private security sector and there's a huge need for it. And I'm getting the impression you are having to be fairly self-sufficient and you're having to be fairly agile and fairly smart in the way that you operate because you don't have a lot to lean on to support you do you in the infrastructure. Yeah, for sure. The most dramatic change, I would say is that you still investigate your cases or your incidents as completely as you can. You go through all the stages of an investigation as much as possible without the help of the police. You hand over a case docket and then you No, not much probably is gonna happen even if there's arrests made. I've had one instance where a very good case, I believed it was a very good case, but because of intimidation, that was the talk at the time because of intimidation. We started to see that prosecutors would be intimidated, Because of the structures that these organized crime gangs have, we, know that they have advocates on standby, they have attorneys on standby and people in high places. And you will see that people either magically escape from custody or the case is just being thrown out or a witness is, doesn't pitch at court. Case dockets disappear, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The security industry in South Africa, you have to work, I believe, investigations. You work with the hr, HR department, there has to be a very good relationship, and then you focus on the HR and labor issues on how to get rid of this individual that's exposed. I recently did an investigation. We did it very well. And executed the investigation very well without any interference whatsoever from anyone. And but still that person is not locked up. There's ample proof of this person being involved. He acted in a peculiar way and on, on the day. It was in a supervisory level, it's typically the insider in, in, in a corporation and they had a severe truck eye jacking. It probably took me about three hours after sifting through the information, getting all the information to identify two people and but that at least is a positive, isn't it? Yeah. Because there are things happening. It's not, yeah, it's not just nothing's gonna happen. At least you get rid of that individual. But then you pass the bucket, isn't it? You pass it onto somebody else. Cause that individual might get work. Somewhere else and probably will, I read a statistic recently certainly in the Northern Hemisphere, that one in every four critical incidents around say, data loss and data protection is down to potential insider incident. An insider threat incident. That doesn't mean to say 25% of employees are going to harm the business, but just means that one in every four incidents. And I guess that's still fairly low really. But how does that insider threat per se, and I appreciate it's not just around data, it's about other criminality. How does insider threat stats compare South Africa? Is it higher? I believe it's definitely higher. I've seen through the years when you put in, uh, proper KPIs, propping proper SOPs, that incidents are down drastically, dramatically. And again, getting buy-in from HR as just one example, makes a huge difference. So security and HR work together. Obviously senior management has to buy into that as well, but that's where you start to make the difference and that's where you start to see what the true implications are of insiders. EvEn in the nineties, in my policing days, we believe that with Truck Eye jackings, there was always some kind of insider up to about 85% of the time. There was one instance where a truck driver was hit on the head and he was in a coma. He was hit with a hammer on the head and he was in a coma. And eventually, when he came out of the coma and the investigation continued, um, he eventually confessed that he was involved. So he was willing to go to those lens. He almost died for the court. Obviously he trusted the guy with the hammer to eat him only in a certain degree, but the guy nearly killed him. And that opens your eyes. It opens your eyes. That's, yeah, that's phenomenal. And it also there's an air desperation there, isn't there? Around the lengths that people will go to, to, to either earn money or be part of organized crime. That must have been a huge realization when you found out that the guy who was the most injured is the insider criminal. Yes. And the focus has switched in the last 25 years, I would say. At those times, the jobs were more available to everyone. And if you compare the tool to today, there's a lot of jobless people out there, millions of them. So things have really gone down. So the motivation at that time in the nineties was probably just greed. Now our motivation is, look, we, we don't have a job. So it's not really getting better. And government has to step in, but they're not, it's only for the chosen few unfortunately. Business is suffering because of governmental decisions, governmental structure, it's not working. There has to change. So cargo still needs to get around and your location being where you are around the world is fairly isolating, isn't it really? You don't have an awful lot of continental support for like we would have in Europe, for example. So how do the logistics of where you are in the world play into cargo management? I