DURBAN: HE IS not yet 75, Madiba’s age at his presidential inauguration in May 1994, but he will be on March 1. This is the day on which the man who was born at Cala in the Eastern Cape, about 150km from Nelson Mandela’s birthplace at Mvezo, becomes chairman of the embattled auditing firm KPMG.
Business Leadership SA (BLSA) and the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica) are among those who were quick to back his appointment. Striding into our meeting room wearing his characteristically guarded expression, in a pin-striped suit, he has the poise of an elderly statesman.
If Mandela had Madiba magic, Professor Wiseman Nkuhlu has wisdom in buckets. He was born with it, as his name denotes. His middle name, Lumkile, means wise.
His answer to my enquiry as to whether his appointment calls for congratulations or commiserations authenticates his sagacity. Chuckling heartily, he admits: “I have thought about that deeply, but I am looking forward to the challenge.”
The scandal throttling KPMG is about more than just the Gupta wedding and that ill-advised Sars rogue unit report.
“It is not as simple as one thing."
Nkuhlu maintained a relationship with a high-profile client, as he wriggles into a comfortable position on the couch, who expresses their commitment to South Africa, in the manner that makes you give them the benefit of doubt even without the full facts.
But these experienced professionals would have mastered independence from handling equally complex assignments.
“It takes years to build a reputation and a small mistake to destroy it,” says Nkuhlu.
The clarity with which he explains this makes me wonder if this appointment will not tarnish his reputation.
In 1976, Nkuhlu became South Africa's first black chartered accountant. Nkuhlu, who was then president Thabo Mbeki's economic adviser, is now chancellor of the University of Pretoria and chairperson of Rothschild.
Instead of basking in the glamour of being the first black CA, he opened his own practice and taught accounting at the University of Transkei. Among his students chief executive of Saica and former Auditor-General Terrence Nombembe.
Nombembe calls him an “amazingly clear individual, with information at his fingertips who could transmit it in a digestible manner".
A true role model and an inspiration, he chose not to advise KPMG from the side-lines, but to dive in at the deep end. Why?
“I have always encouraged youth to join the profession that allows them to serve humanity and I was disappointed in the firm I had held in such high regard."
Nonkululeko Gobodo, South Africa’s first black woman CA, shares his disappointment - she qualified at KPMG.
Her admiration of this consummate professional, whose firm audited her father's panel-beating business, goes way back. “He was an all-round inspiration. Doing holiday work for him, I started dreaming of founding my own firm,” she says.
The inspiration saw Gobodo, who still does not understand why Nkuhlu accepted the position, establishing Gobodo Inc “to break the monopoly on the market”.
The firm would in 2011 merge with SizweNtsaluba VSP to create the country's largest black-owned accounting firm, SizweNtsalubaGobodo. Still, she believes that if anyone can lead KPMG and the profession out of its morass, Nkuhlu can.
Executive chairperson of DNA Economics and former chief of the Public Investment Corporation, Elias Masilela, concurs.
“I think he is a very brave man to accept the position," Masilela says.
“But, the magnitude of the problem and the systemic nature of the institution called for someone with Prof Nkuhlu’s experience, both in the corporate sector and in policy development. This will help him deal with the issues at hand from a national-interest point of view."
Interestingly, Masilela sees this crisis as an opportunity to open space for small black-owned firms.
Nkuhlu is concerned that the current atmosphere is too laced with anger because South Africans have a grievance against the Guptas and the corruption choking state-owned enterprises. However, he urges everyone to give the firm another chance, their legitimate anger notwithstanding.
Like Masilela, but for different reasons, Nkuhlu insists the collapse of KPMG will only punish the hard-working professionals in the firm, which “is not a subsidiary of KPMG Global; but only uses the licence” to operate.
South Africans, he thinks, must understand that each Audit Partner operates independently in servicing their respective clients; in the trust that their fellow partners at other clients subscribe to the same ethical standards.
Besides, Nkuhlu argues, the firm has already done many things to address the crisis. “They have acted against those involved (in the audit report scandal) and implemented the recommendation to recruit independent board members."
Nkuhlu was one of those who took the firm to task for its failure to “exercise the requisite levels of professional scepticism” in his capacity as a board member of some of KPMG clients, like Rothschild.
Could his outspokenness have been among the reasons they approached him? Possibly.
Nombembe, however, applauds Nkuhlu’s courage.
But Nkuhlu was sceptical when he was approached in October 2017, “and doubted that they were genuine”. What swayed him was global chairperson of KPMG, saying: “You have full powers and your role will not be prescribed by us”.
BLSA's chief executive Bonang Mohale “genuinely believes that integrity, independence and objectivity are going to be enhanced” by the appointment of people like Nkuhlu, but that KPMG’s membership of his organisation “remains suspended, pending the outcome of an independent enquiry”.
Nkuhlu has a mountain to climb, but probably nothing worse than what he has already summited in his journey from Cala.
He sees his role in four years as the chairperson as that of restoring audit to what it should be: “The last hope that society has in the world where business is driven by self-interest."
He appreciates the urgency of doing things differently, improving governance and quality control; and raising the level of “consciousness about serving both the client and the higher purpose”.