adminMr Manamike, AICO Africa group company secretary and previously one of the institute’s two vice-presidents, was elected president at the ICSAZ annual general meeting recently, replacing Mrs Avilla Goba, whose term of office has come to an end.
Carnauldmetalbox Zimbabwe finance director and company secretary Glovah Madzima was re-elected as vice-president. Prospective Enterprises managing director
Denford Mberi, who is a past chief executive of Red Star Holdings, was elected the other vice-president.
So important does Mr Manamike consider corporate governance that he has adopted “Corporate Governance: the Key Driver to Business Performance” as his theme for the institute over the next year.
“In my interactions with stockbrokers, analysts and potential investors it has become apparent that, apart from looking at a business’s numbers, they attach a great deal of value to corporate governance structures,” he said.
“Research has shown,” he said, “that those companies that have good corporate governance structures always perform better than those that have weak governance
structures.
“Every organisation should have structures that ensure investors’ money is safe and grows,” he said, adding that business failures were largely due to poor corporate governance structures.
There was need, he said, for proper checks and balances at board level. If one board member dominated discussions and other board members felt unable to challenge him, then there would be problems.
Every idea should be tested before being adopted. A company was viewed as having weak governance structures if there was not a wide enough base of independent non-executive directors.
Mr Manamike urged chartered secretaries who were finance directors, company secretaries or board members to take a leading role in influencing what happened at board level. They should take a firm stance, he said, where there were issues that needed to be rectified.
He said the country was still feeling the effects of the hyperinflationary period it went through when many aspects of good corporate governance were abandoned, with black market foreign currency activities, for instance, being condoned as unavoidable if an organisation was to survive.
“Some of those who graduated in 2002 have never worked in a normal environment. They have never seen what we would say are proper corporate governance procedures taking place, because they have been used to seeing what happened during the past decade,” he said.
For this reason, he said, there was need for some back to basics training, not only when it came to corporate governance but when it came to marketing as well, since many had no experience of competition.
“It has to be back to basics,” he said. “We have to do everything by the book. That’s the only way we can transform ourselves from the past. It’s not as if we don’t know what to do. We have a lot of procedures written down but implementing them is what is important.”
He said he thought that ICSAZ and other institutes needed to work together to change the situation. “This is a national issue. It cannot be changed by one group alone,” he said.
He said the institute tried to inculcate in its students at an early stage the importance of good corporate governance. It was now insisting on its students attending two winter schools and spending at least three months on attachment at a company before they graduate.
It now required members to provide evidence each year that they had spent at least 20 hours in the preceding year attending continuous professional development workshops.
Mr Manamike qualified as a chartered secretary in 1993 when he became an associate member. He became a fellow of the institute in 2008. The new ICSAZ president began his career in 1990 as a graduate learner accountant with Anglo American Corporation, and that was when he started doing company secretarial work.
He joined Versapack in 1994 as finance and administration manager. In 1997 he moved to Longman Zimbabwe as regional finance manager. In 1999 he took up the post of finance and administration manager with Tourism Services Zimbabwe. He joined Zimbabwe Glass Industries in the same capacity in 2002.
He moved to Cottco in 2005 as company secretary and became group company secretary when AICO, Cottco’s holding company, was formed.
Mr Manamike holds a Bachelor of Accountancy (Honours) degree from the UZ and a Masters in Business Administration degree from Midlands State University.
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