The public sector was squarely in the spotlight at the 2025 CFO Awards, with City of Cape Town CFO Kevin Jacoby walking away with the CFO of the Year title – as well as the Compliance & Governance Award.
CFO South Africa caught up with Kevin, shortly after this win, to find out what it means to lead the finance function in one of the country’s biggest metros, help employees become a part of a high-performing team – all while balancing budgets and cultivating trust.
How do you feel about winning the Compliance & Governance Award and what does it mean to you as CFO?
Winning the Compliance & Governance Award is truly special considering my role as a CFO in a public institution. CFO’s in public institutions manage public funds and by respecting compliance and governance we start with the building blocks of integrity and public trust. In addition, there are different levels of maturity in leaders when it comes to compliance and governance.
The lower level maturity would be the simple prescription of controls to force compliance and governance; the middle level of maturity would be those that are custodians of compliance and governance and provide for standard operating procedures to help navigate the control space; and then the higher level of maturity where the custodians care about the service delivery outputs linked to the strategic motive and then collaborate closely to help remove perceived constraints associated with legislative compliance and governance, using these opportunities to also continually review the effectiveness or necessity of the controls in place. This is where my frame of mind is.
I often refer to it as a space we create to enable outputs, or outcomes that are strategically important. I have seen many positive results that come from a collaborative enablement space so you can imagine how excited I was to win this award. Apart from other roles that I play as a risk mitigator at the City of Cape Town.
Taking home top honours as a public sector CFO is a proud moment for you, why would you say this is the case?
There is just so much going on in the public sector right now and often one is associated with negatives that stick. I don’t believe there is much trust in the public sector as a whole at the moment and that is very heartbreaking for any trustworthy public servant that is objective and professional by nature. I don’t mean to be competitive with the private sector at all. As much as our roles are similar in many ways they are often very different too.
Public sector CFOs have exposure to material outcomes they must achieve and at the same time must navigate very complex political and legislative barriers. Apart from running businesses we also have a social element that must be catered for in what we design for financial sustainability. I am a public sector CFO through and through and by winning the CFO of the year award I am hoping I have inspired other public sector CFOs to rock up and compete for these accolades. They must continue to be proud of who they are and the services they provide.
How do you think this reflects on you, your team, and your work ethic?
A small part of this award is associated with myself in person as it relates to how I rock up at the office and how I lead as a person. The rest of this award is a reflection on the finance team I am accountable for, the executive management team accountable to the city manager, Lungelo Mbandazayo. Lungelo himself gives me such great guidance and confidence. Then there is also the executive mayor Geordin Hill-lewis, my mayoral committee member, Siseko Mbandezi, and the mayoral Committee. This award is for team Cape Town. Together we have created a high-performing institution serving the public and loving what we do. We are all allowed to explore our team and individual efforts to their fullest. What a lekker place to work.
How best do you deal with challenges when they come?
Challenges always come and they come in all different shapes and forms. It is how we prepare for them that makes the difference. Successful navigation of challenges is almost always built on relationships in and outside of your inner circle, which changes over time. In addition to having rock solid relations, one’s principles must be known. Being principled helps you receive early warning signals, even earlier.
Further, to know the transactional base of your organisation, what makes the sprockets move and who does what and I suppose I could go on, but, what I tutor myself on often is entering a room without preconceived outcomes in mind. Let the team loose and have them build a solution in front of you while you guide. It is so nice to witness a team design a solution to a challenge you had no idea how to solve on your own. I sometimes have to hide my excitement, but it is often that I cannot.
What are your plans going forward?
I am 55 years old and I have been a CFO since I was 23 years old. I started in local government at 19 years old. I don’t know anything else but the local government. I want to stay on this professional bus for the rest of my career which is currently at an all time high due to the leadership of the mayor and the city manager, with all those that then feed into the Cape Town system. I feel personally responsible to the public. I feel rewarded when I have completed an energetic honest day of work.
Let's look at your Christmas plans. What does the festive season look like for you and your family and what does your Christmas lunch plate usually look like?
We get our external audit done by end November 2025 and we pretty much finish our budget with Geordin and Lungelo around the second week of December 2025. These are all cues for a break – can you imagine, if both the audit and the budget go well, the feeling of relief. So then it is road trip time, there is nothing better than a road trip with frikkadels, egg on fresh white bread and hot coffee in a flask.
We are from the Eastern Cape so we will be heading to our family. Holiday time is also training time for me, as I mountain bike as a sport and all our long competitive races are early in the new year, like the Attakwas, the Imbuko Big Five and the pinnacle race being the Absa Cape Epic.
On the Christmas lunch plate? We are very traditional, mixed between Liesel and my families – we wake up, open presents and start with a massive seafood brunch and then for lunch there is always a place for gammon, chicken, salted beef tongue, roast potatoes and lots of veggies. And don’t forget the desert! Malva pudding, ice-cream and custard! Our eyes are normally bigger than our tummies.
