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Thirty years ago, SizweNtsalubaGobodo (SNG), what was to become the country’s largest black-owned and black-managed accounting firm, was born.
Today, it has huge ambitions to become the advisory firm of choice on the continent.
“Our purpose is married to Africa and for us to continue to be relevant as we grow our footprint in west, east, central and southern Africa,” CEO Victor Sekese said during an interview with City Press this past week.
“We find local firms, we team with them and they become part of the SNG Africa network.
“We have a presence in countries such as Cameroon, Nigeria and Ghana. We are quite settled in west Africa and Zambia. Where we want to be and where we are not right now is east Africa,” he explained.
“Some [African] countries have not developed their regulatory environment. Although the relative size of the profession in some areas can be small, we were able to find partners and people who resonate with our vision,” Sekese added.
He said SNG did a lot of developmental work, but a business case was needed for it to be sustainable.
Sekese said the firm was also active in growing the profession on the rest of the continent. It provides technical assistance to the Pan African Federation of Accountants and the African Tax Administration Forum.
As a growing company on the continent, Sekese was disheartened by the recent xenophobic attacks.
“We need to start looking at economic development on the continent as a whole and, if that’s perhaps too much, then we need to start with regional development.
“We as South Africans need to realise that we don’t live in isolation and countries that have embraced immigrants grow and are more diverse; and diversity brings value.
“If we had all 1 200 of our employees looking and thinking alike, we wouldn’t progress,” Sekese noted.
In 2012, SNG became the sole external auditor of state logistics company Transnet in a move that was hailed as necessary for transformation.
Sekese said the confidence displayed by government had given them traction, but the effect wasn’t as wide as he would like, especially in the private sector.
“It’s a perception thing, where people trust a brand and don’t look at the profession. South Africa has been ranked number one in terms of accounting and auditing regulation by the World Economic Forum, and they’re not just looking at one brand but the whole profession. But people want to use just the big brands,” he said.
Sekese said SNG had consolidated its presence in the public sector, but the private sector was progressing slowly, although they have picked up big private clients such as MTN and Stanlib.
As the business grows, capacity also needs to grow and Sekese said SNG was making every effort to grow the pipeline of skills.
“Our approach is: if we can’t get them, we’ll make them,” he declared.
SNG has a R5.5 million bursary scheme for students.
“We also have an in-house programme, where we help people through their postgraduate qualification through our corporate academy and we have a person dedicated to looking after these people.
“We have been able to produce about 40 or so black accountants who have been able to qualify this way with pass rates of between 70% and 80%,” he said.
Sekese highlighted that the issue of skills reflected a larger transformation issue in the sector, especially growing the pool of black and coloured candidates as the profession seeks to be more representative.
“We started late because this profession during the old days was reserved for white males. We have progressed significantly and continue to progress. We do wish that the rate of progression was faster, but we have to acknowledge that we do have fundamental structural challenges.
“One of the big challenges is that the pool of people is quite small. We have children with matric certificates, but they’ve done maths literacy and so many industries fight over the few students who have done maths,” he noted.
Sekese, who is vice-chairperson of the SA Institute of Chartered Accountants, said the institute was making strides in addressing transformation, including reaching out to previously blacks-only universities.
“We have worked with the University of Fort Hare and the University of Limpopo to get them accredited, and this has had a more visible impact with transformation.”
Sekese’s ambition is to make SNG and SNG Africa the employer of choice in the profession.
In media reports last year, it was alleged that the firm was downsizing despite securing a huge contract from Transnet, but Sekese refutes this.
“We went through a process of looking at the staff mix and we had more staff members in certain categories than we needed. In fact, we recruited more than 200 people who we needed last year and we let go of less than 40 who were not needed,” he said.
