From failure to success: My 16 year long journey to becoming a CA (SA)

• Ask just about anybody who has become successful, if they ever failed at any aspect of their journey. Chances are, you will get quite a few YES.
• In fact, in today’s article, we have Kateki Melvin Mdabula from Johannesburg sharing with us his journey from success to failure to success.
• He shares with us the exact strategy he used to overcome failure and achieve success in his journey to becoming a CA.

Why did I decide to become a Chartered Accountant?

I grew up in a village in rural Limpopo, where I studied from grades 1–7 in a government school.

The life of a village kid is not very complicated.

When it was time to go to high school, my parents, being teachers, were not satisfied with the quality of schools in our village. So they decided to send me to a boarding school in Polokwane, which was 250 kilometers away from home.

I have a very good memory and have always excelled in tests.

I would study 90% of the work the night before the exam. I would sleep for only 3–4 hours and study the whole night, memorizing stuff.

So from grades 9–10, I thrived, achieving top three positions all the time while developing what I didn’t know was a bad habit.

We had to start considering subject choices at the end of Grade 9, so I consulted my older brother, who was in his 2^nd year of engineering.

I only had one question for him at that point: According to his knowledge, which were the highest-paying jobs in the country? He said to me that chartered accountancy was one of the most prominent and well-paying jobs.

It was the first time I’d heard of the profession.

And thus began my ambition to become a qualified chartered accountant.

My journey to becoming a CA (SA)

My journey has been full of thorns and life lessons on the race track to California (SA).

I am now on the last hurdle Assessment of Professional Competence (APC).

It’s been 16 years since I started this journey; 9 years were just for my college degree. Yes, a record nine CTA attempts.

To become a chartered accountant with SAICA, one needs:

• Bachelor’s degree in accounting or equivalent
• Honors Post-Graduation Qualification (CTA 1, CTA 2)
• 3 years of articleship (this depends on whether it is part-time study or full-time study, so it can vary from 3-5 years)
• Give two written board exams (ITC and APC).

Also read: My journey to becoming a Chartered Accountant in South Africa

2004-2007: Earned a bachelor’s degree

All of you from South Africa know how important Grade 12 is.

During grades 11 and 12, I burned out terribly and was no longer in the top 10 students in the class.

I could no longer sustain studying the night before, and I struggled to even study a week before because it felt like I would forget. That is the downside of just memorizing before the exams.

Since I burned out in 2002, I had a conditional exemption.

In short, I could not enroll in a B. Com. program unless I completed the foundation program.

In 2003, I enrolled in the foundation program. It is like a bridge course to your degree. Had I failed this, I would not have been allowed to register for B.com.

Long story short, since I strive well under pressure, I cleared this exam, but again by studying 90% of the time the night before the exam.

After passing the foundation program in 2004, I enrolled in B. Com. Accounting at the University of Johannesburg.

My study method during my B.Com. was still the same. I would sleep only 2–3 hours before the exam and still, get a few distinctions.

In this manner, I graduated from college effortlessly, never having set foot in many classes and exceeding the entrance requirements for honors.

2008-2018: Post-Graduation Qualification with Honors (CTA)

The next step on the path to becoming a chartered accountant in South Africa is doing your post-graduation or honors work.

It took me nine years to pass my honors.

I have explained it in a timeline below:

CTA 2008–11: Studied full-time and made failed attempts

I studied full time from 2008–11 at the University of Johannesburg and still did not clear.

I was still trying to study the night before, and there is just too much volume and complexity at the CTA level to try and study everything the night before and integrate all 4 subjects with only 2 hours of sleep.

After failing four times, I was starting to get demoralized and lose faith in myself.

CTA 2012-2014: Studied part-time and failed

After the fourth failed attempt, I knew I couldn’t continue studying full-time as the study loan balance was increasing.

I wasn’t ready to give up on my dream. So I decided to start articles and study part-time at the University of South Africa (UNISA; this is like distance learning).

I started with my articles at BDO Johannesburg

My first attempt at UNISA was my best failed attempt and the most painful one.

My study approach never really changed, but I think I wanted it more because studying and working were stressful enough; I needed to put my CTA nightmares to rest.

I kept failing.

When I finished my articles in 2014, I did some self-introspection and decided to take a 2-year break from studying.

I was 29 years old, and it had been 24 years of school, non-stop.

I realized I was trying to chop down the CTA exam tree with a blunt axe. It was time to take time out to sharpen the axe.