think what has happened to us is that, and I'm saying this not in an arrogant way, but we, in South Africa, those that successful in managing cargo and have less incidents, let's say less incidents on average are doing an exceptional job. If you compare the violence used in South Africa to European countries as an example, yes, Europe suffers because of, uh, cargo theft, cargo hijacking, maybe more cargo theft, I would say than hijacking. In, in South Africa you might get 10 vehicles. Four people per vehicle suspects onto the teeth, the semi-automatic rifles. we've seen through the years that even police stations gets attacked, firearms taken off policemen, uh, firearm safes emptied out the military basis. Some, there's thousands of firearms that's that, that, that was stolen over the last 20 years, and there's just no recoveries. We've seen in the Durban Harbor, I dunno how many million rounds of nine millimeters, nine millimeter rounds were taken with the container. And the place where the container was a immensely difficult to get to. So again, there was a obvious insider collusion. And who's ordered these nine millimeter, um, rounds? Where's it going to? And because of the policing structures, as it is, we don't know. We don't know where it's being used. Is it used in Cashin transit? But it's, I think it was about 10 million rounds. So where did that go? Did it go to neighboring countries? Is it supporting isis? We don't know. We have a very unintelligent int intelligence service, if I can call it that. That's there's a name for that. Andre, that's, that sounds pretty much like God, do you not get to the end of the day sometimes and think, oh, it's all against you and you and there's no way of, I was in law enforcement in, I was in the British police force here in the uk and. Never once did I really think there was one time I was investigating an African Nigerian man for fraud and he had racked up around about a hundred thousand. He was a British national, a hundred thousand of fraudulent crime. And he was basically using fake identities and stuff like that, very, it was very boots on the ground staff and literally our crown prosecution service didn't wanna touch it. And they said, we've got bigger fraud to go for. And so they were sitting there bar a million, and then I thought, oh my God. Now I felt like the balance was tipped a little bit against us in law enforcement. I thought, what the heck? All those hours investigate all that following the money, investigation trail. And you just think, how disparaging is it to say to somebody who spent all that time investigating? Yeah, we're not gonna go any further with it because if the law enforcement. I don't feel like they're getting the right support from the banks or they don't feel like there's enough and there's a huge problem there. You probably know all about that. You just think, oh, okay, that's tipped again. So I don't feel like we're in charge anymore that we're in control of what's going on and I, that's my sharing compared to what you must be feeling there, knowing that. 10 million rounds of bullets can base weapons can just disappear and no one knows where they've gone because the criminality and the mind behind that was just so complex and so good and so sharp and on point that no one knows where that went. That's pretty hard. Yeah, for sure. I know it's disconcerting, but I think really we've. In the South African security services have realized that, it's no use pondering on those things too long and sometimes, not even for a minute because there's more important things to do and that is service your customers. Make things work for them and it'll work out for you as well. Although it's extremely dangerous. It's really extremely dangerous and one sort of gets numb if you've done this for a couple of years and you just think it's just what we do, but how many other companies out there or persons out there would want to do what we do? As an example, securing high value guts in transit every day in the hub of criminality in South Africa, which is Johannesburg around Johannesburg area. And there's always eyes on you. But yeah, we have to be more clever than them. It doesn't bring us down. We what we do and it's what we are there to do. There, there's a motivation, there's a motivation behind it. And for me, um, it's worthwhile because at the end of the day, the customer is happy. And I know that I've contributed at least something in curbing criminality. If a truck wasn't hijacked today and we were involved, we did something positive. Isn't that oh, 100%. And I think it's tangible when you look at it that way. Quite often, for example, I used to have people say to me, oh, you're never in our neighborhood when something happens and said, actually, I'm driving around your neighborhood at night, three o'clock in the morning. If you want to know that I'm there, I could easily put my sirens on and wake you up. And they're like, oh, okay. They feel really bad, so there's a lot that you don't know that you've prevented. But for sure, just being in the right place at the right time. But with what you are doing there, it's way more calculated in the sense of you can guarantee that because you've been involved there is less negative outcome. So that's gotta be something. And