It was a golden childhood for Nonkululeko Gobodo in the natural beauty of South Africa’s Transkei amid the love and encouragement of successful business-owning parents. While her school friends played in the sun, Gobodo spent countless hours poring over the books of the family business. Her father wanted her to be a doctor; her love was numbers and the catalyst was just around the corner.
One clear Transkei morning, a group of black auditors came to look over the books. They were working for Wiseman Nkuhlu, who in 1977, became the first black South African to qualify as a chartered accountant. This was rare in apartheid South Africa, where education and professions were the preserve of whites.
On that day, Gobodo decided that was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life and went to break the news to her father. He asked her what the highest attainable level of education in the field was and said: “That is what you will do.”
“My father always wanted his children to be free-thinkers,” she remembers.
There was no stopping Gobodo after that. She tore through her education and became South Africa’s first black woman chartered accountant in 1987.
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Gobodo landed her first job at KPMG fairly easily, but working was far from easy. In those days, the big clients were reserved for her white, male colleagues. It meant she had to persuade her bosses to give her a chance.
More than 20 years later, Gobodo chuckles with embarrassment as she tells of a senior, white, male colleague who had to resign after she had taken every client in his portfolio. It led to the company offering Gobodo a partnership, but she turned it down to start her own practice. It wasn’t easy. One of her first clients, an Afrikaner at the Bank of Transkei, told her to get out because he was not prepared to do business with her. The next day he refused to see her. On the third day, Gobodo walked into the man’s office, closed the door behind her and demanded that he speak with her. He did.
There were many other difficulties. Although her practice grew, black-run businesses were still very much excluded from the lucrative, largely white-run private sector. Most of these fledgling firms leaned heavily on government business.
It didn’t stop Gobodo and she prospered on the way to overseeing a merger to create Sizwe Ntsaluba Gobodo, South Africa’s largest black-owned auditing firm, of which she is the executive chair.
Gobodo sees her employees struggle with the same battles she endured decades ago. Surprisingly, she claims that women are reluctant to step up to the plate. They want flexible hours, in order to be able to make their home and children a priority; they’d rather do consulting, on the side, than pioneer big projects to put themselves in line for a promotion. They don’t seem to be able to make the sacrifices she once made, she says.
Her calm exterior is shaken for a moment. Gobodo pauses, looking pensive as she tells of having to leave her one-month-old child at home in order to prove her mettle at work.
“Humanity needs to go back to the drawing board,” she says.
“Raising future leaders is a responsibility; it is important to add value to the lives of others as we rise.”
Dressed in a sunshine yellow jacket, with a smile that could power a small town, Gobodo doesn’t appear the iron-fisted maiden she clearly must have been to make it in the often treacherous corporate world.
“I’ve had skirmishes where people have tried to undermine my leadership, but I’ve also put them in their place, and they’ll never forget it… they never forget it,” she emphasizes.
We’ll take her word for it.
Biography
Born on October 10, 1960, Gobodo started her career as a junior lecturer at the then University of Transkei, now Walter Sisulu University.
She left to begin her articles with KPMG in the Mthatha office. She joined the Transkei Development Corporation (TDC) as senior manager of finance. She left TDC in 1992 to start an accounting practice. She had a vision to start a medium-sized black accounting firm, as opportunities opened up after the 1994 elections, and founded Gobodo Inc with a group of partners in 1996.
“The accounting profession needs another big player other than the big four (Deloitte, PwC, KPMG and Ernst & Young). We intend multiplying the firm in terms of number of staff and revenue within a short space of time. It will be the new house for black professionals.”
– Nonkululeko Gobodo, April 14, 2011, announcing the merger to form her present company
She has won awards too
Cape Town, 17 May 2012: Two South African women took top honors at the prestigious Oliver Empowerment Awards, as they were named the Top Black Business Leader of the Year and the Top Black Entrepreneur of the Year.
Nonkululeko Gobodo, South Africa’s first black, woman chartered accountant walked off with Top Black Business Leader of the Year and Sibongile Maseko, founder of Bongi-M Construction, received the Top Entrepreneur of the Year accolade.
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