From Current Affairs, Entertainment News to Sport, Thando Mpembe has had to adapt and swim with the waves in her quest to become one of the countries well-recognised writers.

Never afraid to do all that is daring, Mpembe became a manager of the Sports Desk at Briefly News, after realising that it was an untapped space in the publication. For a publication that had little readership she decided to find innovative ways to introduce sport to that market.

“I expressed to my manager that I would like to write sports stories. Briefly didn’t have much of a sports readership so she was sceptical but she gave me a chance nonetheless. That was when I became the Sports Desk Manager at Briefly News and I was managing the sports desk, writing stories, conducting interviews and trying to grow the sports readership.”

Mpembe has worked for reputable publications such as Soccer Laduma and TimesLive. Her work and versatility in the media space includes being a social media content manager, sub-editor, digital marketer and content creator.

In the South African sport media landscape, we are still not seeing a large number of writers. According to Mpembe that is because, “women are given the social media roles but are hardly ever trusted with writing. The only way it can be changed is if women are considered for writing positions fairly, or perhaps creating sports writing positions at big media houses that only women can apply for.”