I don't know, I do just like jobs where it's just all the odds are against you, Andre. It's where I found myself. I tried various other things for a while and I kept on getting back into security. Policing slash security. Sometimes it's almost the same thing. But it's what it is. I've been doing this now for close to 20 years and I can't see myself doing really anything else. I love doing investigations. And I love the people aspect about it. It's interesting to deal with people and you have to like people to do this, even the bad ones. It's distancing yourself from the criminal mind that sits in front of you, but learning something from it because you learn every di every time you sit in front of the criminal, you learn something. Yeah. Their deviousness, the way that they try to negotiate themselves out of the situation, the way that you have to be more clever than them. The non-verbal communication, et cetera, et cetera, those are interesting things, and if you don't like doing that, you shouldn't be in this industry. Yeah, agreed. Agreed. And I know that, we're, you don't join the police for sure or get involved in security because you want an easy life. You like being left of bang all the time. And there's just something about our makeup that that attracts us. So look, I wanna ask you, when a client comes to you and says, listen Andrea, I need your help. I need to get a product from A to b. Where, what's the product that excites you and what's the product that makes you think, oh God, I'm not gonna sleep tonight? Yeah. I must say initially when I started my business, I think with anybody else you tend to do a lot of the things yourself. And I did everything myself at first and and I believe it's a way to go, but. Nowadays and again not using the word nu too openly, getting numb for the type of product that we or electronics that we secure, but everything that we secure has our I value to it. And that happens every single day. No, to me it's exciting. I'm always interested, why are they approaching me now? And I've had a situation where I went out that marketing face-to-face with a MD of a global role play in the logistics here, and he wasn't too much interested. And the week later, uh, a consignment of laptops with 60 million was ija and. Unfortunately for him, the security service did not comply to any of the SOPs, and he stood the chance of losing this international business that he had or that international contract, and I stepped in and I was given the opportunity to motivate our case in front of an international audience, and it worked extremely well. Now the reason why I say I'm always interested in why they approach me is because that's where we make the difference. There's many similar operations to ours running around, dealing with, doing some of the services, et cetera, et cetera. But the privacy in the pudding, what did not work for you. And that's why I like to focus because, and I'm not saying we're the best service in the world. We're always trying to improve. But that situation where they approach me is where they start to really listen. It's not when you go and market that they listen. If they approach you, they want the solution now, and they're worried and it's nice to remove that worry from their operation so they can focus on what they need to do. Run business, get in the business. We take over all that risk and that responsibility for you getting your cargo from A to B. You don't even have to have your own trucks. Why not? Why not? Does that work for me? It works wonderfully. I love what I do. Andre, I can tell, but I can also see that bringing on a new client is a very consultative period because it isn't just about finding out what they wanna move and why they wanna move it and where they wanna move it. It's about finding out, like you said, how they've been operating and what model they've been using, and who is involved in every step of that process. And then while all of those components need to be in it, and then do they all need to be in it? And then you come along and I guess really information's very limited. You don't want to say too much for sure. But you've got a model and it works. And it sh it could be very different to how they have been operating in cargo logistics, right? Yes, true. So what I often find is, Any driver, for instance, gets in the morning, any vehicle, whatever the security detail is involved with that vehicle, whether there's proper tracking on or not, and I often find it it's a brand new building, but the security design and security principles are just not there. Which creates a challenge because to make changes after the fact is difficult. But with the transportation of things I always look at what problems did you have? And it's interesting to see often with customers that they don't realize they have a problem. There's this thinking in sort of Africa often. With companies, and it's even with insurance houses that, oh yes, it's in South Africa. You should have so many hijackings, you should have so many losses. That's not true. It's really not true. The security principles of detect, deflect, et cetera, et cetera. Those are the principles that you should use. And again, I'm reiterating about hr, but I sit down with senior management and I ask relevant questions