ADVERTORIAL SAICA
Thuthuka
Inspiring success and changing lives for the past 20 years
T
his year marks 20 years since the chartered accountancy profession reinvented its earnest efforts to ensure that its membership base was more inclusive and representative of the country’s demographics. In celebration of what South Africa's then Deputy President, Kgalema Motlanthe, called “the most successful transformation and skills development programme in South Africa”, we look back at the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants’ (SAICA) Thuthuka programme. WHY SAICA TURNED ITS FOCUS ON TRANSFORMATION Although SAICA’s transformation efforts were kicked into high gear in the early 2000s, when Thuthuka was born, talks about how to reach its transformation targets began much earlier in the 1980s. At the
time, SAICA’s three-part objective was to “encourage collegiality; involve all societies in the institute; [and] maintain exceptional standards.” The first and third objectives were relatively easy. Opening up the profession to all races, however, was a different story. With the first black chartered accountant [CA(SA)], Professor Wiseman Nkuhlu, only achieving the designation in 1977, the profession’s transformation record was virtually non-existent – with only one black and 11 Indian CAs(SA) making up SAICA’s membership base. The conundrum of how to open up the profession given the deficiencies of the apartheid education system and its long-term effects on South Africa’s skills and employment, cannot be underestimated. The
38 | Public Sector Leaders | April 2022
state of education in the institutions black people were allowed to attend was vastly inferior to the education on offer to their white counterparts. This discrepancy convinced SAICA of the need to create a solution. The knowledge that it takes seven to ten years to produce a fully-qualified CA(SA), after Grade 12, meant that the solution had to be long-term, sustainable and high-volume. THE PROFESSION TAKES THE FIRST STEPS… Having recognised the need to open the doors to more black and female CAs(SA), SAICA established a committee to champion this. In 1987, SAICA, together with the then Public Accountants and Auditors Board (now the Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors), and the Association for the Advancement of Black Accountants,
