Sue Blaine
9 November 2009
Johannesburg — TEMBA Zakuza gave up his thriving accounting practice in East London four years ago to return to his first love -- teaching -- and help the University of Fort Hare's Nkuhlu d epartment of a ccounting sciences attain accreditation by the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica).
If a university's BCom degree is not accredited by Saica, its graduates do not have immediate entry to the institute's board examinations, which obviously means that students who want to become chartered accountants (CAs) have to go elsewhere to study.
Fort Hare is the first university to gain Saica accreditation since the institute began using its revised accreditation and monitoring processes in 2006.
The university's accounting department got provisional accreditation at the end of 2006 and at the end of last year secured full accreditation, on condition that the university met certain criteria, mainly to do with the development of academic leadership, says Saica education project director Mandi Olivier.
"It is very much so (that more students come to Fort Hare to study accounting now). The interest is growing and it is nothing else (but the Saica accreditation), it is purely because of that," Zakuza says.
SA is in desperate need of black and coloured CAs and auditors. Of the 29422 CAs registered, 1411 (4,8%) are black, 662 (2,25%) coloured, 2441 (8,3%) Indian and the rest -- 24864 (almost 85%) -- are white, according to Saica.
In a bid to boost black participation in these careers, the Association for the Advancement of B lack Accountants of Southern Africa (Abasa) five years ago set up its Nkuhlu s ubvention f und to top up academic salaries, to entice black CAs into academia.
"Our focus is increasing the number of black accountants and we help with bursaries and with visiting schools to tell learners about accounting. But to really increase the numbers we had to change the institutions where the people are.
"Whereas UCT (University of Cape Town) will have some black students, that is not where the majority come from," says Abasa president Tsakani Matshazi.
Fort Hare is Abasa's first university success and it has put about R7m into it and the University of Limpopo. In future it will spread its work to the University of Zululand, the Walter Sisulu University of Technology and the University of Venda for Science and Technology, says Matshazi.
Most of this money has gone to securing teaching staff.
"When we went to Fort Hare we found that the key issue inhibiting its Saica accreditation was lecturer quality. Saica requires a minimum number of CAs lecturing, but less-resourced universities do not have money to employ CAs," says Matshazi.
Zakuza, a former Abasa president, was recruited to Fort Hare in 2005, although it did not take much to twist his arm. "It didn't take much persuasion, my heart was in teaching. I began at UCT," he says. At the university he had his work cut out for him.
"We had to make curriculum changes. That's normal in the accounting field, the landscape changes all the time. But there was an old BCom (curriculum) that was not speaking to the Saica requirements," he says.
Fort Hare's accounting curriculum overhaul started in 2002 before Zakuza arrived, with Saica working with the University of Johannesburg to change the way their BCom was taught.
"The whole approach changed. There was a move away from the mathematical to the conceptual approach, and computers were brought in. Before there was no exposure to computers and that's very important for CAs these days," he says.
It has worked. The proof lies not only in the Saica accreditation, but also in the fact that Fort Hare 's results are good -- this year the pass rate was 65%, with 13 students passing.
" They dropped off slightly since 2008 where they achieved an excellent pass rate (78% -- seven students graduated). One must remember that the numbers at this stage are still quite small and one person failing can make a big difference to the overall percentage pass rate," says Olivier.
For Abasa, the achievement proves something important: " It is possible to achieve big goals if you partner in a strategic way ," says Matshazi.
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