PRETORIA, South Africa – Auditing RDP houses in the Eastern Cape showed Katlego Malebye how inadequate housing can undermine people’s dignity and prospects. Now the Pretoria-raised candidate architect is using her place in the Miss South Africa competition to advocate for better homes and help young people find their footing in the professions that build them.
The 31-year-old is among the 19 finalists announced for Miss South Africa 2026, representing Gauteng. Through her initiative, Build For Change, she wants to connect housing advocacy with youth development and greater opportunities for women in the built environment and science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Malebye holds undergraduate and postgraduate architecture qualifications and is registered with the South African Council for the Architectural Profession (SACAP) as a candidate architect. Her advocacy draws on both her fieldwork and her experience of the support young professionals need to turn their qualifications into careers.
Housing That Protects Dignity
While conducting audits of RDP houses in Port St Johns, Malebye encountered poor infrastructure and inadequate living conditions. The experience strengthened her belief that housing shapes far more than where people sleep. It affects their stability, wellbeing and ability to pursue opportunities.
Her work took place in a province facing a substantial housing challenge.
The Daily Dispatch reported in December 2025 that the Eastern Cape’s total recorded housing needs backlog exceeded 774,700 in October that year. That broader figure was separate from the province’s list of more than 62,000 approved beneficiaries.
Human Settlements MEC Siphokazi Lusithi told the provincial legislature that providing housing for the approved beneficiaries would require about R16 billion and take approximately 11 years at prevailing funding levels. DA MPL Chantel King also raised concerns about more than 30,000 incomplete RDP houses across 87 projects.
For Malebye, those challenges reinforce the need to place the people who live in subsidised housing at the centre of discussions about design, construction and delivery. Build For Change seeks to keep dignity and living conditions part of that conversation.
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Helping Graduates Find A Foothold
The initiative also addresses a different barrier: the distance between earning a qualification and securing meaningful work.
Malebye says young graduates need mentorship, practical experience and professional networks to establish themselves. Completing a degree is an achievement, but entering a profession often requires access to people and opportunities that are unevenly distributed.
South Africa’s labour figures show the scale of the wider challenge. Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey recorded five million unemployed young people aged 15 to 34 in the second quarter of 2026, an increase of 264,000 from the preceding quarter.
The unemployment rate for that age group rose to 47.4%. These figures cover young people across education levels, rather than graduates alone, but illustrate the difficult employment environment in which newly qualified professionals are seeking work.
Through Build For Change, Malebye wants to help young people gain the guidance and exposure needed to move from studying a profession to participating in it.
Supporting Women Beyond The Classroom
For Malebye, mentorship is also personal. Guidance from a female mentor helped shape her career, and she wants other young women to have access to similar support.
Her focus extends to women entering architecture, engineering and construction, where getting through the door is only part of the challenge. She wants them to receive the encouragement, professional exposure and guidance needed to remain in the industry, progress and eventually support others.
A 2023 University of Cape Town study highlighted the gap between women’s participation in architectural education and their representation in practice. It noted that women outnumbered men in the architectural student body, yet accounted for only just over a quarter of registered architects, with black women representing a small proportion.
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Based on interviews with nine practising women architects, the research explored how gender expectations and unequal access to opportunities shaped their careers.
Malebye is exploring possible collaborations with the Golden Key International Honour Society and SACAP to support mentorship and professional development. Those discussions remain proposals, and no partnerships have been finalised.
Building Something That Outlasts The Crown
Her initiative aligns with the Miss South Africa Organisation’s emphasis on developing contestants’ advocacy through Empower Youth Africa (EYA).
When announcing the Top 19 in August, the organisation said finalists would continue expanding initiatives covering education, entrepreneurship, youth development, health, civic participation and Pan-African collaboration.
Malebye sees her participation as an opportunity to bring greater attention to the issues she encounters through architecture and to build relationships that could support her work beyond the competition.
“The crown is the platform, not the purpose. The purpose is what I am able to build with that platform, who I can bring with me, and what continues long after the crown is gone,” she said.
Build For Change brings together three connected ambitions: homes that protect dignity, opportunities that help young people establish careers, and mentorship that enables more women to shape South Africa’s built environment.
For Malebye, the lasting achievement would be an initiative that continues opening doors long after the pageant ends.
