08 November 2002
	Accountancy TRADITION TURNED ON ITS HEAD By Ethel Hazelhurst

There are only 248 black accountants in SA. But this situation should change soon. Cida City Campus is establishing a centre of excellence in accountancy - with the help of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the Rand Afrikaans University (RAU), KPMG and others. PwC deputy CEO Suresh Kana, who is in charge of the firm's social responsibility programme, says Cida is a future source of black accountants and he has promoted the firm's involvement in Cida (see page 13). He assigned assistant manager Llewellyn Bricknell to establish a continuity plan for Cida, within PwC. "We set up a steering committee of four and a team of 20," says Bricknell. But Bricknell saw that creating a course for a CA specialisation programme needed more time than PwC's volunteer team had to spare. "We approached RAU, who co-operate extensively with the SA Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica) and the University of Fort Hare in the development of black CAs. They will assist with quality assurance of exam and test papers and in the development of a high-quality curriculum. We have to be sure that the quality of what we do is extremely high so we can increase the students' chances of achieving their goals," he says.