AGAINST ALL ODDS

Accountancy SA,  Jul 2005  

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In February this year, when 1 675 CAs(SA) received the good news that they had passed their board exams, two candidates stood out above all the rest. Both of them are blind. Here are their stories.

Never in the history of the accounting profession in South Africa, has anyone as deserving as Joseph Komape passed the Public Practice Examination (PPE). Joseph is not only black, but blind too. SAICA's Executive President, Ignatius Sehoole says: "It's an extraordinary achievement. Fully sighted people from advantaged backgrounds often struggle in vain to pass this examination. That Joseph passed at the first attempt makes the achievement all the more exceptional. This man is a shining role model for all South Africans striving to succeed in any walk of life, not least the accountancy profession."

Joseph opted to pursue a career in accountancy because "he wanted to do something different; something perceived as outside the norm or ability of a blind person."

With an A-aggregate in Economics, History, Typing, English, Afrikaans and Northern Sotho, Joseph whizzed through his matric in 1993, giving him the confidence to believe that he could cope with anything. For his tertiary studies, he applied to and was accepted by Wits University, where - because mathematics was not one of his matric subjects - he had to complete a year's bridging course. He joined the university's Disabled Students Programme, which converted all study material into brail.

In 1995, he started his BAcc, majoring in Finance and Economics. Accounting was a compulsory first year subject, which he passed, thereby acquiring the motivation to carry on. His subsequent major choices were influenced by his conviction that he stood a greater chance of getting a job as an auditor than as, for example, an economist. All of this begs the question of how Joseph studies.

He says: "Sighted people think that the blind have some extra memory space or something. I mean, you first become blind and then you realise that you need to compensate for your blindness to cope. So you rely on your memory."

Joseph prefers to commit information to memory rather than making notes on his computer - which reads material once to him for sense. On the second reading, he is then able to extract the relevant information. Blind students are given the option of whether they would like to study using audiotapes or a computer voice synthesizer, which is a software program loaded onto a computer. When information is fed in, the computer will verbalise the contents for the listener. Also, when typing information, the computer will sound out each letter as it is typed.

Joseph's passion is tax consulting because it affects everyday life and is more scenario-based than auditing. Pure auditing is heavily reliant on sight in terms of checking the evidence and examining and re-examining figures.

As a trainee at Grant Thornton, Joseph does not get any special treatment Clients give him information on disk which he then inserts into his voice synthesizer equipped computer, which helps him navigate his way through the information. It is no secret that the profession is all about chargeable hours. Where does this leave Joseph, who self-evidently, takes longer to complete a job than his sighted counterparts?

Says Clifford Amoils, head of Audit at Grant Thornton, Johannesburg: "For Joseph to qualify as an accountant, he needs to meet certain core training requirements as stipulated by SAICA. These include spending core hours out in the field learning auditing and accounting practices. In this sense, he is under the same pressure as any other trainee to fulfill these requirements."

Joseph is currently studying for his Masters in Tax at the University of Johannesburg.

Another exceptional individual is Dries Oosthuizen, a PricewaterhouseCoopers employee. After loosing his sight in an accident in 1995, he set out on a journey that led him down an unimaginable path of learning and development.

There are 2,25million people with disabilities in South Africa, of whom some 700 000 are classified as unemployable, since they are severely disabled. That leaves roughly 1,5 million people with disabilities who are fully employable, but who, sadly, are not fully employed.

"Only 11 000 persons with disabilities are actively employed," laments Dries. "That's less than one percent"

Dries matriculated in 1984 and already in his orientation week changed from theology to accounting, finally emerging with a BCom undergraduate degree, incorporating theology, from the University of Pretoria in 1989. The following year, he completed his BCom in accounting.

In the early 1990s he returned to his home town of Vanderbijlpark, starting his articles with a small local accounting firm, but soon returned to Johannesburg. On 1 September 1995, the first day of spring, Dries's world went dark. An accident robbed him of his sight, though not of his determination to make a success of his life.

In 1996, he signed up at Optima College, an institution dedicated to training the blind and visually impaired. The blind are typically offered three areas of pursuit: physiotherapy, switchboard operator and computer operator. But having already tackled two careers, Dries was in no mood to take on a third. For him it was CA(SA) or bust. That very same sense of determination saw Dries make himself a solemn promise when he learned that he had failed Part II for the second time, by a mere 12 marks.