In the state-capture depression, it is darkly satisfying to hate on KPMG

We’ve reached the point where KPMG apologises to small animals and for the weather, but still it just doesn’t get it. On a  Friday last month, on what we fondly recall as KPMG Day, the company suspended nine of its most important people and promised to do better. There will be an inquiry, it said; the truth will out, just you wait.

But even that “frank” admission was misleading at the edges. If you thought “suspended” meant “shown the door amid hissing in the office”, KPMG provided clarification in Parliament last week.

Turns out the Oakbay Nine received handsome severance packages so they would go “in the interest of speed”, admitted a remaining KPMG executive, Gary Pickering. It’s perfectly reasonable, really: they were serving out a three-month notice period, weren’t they? We wouldn’t want to do wrong by them.

MPs were treated to other news from new CEO Nhlamulo Dlomu, who appeared to be speaking in the style of wishful thinking. “This is about survival … of the firm. In the opening I did mention that we employ people who are capable. We have made a mistake or two on two accounts ... We are asking to be given a chance to complete the independent inquiry,” she told Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa).

How placated one feels at the sound of the word “inquiry”. An inquiry assures you’ll get to the truth rapidly, but only if you’re counting in geological units.

While saying sorry to Scopa, KPMG also provided context. It made “a mistake or two on two accounts”, Dlomu told MPs. It’s not like anything systemic was going on. You “suspend” the CEO, COO, chairman of the board and six other heavies when a mistake or two are made.

If evidence of, say, a third and fourth mistake were found, KPMG would presumably sacrifice nine more executives and an experienced receptionist.

I would not like to seem unkind, so let us try to reconstruct events in the most positive light that reason allows.

On a bright morning in 2000 or so, KPMG met three ambitious brothers from India (they were not South Africans back then; presumably they had to wait for Malusi Gigaba to turn 21).

The brothers seemed smart and dynamic. Sure, they were visibly uneasy when their coffee was brought in by a black woman. They shuffled about vaguely when their expansion strategy came up. But the gentlemen of KPMG did not notice, because noticing things was not their job. That’s why they noticed nothing until 2016.

Why don’t we do what we can? Most of corporate SA has defended our democracy with the vigour of a pigeon that’s dead in a puddle

The very kindest explanation is that some of the Oakbay Nine were so staggeringly stupid they couldn’t see what was going on.

If the truth were this benign, should the innumerate execs have received bonuses so large they wouldn’t know how to count them? Shouldn’t KPMG be demanding a refund from people who can’t tell an income statement from a Melrose Arch parking ticket?

In defence of former CEO Trevor Hoole, he did put a stop to things. In 2016, but not in 2015, Hoole realised something was not quite right about the Guptas. Unlike in 2015, it was now felt the Gupta association could damage KPMG’s reputation.

“We have decided that we should terminate our relationship with the [Gupta companies] immediately,” he wrote to staff at the time. He really did say “immediately”.

Still blind to the gathering Guptageddon, Hoole went on: “It is with heavy hearts that we have reached our conclusion, and there will clearly be financial and potentially other consequences to this, but we view them as justifiable.”

Some fine insight there, Trev. The “potential other” consequences sound particularly promising. I wouldn’t like to speculate whether you did something illegal. But if our courts’ fine minds were to reach that conclusion, they would surely think of a character-building place to put you.

Forgive my lapse into fantasy. But in all the state-capture depression, it is darkly satisfying to hate on KPMG. There is no foreseeable accountability in the public sector, but companies are much more vulnerable to commercial and societal pressure.

Why don’t we do what we can? Most of corporate SA has defended our democracy with the vigour of a pigeon that’s dead in a puddle. Is Sygnia CEO Magda Wierzycka really the only principled voice in business? Remember how she fired KPMG well before it was fashionable?

In the weeks after KPMG Day, a third of its clients had announced a review of their relationship with the firm. Is it not shocking that two-thirds have not? Exactly how much more must KPMG do to lose its clients’ confidence?

(Full disclosure: Sygnia Asset Management is a client of Fairly Famous.)

We know who some of the dodgy companies are. The day is coming for McKinsey, SAP and other firms that deal in the dark. Can SA’s largest companies find it in their hearts not to forgive the Guptas and their friends? If your company does business with KPMG, McKinsey or SAP, do you feel good about that?

Even if you do, take this from an ad man: your company’s association with KPMG does not look good. People will keep asking about it and writing about it and wondering why you’re so relaxed about KPMG’s approach to business. If you’re retaining KPMG, work on an excellent explanation for your customers and shareholders.

Unfairly, KPMG has also done considerable damage to the entire accounting profession. Like most South Africans, I quite trusted the Big Four. I also thought of them as fairly interchangeable – big, incorruptible auditors for companies much bigger than mine.

With KPMG unmasked as morally bankrupt, where does that leave the New Three of Deloitte, EY and PwC? Which of them is the least like KPMG? If one or some of them are genuinely ethically different, they should speak up and steady their industry. South Africans will thank them for it.

These are binary times. If South Africans do not shun the complicit, they are complicit. If partners or suppliers are compromised or merely ethically pliable, companies should fire them. Binary times call for binary measures.

In Parliament last week, KPMG was cagey about its offer to pay back R23m to SARS. And it has been trumpeting the donation of R40m it made from the Guptas, to be doled out to charities yet to be unveiled. Here you go, SA: R63m-worth of sorry.

To me, that’s not very sorry. The Guptas have looted R100bn, former finance minister Pravin Gordhan estimates, and we won’t see that money again. But maybe we can start recouping it from the companies that helped to capture the state.

While KPMG was touting its smallanyana R63m, it mentioned more interesting figures to MPs. In 2015, it did R579m-worth of work for the state. There was another R495m in 2016 and R456m in part of 2017. That’s R1.53bn, strangely including VAT.

It’s just 1.53% of what KPMG’s beloved Guptas stole from SA. It hardly makes up for it, but, as a heartfelt apology to the people of SA, it feels an awful lot more sorry than R63m.

There are much better ways to calculate a reparation figure than adding up three amounts. (And I realise it’s irregular to include VAT in the figure KPMG owes us, but I’m not feeling generous and KPMG doesn’t mind irregular.)

The point is to start talking in figures large enough for KPMG to realise how badly it messed up and how deeply it betrayed us. A casual R63m does not sound even slightly sorry.

KPMG, you’ve been saying how sorry you are. But you’d feel sincerely sorry if you have to give R1.53bn to the nation. If I may speak for the nation, we’d be able to live with your sorrow.

• Wiggett is founder and creative director of Fairly Famous, a progressive advertising agency.