about the operations. What is in place, what's the history of your problems that you had? And then often I find that management did not know what to do about it, and it's spread amongst four or five heads that now has to make a security decision. I think it's nothing new. Yeah. In the world, but still you find it that's happening. And again, that excites me. When I step in, I can really make a difference. What happens after the fact then when everything is sorted, the investigation is done, you can't control again. And I spoke earlier of controlling what you can control, um, but often. Unfortunately, some of these customers go back to the old ways because it's about spending money. We know the hurdle about money, but but still there's lovely companies out there that, that do put in the changes. They continue without having incidents and covering their backs, so to speak. Yeah. I've spoken to some people recently that are at the top of their game in relation to executive protection, and I think the principles are fairly similar. You know these very reputable organizations that have great standard operating procedures and follow legislation, legislative guidelines, for example. Are the ones that will be able to manage their client appropriately because you can't have a client in an executive protection role who's gonna go off and do the absolute opposite of everything you've told them to do, which then jeopardizes the safety protocols and all of the steps that are in place for protection. And I think it's gotta be the same in cargo protection, hasn't it? Your client has to comply with what you are telling them must happen in order for this to be a success. Yes, true. So what I tell my clients is the moment we get involved on any specific shipment and we are there, then it becomes a security operation, no longer a supply chain operation. And once that sort of sets in, then they understand, okay, we've taken over the responsibility, give us the responsibility, please so we can do our job. Don't interfere, don't tell your driver something else than what we've told them. And especially yes in the, in these instances where it's a third party truck cause you don't have any controls over that, there's always a higher risk involved with that because you dunno what systems they have. You dunno if he's an insider, you dunno, what's his track record. You don't know how he was screened or not screened. But we, part of our success is definitely. The fact that we have systems in place to control our own staff. And again, I'm going back to control what you can. So our own staff, we need to keep them honest. You have to have procedures and policies in place that they will expose themselves if they do participate in crime, if they do participate in planning. And it's not so difficult. Those are obviously the tricks of the trade that I'm not gonna give away just yet, but Yeah, of course. Yeah. Those are the things where we make a difference. Yeah. And attention to detail. You spoke about the smaller things and your history in the police services where you know the case wasn't taken seriously because the amount is not high enough. Yeah. But what if the person committed 10 of those? Is it then high enough? Yeah, exactly. Criminals are clever. If they know that's the bar where we will get attention, then we just keep it under the bar. Yes. We only take five boxes. Only take 10 boxes. And another incident or instance where I, this person was handled incorrectly by HR Bec he was negligent and lost a valuable box worth about a hundred thousand grand. And he was just likely eat on the hand. And the moment that reprimand expired, he got involved in the hijacking the moment cuz he felt okay, it's fine. I'm just gonna get another eat on the wrist, nothing else is gonna happen. But this time round we stepped in and made a difference and he's no longer working there. But you can imagine his criminal bosses saying, look, we need you to stay in there, so stay in there, get your head down, do your job, be normal because we'll have something else coming up for you and we'll let you know when that is. You can imagine that. It's interesting that you say criminals are clever. I think the good ones are, I know that I can't say that everyone, I was involved at my level of street policing, for example we always used to laugh and joke and say, the same people coming into custody all the time. They really weren't that bright. Because they're really clever ones. You never caught them. Especially at, even at entry detective level, you weren't ever gonna catch big criminals. But I think the difference, and I was at something very recently called we Fight Fraud and it's it's certainly a UK initiative, I believe. We might fraud.org. I think and I can't remember where the information is, but. They had, we had this kind of, quite an intimate seminar where you could go along and you could see people talking and there was a very senior ex-police chief police officer, and then there were two criminals and they both served time. These weren't the sort of criminals that, were in for anything. Like one was in for, very significant stock markets ID theft that led to huge importations of big rave drugs direct from Mexico to the UK and to the UK and from Amsterdam, great big drug