Zoë Scholtz

  Five women, five dancing robots, and the three weeks that nearly finished us. Coffee number two, please Thursday started at 05:30. Not because I'm one of those people who leap out of bed ready to conquer the world. My brain had simply decided that sleep was optional with the auditors arriving on Monday. I'd forgotten to send an important message the day before, so I typed it with my first coffee and was about to press Send when I noticed the time. The small part of my brain that had reported for duty pointed out that normal people don't enjoy business messages at half past five. Coffee number one clearly wasn't working. Coffee number two was summoned. On the drive in, I phoned my Senior Accountant and we planned our attack. A few audit actions to close, the Request for Information (RFI) pack to send to the auditors, and three weeks of madness to put behind us. We'd be done by lunchtime. I know. The innocence. How did we get here? Three weeks earlier, we...

Because nothing brings South Africans together quite like democracy, a long queue and a strong opinion about how it should have been organised. There are certain things that unite South Africans. Rugby. A good braai. Potholes. The petrol price. And the deep, personal belief that, given ten minutes and a clipboard, we could sort out whatever administrative disaster is unfolding in front of us. Elections bring out the very best of this national talent. A public holiday with a purpose I love a public holiday as much as the next person. Waking up on a Wednesday knowing nobody needs me to approve a payment or explain why a reconciliation doesn’t balance is one of life’s quiet joys. But this one was election day, and Gerhard and I take voting seriously. Whatever your politics, if you want a say in your country’s future, you have to turn up. Besides, I’m South African. Standing in a queue and complaining about it is practically my cultural heritage. The queue that ate Wednesday We arr...

It started with the FY2026 audit. We were deep in audit preparation, and I needed to see exactly where we stood. Three companies, five people, and a mountain of reconciliations, schedules, balances and supporting documents. Everybody was busy. But busy and finished are not the same thing, as any CFO with an audit date will tell you. So I built a tracker. Nothing fancy. Tasks, owners, deadlines and a place to tick things off. The sort of thing that makes a CFO happy and everybody else slightly nervous. Except my team liked it. Watching the numbers come down The tracker showed each person how many tasks they had left. Finish a reconciliation, tick it off, watch your number drop. And suddenly people were checking their numbers. Voluntarily. Without me asking. I've spent years reminding people about deadlines. Having them chase their own was a new and rather pleasant experience. So naturally, I decided to improve it. That's where things went sideways. The robot misunderst...

It’s hot in Gauteng. Properly hot. The kind of hot where you start the day looking like a CFO and end it looking like you’ve run to work. They installed a new aircon in my office last week. I’m told it works. I live in hope. So yesterday I went shopping for short-sleeved blouses. I came home with trousers. Green ones. Olive, khaki, army, I’m not sure what the label calls it, but whatever colour they are, it’s been a gap in my wardrobe for ages. And they fitted beautifully. Through the waist and hips, anyway. Below that, they carried on for quite some distance after my legs had stopped. I’m 166 centimetres tall, these were cut for someone who changes light bulbs without a ladder. A normal person would take them to be shortened. I have never, in my whole life, sent a pair of trousers to be shortened. I hem them myself. Saturday was for work. Sunday is for personal admin. And this morning, personal admin was me, a needle, a reel of cotton and a pair of olive trousers I wanted to wear to t...

There are certain words that apparently cause immediate concern at our factory. “I have an idea.” I discovered this again one Friday morning when I phoned a colleague about five minutes before arriving. “I have an idea.” There was a small pause. “Oh no. What now?” Poor man. The idea, for once, was actually quite simple. Put Tanky on the factory floor. Tanky is my white Tank 300, and she wears parts our team makes. We were having a special morning. The team had worked incredibly hard, the factory looked magnificent, and we had a chance to stop for a moment and recognise the people behind what we are building. Tanky had other plans for her appearance. Earlier in the week, the Gauteng cold front and rain had made sure she looked considerably more like she’d just come back from an adventure than a corporate display vehicle. Fortunately, the factory is essentially her second home these days. The guys gave her a quick wash to remove the worst of the evidence, and onto the factory floor she w...

It started, as most revolutions do, with a pair of brown loafers. Okay. Perhaps most revolutions don't start with loafers. But mine did. I am 45, almost 46, and I have spent a significant portion of my adult life working in Finance. I did my corporate years. Deloitte left its mark. Somewhere along the way, I developed a very clear picture of what a CFO was supposed to look like. Black pants. Pretty blouse. Jacket if required. Black shoes. Black belt. Repeat until retirement. Perfectly respectable. Also, as I recently discovered, spectacularly boring. Which is strange, because I don't regard myself as particularly boring. I write. I take photographs. I run. I overland. I'll happily disappear into Botswana, crawl around a factory with a camera, climb into a ridiculously high 4x4 and follow numbers down rabbit holes because something doesn't make sense. My running wardrobe contains enough pink to be visible from the International Space Station. And yet every mo...