PROFILE OF A STRANGER

Tebogo Makahe

‘Breaking the unemployement chain’

Following the devastating economic uncertainties that the Covid19 pandemic has brought to businesses and companies, unemployment in South Africa has increased to a new high.

Unemployed Tebogo Makahe otherwise known as ‘The Minister of Jobs’ by her followers, has dedicated her twitter account to sharing job opportunities.

“I don’t hire, I just share jobs, and I am passionate about assisting people, by making them aware of jobs that are available on the market”, she says.

Like many other South Africans, the 27-year-old was not working during the first hard lockdown, level 1, last year. The reduced economic activities during that time, led to reduced labour and capital demand. This, in turn, led to little- to no income and the household that she shares with her Boyfriend suffered because she was part of the workers that were the most constrained. Whilst Tiffany and her self-employed boyfriend had to live off her unemployment fund, things took a turn for the worst when she was told that she could not come back to work, because she had lost her job.

“I lost my job working as a retail shop manager, one of our stores closed. And living in a small town in Limpopo, makes things harder. it was already hard finding a job here, and now it’s just worse. Businesses and people are simply not hiring.”

Whether you’re an active twitter user or not, you might have seen that the pandemic has also caused an increased surge of people seeking for employment on the timeline. The desperation after her job loss also led Tebogo to actively look for jobs on social media. This is when she saw the overwhelming calls for employment, especially by the youth who would also contemplate the worst.

“I started sharing vacancies because I would log onto Twitter and see a lot of people complaining about unemployment to a point where I would even see many young people contemplating suicide because of being in hopeless situations. I then decided to be a big sister and help where I can to ease the stress and give them hope.”

Her nurturing nature gave rise to ‘The Minister of Jobs’ on twitter, where she shares almost over 50 vacancies on her timeline every day. She has a follower base of 202k followers and the growth of her followership over the past year, has led companies to DM her for sharing job recruitments. This is how she makes extra cash.

Whilst recent unemployment statistics show that unemployment in South Africa, for the third conservative time, has increased to a new high. One would think that Tebogo would lose hope in trying to better the unemployment rate – especially because, she still, after all this time, hasn’t found a job.

Instead, she remains as hopeful ever and says that she wants to take her passion for helping others into greater heights and established a website that is fully dedicated to job seekers.