trafficking. And the other one. Who was really encapsulating to listen to, I've invited him in to do a podcast. He he's done his 11 years, he was in serious organized crime. We, he didn't go into too much detail about what he was doing, but he talked about the impact of what he was doing and how he's completely converted to now supporting the banks and financial institutions to help them to prevent fraud. And when you say criminals are clever, you're absolutely right because he said, and I will never forget this, he said we had to be agile. Every time they got closer, we had to move. We had to be sharper. We had to be one step ahead. And I should guess in a sense that you are probably. Your mindset is the same, is that you have to be constantly changing, adapting, improving. So it's almost like a battle of wits, isn't it, between you and them, especially when they are at that quite intelligent, high organized crime level. Yes. I call it a chess game. So we play a chess game every day. You're absolutely right on there. So in my policing days, We realized that if things got too hot for them in the Janne book area, they would move to say the Durban area just outside of the region where we as a unit would investigate, but they installed the cargo would come back to our area, so we had to be clever as well. So if we trace them back to our area, then there is still a case obviously. And then we just go and collect the Durban docket or whatever. So what's happened now or what's happening now is what we had to do to remain clever is we know for a fact that they know is secure logistics. They know who works for secure logistics. They know what trucks we have, so we have to remove our security detail that they don't know who they're, yeah. And I decided on that in 19 no. 2016. I witnessed. I was lucky enough, and people might think I'm weird saying this, but I was lucky enough witnessing two hijackings of two trust month. Sorry. You were waiting. I learned you were witnessing. Two hijackings within the same month of two of my trucks. Okay. And I was doing audits, so my staff would not necessarily know I'm there and I would just audit the process, how they did the escorts, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And On the second in let's talk about the first incident, but I recognized that there was a scout vehicle following one of my trucks, probably about three kilometers behind. And that's on a motorway. You have to be skilled to realize that. And the person with me at the time said, no, he doesn't think that's on, but it was a junior. And I said, hang on, we'll see you with in due course. We are gonna see what's what this is about. And yes, it reached the stage where I picked up my phone and I phoned the driver and I said to him, Hendrick, I'm sorry to tell you, but you're gonna get hijacked today. And he was going ballistic. I felt so sorry for him. What? There's, what that he was shouting no, please. I said, there's nothing we can do now. It's gonna happen. But in any case, it happened. And probably about 10 vehicles hijacked the truck. Within a couple of seconds, they removed him out of the truck. Put their own driver in and the truck went and I managed to follow my own truck for about 20 kilometers because we wanted to catch them. Yeah. I recognized certain vehicles that were involved in previous hijackings that through the intelligence that the security operators share, and I wanted to really arrest the guys on that day. But it turned out that it didn't happen that we could arrest anybody, but we got the full load back. They couldn't get the load. Now, long story short, the two incidents in the same month taught me that it's a war because in the second incident they were shooting to take place, like you can't believe they were shooting all over the show. They didn't care who they were shooting at. Nobody got hit even on close range firing Semiautomatics. It was just a miracle. I don't know, I can't explain it up till today, but what I learned from that is, It makes a difference how you respond in the middle of these things happening. You have to be, have to have a certain type of personality that is to remain calm, although it's extremely difficult inside of you to remain calm, but you should stall outwardly, remain calm, and when you're outgunned your decision making skills need to be as sharp as ever. Because that's where it's gonna make the difference. And in that instance, we managed to, with the support that we build into our systems, recover our truck first of all, and secondly, we arrested four criminals, four AK 47 s one vehicle that they used, but it's one vehicle, probably about eight vehicles on this specific day. And I drove right past them, as in very close. So it taught me a great deal and I'm very thankful for that. I was very angry at the time, I just felt, wow, we should be putting a team together and, do things that I want to repeat. Yeah. But I decided, no, that's not gonna work. Because there's always gonna be more, there's always gonna be more of them and more of them. We have to be more clever. So we started to think more clever. You don't want to fight these guys, but the moment they have the truck, the moment they have your cargo, then they should become the target. And they should know