It felt good to be African this week

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta greets a singer at the pre-Global Entrepreneurship Summit expo at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre in the capital Nairobi this week, before US President Barack Obama's much-anticipated visit to the country this weekend.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta greets a singer at the pre-Global Entrepreneurship Summit expo at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre in the capital Nairobi this week, before US President Barack Obama's much-anticipated visit to the country this weekend.

Published Jul 26, 2015

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Three black professional services companies that marked milestones this week embody the continent’s excellence and pride, writes Victor Kgomoeswana.

Johannesburg - I looked everywhere, including in the most sceptical crevices of my mind, in vain, for reasons to dampen my Afro-optimism this week. Not even the 25 basis points added to the repo rate by the monetary policy committee of the Reserve Bank, the likelihood of a hike in the VAT or the shambolic elections in Burundi could dampen my spirit.

It felt good to be African this week, everywhere I turned.

Kenya welcomed a most celebrated visitor to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in the same week that it reopened the Westgate Shopping Mall, two years after it was bombed, and Equity Bank launched its cellphone network.

Ghanaian millionaire Patrick Awuah gave up a cushy job at Microsoft to build Ashesi University in Accra, Ghana, to educate young Africans.

And, here in South Africa, such was the roll that I was on that in the space of three hours, I found myself at two of the three celebrations of important milestones by professional services firms owned and managed by black South Africans.

The companies, Ngubane & Company, SizweNtsalubaGobodo and SekelaXabiso, brought the traffic to a slow snarl on Thursday.

So, please indulge me as I gloat about the resilience of the Africans who made headlines this week, confirming my religion – that Africa is open for business.

First up, Thursday must have had some lingering Madiba magic about it.

On the same day, at the same time, three black-owned and managed professional services firms held celebrations to mark significant achievements.

One of the firms celebrating on this day was SizweNtsalubaGobodo, founded by First Rand director Sizwe Nxasana and Sango Ntsaluba of Amabubesi.

It was later to merge with Gobodo, which was founded by the first black woman to qualify as a chartered accountant in South Africa Nonkululeko Gobodo.

None of the three founders is still with the firm, Gobodo having been the last to sell her stake late last year.

However, this firm has blazed its black excellence trail in the business world, becoming the number five firm in South Africa, after what are referred to as the Big Four: PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Deloitte and Ernst & Young.

For a while, bean counters set aside rates and chargeable hours to celebrate milestones. And when they party, they do it as hard as they work, which allowed me the honour of hosting a radio show on the same day, from the new headquarters of another black-owned and managed professional services firm, SekelaXabiso.

I chatted to advocate Boyce Mkhize, head of forensics at the firm, who was one of the eight directors we interviewed on two shows broadcast from the snazzy-looking building that is hard to miss on the M1, just off Corlett Drive.

SekelaXabiso chief executive Lindani Dlamini told me one of the reasons they had chosen this location as their headquarters was to “make a statement”.

And look the part they do, that is SekelaXabiso, when you are on the motorway.

The firm, which focuses on what bean counters call Channel 2 work – internal audit, advisory, corporate finance, instead of external audit and tax – marked the opening of its headquarters with a party on the roof of the building in Waverley. Talk about attitude!

It is this kind of attitude that we should celebrate in Africa, to remind ourselves of the tough stock we come from. We need belief in ourselves, quashing stereotypes and, as Dlamini said, “punching above our weight”, where and when necessary.

Later that evening, I had the pleasure of party-hopping to another celebration in Birchwood, where Ngubane & Company was celebrating 20 years of existence.

I was whining under my breath about having to drive from Houghton to Boksburg, where the Ngubane gala dinner was held.

Feeling sorry for myself, I complained about these three leading black firms in South Africa choosing to host celebrations on the same day, making nosey people like me wish we could clone ourselves.

However, when I got there, remarks by one of the co-founders of the firm, Bhekabantu Wilfred Ngubane, put me in a more optimistic frame of mind.

Ever calm and wise, he said of the three firms: “We all planned our events secretly in order to surprise – but we were eventually the ones who were surprised,” punctuating the words with his characteristic suffix – a chuckle.

Ngubane eased my anxiety and that of the audience, which included Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene.

“It is a good sign that three black-owned and managed firms can all celebrate significant milestones on the same day.” Game, set, match, Ngubane!

Competition is good, especially if all the competitors have something substantial to celebrate.

Ngubane argued that for the day, the competitors should be friends because they were fighting the same enemy – the economic subjugation of black people. His mature take was affirmed by the fact that in the audience was the chief executive of another black firm in its twenties, Sindi Zilwa, the second black woman to qualify as a chartered accountant in South Africa.

Part of the joy of Thursday’s celebrations was that each of the events attracted its own crop of heavy hitters, including Gauteng Premier David Makhura, Public Investment Corporation chief executive Dan Matjila and deputy auditor-general Tsakani Ratsela. All of them are young, black and respected personalities in South Africa.

For them to put aside their busy schedules to salute true black economic empowerment in professional services is testimony to the fact that we are making progress on certain fronts, however slow it might seem.

The future path for black South Africans came through in the words of another co-founder of Ngubane & Co, Desmond Msomi, when he said it was up to the younger members of these companies to take the legacy forward.

SekelaXabiso chief executive Dlamini echoed that spirit. When I asked her what she would like her legacy to be, she said nothing about money but rather spoke about making a difference and changing the course of destiny for black people.

Interestingly, all the founders of SizweNtsalubaGobodo have moved on, but the firm has retained the name, indicating that Victor Sekese, the chief executive, is aware that what he does today is as important as acknowledging where the firm he runs has come from.

Honouring the legacy of people like Sizwe Nxasana, Sango Ntsaluba and Nonkululeko Gobodo is high-order wisdom and highly commendable. It shows that we are protective of our heritage.

I don’t know about you, but I think if this does not convince us that Africans can do it for themselves, nothing will.

My African hat off to the founders, the visionaries, the managers, staff and other supporters of the three black firms celebrating this week. You personify African excellence and pride. Keep on sparkling and leading – we are following right behind you!

Blame it on my Afro-optimism or idealism but I am super-excited to be African this week!

* Kgomoeswana is author of Africa is Open for Business, anchor of CNBC Africa’s weekly show Africa Business News, and anchor of Power Hour on PowerFM. He writes in his personal capacity.

** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.

The Sunday Independent

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