In late May 2017, two months after then president Jacob Zuma terrified the country by replacing finance minister Pravin Gordhan with the almost entirely unknown Malusi Gigaba, the controversial proposal to make audit firm rotation mandatory was pushed through parliament.

The necessary change to the Auditing Profession Act was announced at a press conference led by Gigaba and Bernard Agulhas, then CEO of the Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors (Irba). On June 5 2017 the Mandatory Audit Firm Rotation (MAFR) rule was gazetted; from then on, companies’ audit firms had to be changed every 10 years. ..

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