Communications was the craft. Convening became the work. Thirteen years and counting at the interface where institutions, funders and communities have to meet, and where the promise has to survive contact with the people it was made to.
Most communications work is asked to make an institution look trustworthy. The more interesting problem is making it actually be trustworthy, then letting the communication tell the truth. That is the work.
An institution earns trust through what it does repeatedly under pressure, not through what it says once under scrutiny. Communication either reports that reality or covers for it. Only one of those compounds.
My practice began building communication frameworks for NGOs that had to run them without me afterwards. That constraint still shapes everything: documented protocols, standing calendars, systems that outlive the person who set them up.
Institutions rarely fail at intention. They fail at the interface, where a decision taken in a committee has to land in a township school, a funder's board pack and a family's actual week. I work in that gap.
The organisations that will matter in the next decade are the ones that can hold a room containing government, a corporate funder, a sanctuary, a university and a community organisation, and get a decision out of it. I am building towards that capability.
I design and build the platforms rather than commissioning them.
Each record below sets out the problem, the strategy, what was actually executed, the outcome and what it taught. Outcomes are described qualitatively. Supporting documentation is available on request, and the live platforms are open for inspection.
Each body is an institution. Distance from centre is time. Size is scope of accountability. Drag to rotate the field, or select any body to open the record behind it.
Matters of record rather than performance estimates. Each figure below can be confirmed from employment history, committee minutes, event programmes or a published platform you can open right now.
Four standing structures held concurrently at the University of the Free State. Influence in an institution is not proximity to leadership, it is a seat in the room where the minute is recorded. Select any node.
Professional convening skill applied where there is no budget line for it. Brokered partnerships, established facilities, and programmes that kept running after the launch photograph was taken.
Everything above this line is record. Everything below it is intention, and is marked as such. The pattern in the work is already clear enough to name: I am moving towards stakeholder engagement and community development as a leadership function, not as an activity attached to a communications post.
A library at Heidedal, a food garden, a Mandela Day programme that pulled four university units into one room, a faculty platform built so that heads of department can keep it alive without me. Different scales, same operation: convene the parties, establish the thing, hand it over, stay accountable for whether it survives.
The next step is to run that operation at institutional scale, with a mandate and a budget behind it rather than goodwill and after-hours.
Working notes on communication, institutions, technology and the awkward places they meet. Held loosely, argued firmly.
Live platforms, published newsletters and public citation. Everything below is third-party inspectable.
“The faculty extends its sincere appreciation to Lethabo Machabaphala for his vision and dedication in leading this initiative.”
“Spearheaded by Marketing and Communications Officer Lethabo Machabaphala, this digital transformation serves as a powerful storytelling platform.”