Culture shock

Lindani Dhlamini’s life has been littered with fortunate detours. She sees a bit of herself in many of the young people she acts as a mentor to and has developed a passion for the African child.

This is a journey she says she is just starting out on.

Speaking to City Press from audit firm Sekela Xabiso’s offices overlooking the M1 highway in Waverley, northern Johannesburg, the Umlazi-born CEO tells how she is all too familiar with corporate culture shock.

Because of this she is determined to expose as many black children as possible to the corporate environment.

She is the youngest in a big family, one that drummed the importance of education into her.

The self-confessed bookworm initially eyed a career as a librarian because of her love of books.

“When I got to high school, because I was academically gifted, I wanted to become a medical doctor.

"That’s where I was channelled to. When I applied to the University of Cape Town (UCT) for medicine, I couldn’t get in, because UCT was UCT at the time. So I did my second option, which was a BSc computer science.”

After graduating, she got a job at an established national insurance company.

Need for exposure 

This was where reality set in. The experience sparked a workplace exposure programme that has grown to be a passion of hers.

“I arrived there. I was arrogant. I had a degree and was highly educated and people needed to respect that because I spent so much time at university.

"I get there and I am a nobody in a corporate environment. This was a shock to my system. I was a graduate and I was earning next to nothing.

“I had the smallest desk, smallest cup, smallest screen. I did not think my degree was worth anything because I did not know anything,” she says of that time. She told her boss she had her sights set on greater things.

“I was a quiet but feisty 21-year-old. I approached him and told him it’s obvious this thing is not for me and I wanted to be a chartered accountant, like him.”

The company agreed to pay for her to go back to school for two more years to do a BCom conversion programme and return to work for them again. She never did.

“They even organised with one of their auditors for me to serve my articles, but when I was supposed to go back, the company had changed its name to Momentum and the only vacancy they had for me was in Pretoria, but everything was done in Afrikaans there.”

Faced with this hurdle, she negotiated with her then principals where she was completing her articles. They agreed to buy her out of the contract with Momentum.

Setting up shop 

In 2003, after three years at the company and armed with some experience in a business environment, she and a fellow chartered accountant decided to set up their own shop.

She points out that the vision for Xabiso was that it had to be women-led, majority women-owned and that it would focus on giving black children opportunities.

“Running a business proved to be harder than the rhetoric of youth and women empowerment at the time, because people were not as supportive.

"The day to day running of the business and going out to look for business was a huge shock because we were used to just being professional employees.”

She decided to find strategic partners and relationships.

Almost a decade later, in 2012, with the business turning over R80 million a year and employing over 100 employees, Xabiso Chartered Accountants merged with Sekela Consulting.

The latter had an annual turnover of R120 million. They formed the second-biggest accounting firm in the country at the time.

“Sekela means ‘support’ and Xabiso means ‘value’, so that name means we support value.”

The long list of services the company provides is centred around creating value for clients.

“There’s a mismatch in what the universities are producing and what we need as corporates. We need to get closer to education.

“A lot of graduates are closer to what I need, but they will experience the same shock I experienced. They have a degree but don’t know how to do a presentation or a business report,” she says.

The company now has about 200 employees. It has relationships with a number of rural schools and NGOs to expose pupils to the corporate environment.

Dhlamini says the recent scandal that has engulfed KPMG has required the industry to have a conversation that is long overdue about the fact that only a few firms get most of the work.

“There’s a high concentration in just the use of the big international firms. For a growing economy that is trying to be inclusive, is that the ideal situation?

“My personal view is that there is an opportunity to open up the market, not at the expense of other firms, but because the pie is big enough to have more players.”

The mother of two is a keen tennis and golf player who is studying towards an MBA. She has plans to help the firm expand into the rest of the continent.

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