We were lucky to catch up with Belbrevia Dimakatso Makinta recently and have shared our conversation below.

Belbrevia Dimakatso, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Looking back at the decisions you made early in your career, particularly whether to join a firm or start your own, do you feel you made the right choice for that stage of your career?

From the beginning of my career to date, I had worked for corporate, since after my first graduation and it was just okay simply because that’s what our parents expect out of us, which is to get a degree and join a firm and earn a medium salary to make a living. As a young child, you really do not have much of a choice when it comes to career planning, in most cases our parents would tell us that you should consider a certain industry, in my example it was either being a Doctor, Lawyer or Engineer/Computer Scientist. Just like any other day, I got up from my bedroom heading to the TV Room, I found a South african Brand Magazine on top of the coffee table, there was really nothing interesting on the TV so I sit on the couch and grabbed the mag, I immediately headed to the Hot Spot Editor which had a career story that I could possibly be interested in, It was a story of a black lady who studies Information Technology majoring in Web Development and I became so attached to the story that I found myself googling her Job Role to get some insights of it, and what actually got me attracted was the salary as she had noted that on her story so I was indeed flabbergasted. And that is how I started pursuing my studies in Information Technology and Computer Science, majoring in Software Development/Engineering. I definitely believe that this was the greatest decision I have taken in my whole life, due to the current unemployment rate that is happening in our country, I think choosing to be one of the women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) has played the biggest role in bypassing unemployment in South Africa. Being one of the women in STEM opens more opportunities globally and the ability to meet all my financial needs has been the greatest blessing by far in this rough economy. As someone coming from a poor background and being a top earner in the family, I can really say I have achieved and that did not come easy, studying engineering is hard more especially if you don’t really have a good financially support. Being a University student require a positive financial support from parents but if your parents are not earning as much, it becomes difficult to have access to other facilities in the university as that requires capital, that includes having access to printers, study material, access to tutors for extra lessons to mention few.

Belbrevia Dimakatso, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Getting into corporate may be easy but growing inside corporate is a sweat, more especially if you are someone like me, I am open minded and if something is wrong or right I say it with confidence. Being in a family where we are allowed to speak our views and opinions without disrespecting one another has given me the basics of surviving corporate world, because if you don’t speak up, you will live by the decisions of your other team members and you may be viewed as an introvert, as they say that “According to corporate world, introverts are not good leaders”.

I was excited when I joined a Cyber Security Firm, although I did not have any cyber security experience, I always knew that I am one person who is eager to learn and hold a good listening skill that I often use whenever training is provided. The job seemed impossible at the beginning but the more you interact with your teammates who has been in the role for two long, the more it get easy.

Joining a cyber team is not easy, lots of people I interact with seem to be interested in the role but it’s definitely a difficult task to be part of the cyber team for many companies, In the past, I had worked as an IT Agent, at some point I lost hope that I will oneday get a good career for the degree I studied for, But being an IT Agent has helped me to be confident in my troubleshooting provided we had to do mild troubleshooting for users who had issues with their PC, Printers or Tools and that was done remotely. Because we had to interact a lot more with customers telephonically, my communication skills as well improved as I had to speak every other minute with a customer and that had opened a platform for me to learn about the basics of Networking, Cloud Computing and Internet of things.

One of the good days I had met someone who studied Information Technology and has been unemployed for the past 10 years to date, when I asked them why? They said that “I don’t want to work as an IT Agent and that seemed to be the offers I am getting”, Well…..In my case I had taken any other job that came my way because I needed the capital to survive, and that has worked in my favour. I can only imagine where would I be today if I had the same mentality as this stranger. My advice for anyone that, you must never underestimate the power of starting small.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

As a Social Media Content Creator mainly for Instagram and Tiktok, I must say that the response to my content has been nothing but great, I have joined tiktok for about four months ago and I am at the moment sitting on 117,000 thousands of followers who seems to show a huge interest in my food videos, I provide my audience with simple food recipes and baking recipes and I think what attracts a lot of people is the fact that I speak my own african language instead of English, I am fully original on my content, there is really nothing to fake and people love that.

The simplicity in my videos, the fact that people get to hear and understand what I am saying including those who are not familiar with english does get my videos to reach a millions of views in a space of a day or days. My handle on Tik Tok is @shes_in_thekitchen. Just a tip when posting videos: make sure it’s in the morning round about 9am or 9:30 am during the week, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Do not post during the weekend, a lot of people are busy shopping or catching up with friends or families so they don’t really have the time to browse through their social accounts.

However on instagram I do provide my followers with a different content, content that is more personal, sharing my journey as a mom and a traveler and how to mainly love your body and dress for it beautifully nometa how big or small it is, my handle on IG is @belbrevia.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

In my own understanding, being resilient means that one has the ability to overcome challenges which may come as difficult to them and that truly reminds me of my journey before all the things that I have archived today.

Its is indeed everyone’s wish to further Secondary School and head into a University to study a course that prepares them into a workplace, and that was my my wish.

After pursuing secondary, I had to attend college instead of university to pursue an Information technology Certificate, I was not fortunate enough to go straight into a University and study for a degree of my choice, due to some financial challenges.

A college was cheaper but a certificate was also not what I wanted, But I had to do the certificate until I finish it and my parents were paying school fees cash on monthly basis. After furthering the certificate, I applied into a couple of universities where I got an acceptance letter but that did not mean anything provided I cannot afford transport or residence during the time of study, I cannot afford registration fees, books and a laptop and that has really got me stuck, that was followed by numerous email from companies which I had applied for bursaries and the emails had nothing positive but a rejection letter.

And one of the student in the University that I was interested to further my studies with, reach out to me and informed me of a so called Merit – Award Bursary, by then they used to call it a Vice Chancellor’s Award and it is only given to top students with 100% distinctions in all major modules. I had to work so hard, studying Day and Night, no sleep for five days and at that time I only slept on Sundays after church. I gathered all studying materials in the University library and had to be friends with tutors and everyone in the class who was outstanding in their academics, and that worked in my favour.

I got the acceptance letter to study Information Technology – Software Engineering and with my hard work, I indeed received the Vice Chancellors award for that year and it covered my annual fees, food and books. I had to work hard every other year to receive that capital and that is how I managed to accomplish my studies and bypass my financial issues.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/belbrevia/
• Linkedin: https://za.linkedin.com/in/belbrevia-dimakatso-makinta-45350a120
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@shes_in_thekitchen