this because we are fighting police involvement, traffic, police involvement, and criminal syndicates. That's, that goes high up in structures. Unfortunately, in, in our country, soy, those structures is just impossible. Yeah, because you need to have buy-in. You're not gonna get buy-in. Yeah. You're just gonna get exposed. So we deflected that problem and ever since then, we haven't had any attempt whatsoever. Whatsoever because they don't know what's coming and that's the, they shouldn't know it's coming. Andre is I haven't in the last, oh gosh. I remember I met a South African family who moved in next to me when I in the nineties, early nineties. And they told me that their convenience store had been held up at gunpoint several times. And I was like, wow. And then subsequently, every time I've met somebody from South Africa who's, Clearly left. They've all told me they've been shot at, but I think you've had your more, your fair share. I'm starting to think that South African men over the age of 45 are quite rare bullets. Yeah, no that's unfortunately also two. Yeah, I, it, it, again, it's what it is. I was so angry, as I said at the time, and to see the trauma that my drivers went through, they were crying next to the street and the one guy, the one driver had to walk for about 20 kilometers without any shoes in wintertime to get back to the office because we didn't know where he was. Cause they took his cell phone, obviously. And the truck was gone and et cetera, et cetera. But yeah it makes you angry, but that's what it is. We sign up for this and that is what we should be dealing with. Luckily, I still have those drivers working for me, and I'm very proud of them. And after the events, they were very much sharp. You try and convey certain principles to staff and they often look at you and you think they got it. Until something happens, that's where risk management starts to really make a difference in people's lives if something happens to them. So yes, it is tragic that we live in a country where there's lots of shots fired, if I can summarize it as that. But luckily there's a lot of good stories as well. Not everything is over the hill, so to speak. Gone and we are just going downhill. A lot of positive things are happening in the country. I myself moved to the Western Cape so I can think more clearly. anD my business has actually expanded since I removed myself a bit from the immediate environment with Johannesburg to plan better and think more, more cleverly and do further studies. so It's worked out very well for me, really apart from those shootings. But as I say, I couldn't believe that on that specific instance, nobody was shot. The guy in front of me his cars, windows were all out and he stood he climbed out, got out, and he was touching his body all over, and he was just saying, why didn't they shoot at me? Why did they shoot at me? He was so shocked. He didn't understand what was going on, but they mistaken they mistook him for an on escort because they fit his in. His co driver fitted that specific profile and that's where security companies involved cargo protection needs to get away from. There's too many examples of escort staff being shot, killed. Traumatized done, placed in their mouths. I could just go on with that and that goes totally against my thinking, you have to protect your staff first. The customer cargo is obviously important, but if you protect your staff, then they're there to tell the story, isn't it? Yeah. And they trust you, but if they're not there, Then what does that help then the customer has thrown money at cargo protection, but it's not really cargo protection, is it? Yeah. It's just a, it's just a flag. It's really, yes, we, yes, we're securing something, if you attack us, there's not much we can do. I'm saying that, so it's more than being in the cargo protection business. You're in the human protection business as well, because if you protect your staff, your drivers, The cargo, by default is protected. So there's your priority, isn't it? I see it, yeah. If you think about the big corporations the global corporations, it's not good for them to have an incident where their product was hijacked and three people got shot. No. And it's never good. So it's about that the name of your company, it's not about the name of your product. You don't wanna get. Tied up with crime every day, and that's what makes it very much important for my customers that they have a very good ride in South Africa. And we try and do that for them. Yeah. Thank you so much for chatting with us today. I think it's been very ear opening. I have to say that for an audio, not a Can't say it's eye-opening, it's ear opening. But yeah, hugely insightful and congratulations on everything that you're doing so far. I know it's never ending battle. ANd may I wish you all the continued success as well, because I know that if you continue to be successful, your staff stay alive and then you end up getting your product from A to B. Thanks, Yolanda. Thanks for the opportunity and I have to congratulate you as well on, on your podcast show. I think you're making a big difference on following it weekly. Now. Keep going and keep making a difference. Thanks very much for what you're doing to, to our as well. Thank you so much.