Also read: My Journey from Becoming a CA (SA) to Living in Dubai as an Expat

CTA 2017-2018: resumed studies and studied part-time

Everything I ever set out to do in my life, I have accomplished except for CTA, and it ate me alive every day.

I decided to go back and study CTA again after taking a break. I had just finished paying off my student loan, and now I was about to go back to the bank and start another loan from scratch.

If I walked away, all my previous eight attempts would be a waste of time and money, and I would have nothing to show for it.

I found study loans had better interest rates. When you are still a student, you need to only pay off the interest until you start working, then you can begin paying the capital.

This was one of the reasons why I stopped studying full-time because I needed a job in order to get a study loan.

So I gave it one more shot, but I was very strategic this time.

In 2017, I resumed my CTA studies part-time at Monash University.

I also got married in the same year.I told my wife that if I didn’t see this through, she would be married to an incomplete man.

When I tried to study, I found my attention span lacking; it was almost as if I had ADHD.

Once again, I only passed tax and auditing after 2 years of not studying. This was because I now had all the auditing principles and tax principles embedded in my DNA.

So I stopped studying Tax and Auditing and focused solely on Accounting and Management Accounting, and yes, I finally got it.

This was also the first time in my life I had studied for something consistently.

I finally passed the CTA.

It was so surreal that I kept staring at my marks every day for a week until I received the official academic record that I had passed.

It felt like the weight and oppression of battling with one thing for the past 9 years had finally lifted, and nothing was holding me back in any way.

Advice to those pursuing CA

• I have had many friends who looked up to me and came to me for help on certain complex topics, but they studied consistently and I did not. They passed CTA on their first attempt. They understood that the CTA was a marathon, and they paid their dues daily.
• I, on the other hand, did not study consistently and tried to make CTA a sprint just before exams, and I fell flat on my face.
• So while brilliance would go a long way, it is not a requirement; consistent hard work is. I am proof of this.

Articleship Journey

Articles played a vital role in shaping my character and knowing myself better.

I learned to quickly manage different personalities from all the audit managers and from the client’s side.

People skills and managing personalities are very important if one is going to thrive in writing.

I was approachable, and I would approach anyone and everyone I needed to get the job done.

My approach was always based on the personality of the person in question.

I took time to read and learn about people and what makes them tick so that I could approach them in the same spirit.

There is always politics in articles and among clerks, but I always shied away from politics and focused on getting the job done and also learning and personal development.

This quickly made me the go-to person amongst my peers, especially when they needed someone to explain certain audit sections or mediate with another senior. The consensus among my fellow trainees was that I seemed to be liked even by the most “difficult” of managers and seniors.

Overcoming struggles and dealing with failure

Friends and family did not understand me.

I have lost friends on this journey and had to break up with a girlfriend because she was a naysayer. She kept telling me that CA was not for me and that I should pursue another career!

At some point, my parents also didn’t understand the CA journey. They didn’t understand why I wanted to finish articles if I could just leave it and get a better-paying job.

I had to explain to them the bigger picture and to see articles not as a job but as a learning platform that is also a qualification in itself.

Our families and friends often do not understand what we are going through, and why we are so stressed all the time.

Losing my job

The journey after completing the articles was also not very smooth. Just when I had decided on a 2-year study break, I got retrenched twice in that one year.

To make matters worse, I had just bought a new car and moved into a new place.

Sacrificing my passion

I have also been practicing karate since the age of 14. I am a 1^st Dan Black Belt.

I have had to sacrifice training and participating in world tournaments so I could put more time into CTA and fulfill my CA (SA) dreams.

Luckily for me, I started reading self-help books at the age of 14 when I was in high school, which equipped me with all the tools to get through tough times.

I learned long ago that failure is an event, not a person.

Here are a few tips from me:

• First and foremost, regardless of your grades or intellect, listen to your lecturers and those who have walked the path. You need to respect this journey.
• Give it your best and put in the required effort, or you will fail dismally time and time again.
• Playing a sport or having a hobby that can be an outlet for your frustrations also helps, as you will need all the support you can get.
• Try to find people in the same field who can relate to your struggles, as it will be easier to help each other.
• To the young professionals: invest time in your own development; you must be a brand for yourself.
• Before you undertake a task or a goal, always begin with the end in mind because that way, you know where you are going and what the destination looks like.
• There will never be another you, so be the best version of yourself.
• To get you started, I would recommend getting yourself these two books: “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and “Tough Times Never Last, but Tough People Do.”