IN TROUBLE? RENT A DARKIE

KPMG SA has seen the light: when greed gets the better of you and threatens to destroy your company, find a willing or gullible black executive to clean up your mess. This, at least, seems to be the long-established tradition among companies that have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

In such instances, black executives suddenly become little more than employment-equity window dressing, the type of person who gets dragged along to pitch for business from state-owned entities. These are often the same people who work in these firms almost unnoticed by their bosses for ages, before overnight acquiring the experience and skills to step in when the firm gets caught in unethical or criminal behaviour.

Nhlamu Dlomu has worked at KPMG for five years. In September, she succeeded Trevor Hoole as CEO when he left with eight others who were the leading partners in KPMG’S nefarious dealings with the Gupta family and the SA Revenue Service (Sars).

Hoole had replaced Moses Kgosana, who joined KPMG in 2002 before rising all the way to the top. Kgosana seemed to have acquired a taste for the finer things in life. He must have taken such a liking to the fare on offer at the Guptas that, for all those years he was at the helm, KPMG all but turned a blind eye to the family’s questionable business activities.

KPMG says it “audited” the accounts of 33 companies owned by the fugitive family. Only, in that period, not once did it seem to notice the outright money-laundering and thieving that was taking place in those companies. Now, auditors are meant to be the last line of defence against corrupt and unethical corporate behaviour. Here, KPMG clearly wasn’t.

But it also extended its brand of professionalism to other shady individuals linked to the Saxonwold Shebeen. Helping to get rid of a sitting finance minister, his deputy and 55 hardworking Sars executives was all in a day’s work. Along the way, KPMG discovered such lucrative revenue streams as copying and pasting instructions onto pages and charging exorbitant prices for it. In the end, the report cost Sars — no, you the taxpayer — R23m. It cost billions more in uncollected taxes, lost investment, lost jobs and loss of investor confidence. It turned SA into a haven for corruption.

A veneer of credibility

KPMG International then evidently cast around for a black face to clean up the mess and pacify an angry nation. Enter Dlomu, the human resources director. Agreeing to mop up such vomit, you’d imagine, makes her either over-courageous or gullible or both.

But the powers-that-be at KPMG strategised further. Realising Dlomu was perhaps short a spot of credibility and experience, they settled on the very respectable Wiseman Nkuhlu for chairman. Before lending his enormous credibility to KPMG, Nkuhlu, a peerless pioneer and father of black accounting in SA, commanded a lot of respect. He taught black accountants, funded their training or hired them when the established white companies in apartheid SA would not touch them with the longest pole. That’s exactly why he is the perfect candidate to knock on the doors of the regulators and mop up the mess left behind at KPMG.

Dlomu and Nkuhlu have made themselves the black face of the fraud that has masqueraded as some of the company’s audit and professional work. They are there to do what they can to save the firm.

But KPMG’S apparent culture of corruption helped take down one of SA’S few black banks, VBS Mutual Bank. It will not be the last. KPMG also audits three other major banks — Nedbank, Barclays Africa and Standard — and dozens of companies in which billions of rand in pension money is invested.

Nkuhlu has, until now, been true to his first name.

Agreeing to mop up such vomit makes Dlomu either overcourageous or gullible