“Career guidance if vital,” says Dr Nompumelelo Zuma, whose first name is a female version for the name Success.
Zuma, a Ladysmith-born woman with no career counselling under her belt, went to university to study a BCom Accounting degree and ended up with a doctorate in philosophy.
Zuma recently graduated with a Doctor of Philosophy in Management Studies from UWC.
She is also the regional manager of the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) in KwaZulu-Natal.
In an interview with Business Report on her remarkable journey to where she is now, Zuma explained the stepping stones in her career..
She is the fourth child in a family of six siblings from Ladysmith. She married into a family from Pietermaritzburg and continues to live there.
Zuma, who is a 38-year-old mother of three boys, says in her second semester of her first year at university, she developed an interest in IT and changed her field of study to B.Com Information Systems and Technology and Business Management. She finished her junior degree in 2007 and joined a bank as a consultant.
She then served as a co-operative specialist in a government department for a contractual period of three years before becoming a business adviser in a development bank.
In 2015, she joined the NYDA as a specialist in co-operatives. She later enrolled for a postgraduate diploma in business management and an MBA with the assistance of a NYDA bursary.
Zuma developed an interest in research studies and, at the introduction of enterprise resource planning (ERP) in the organisation, she noticed the reluctance of co-employees to adopt the system.
This prompted her to do further research on why there was negativity in system's adoption.
Intrigued by the subject, Zuma registered this as the dissertation for her PhD at UWC, looking at the nexus between knowledge management and enterprise resource planning in the NYDA.
Her project used a mixed methodology research where she used co-employees as her sample. Junior staff members were used as a sample for a quantitative study, while senior staff members were assigned to a qualitative study.
However, the onset of the Covid-19 lockdown was a major stumbling block to her research. Zuma says this made it very difficult for her to get responses for the study. However, with perseverance, she managed to finish her PhD.
Zuma says the findings of the research helped the NYDA establish if the processes used to implement ERP were enough to help knowledge transfer and boost employees’ morale towards the ERP implementation and usage.
"I am grateful to the NYDA CEO Waseem Carrim for allowing me to do this study. I would also like to thank the colleagues who took part in this study. Without your participation, I would not have been able to do this study,” she says.
From this experience, Zuma says she encourages people to take a leap of faith and work hard in whatever they want to do.
“Coming from the rural areas did not stop me from doing what I have always wanted. Being the first one in my family and community to obtain this degree should be the beginning of many doctors of philosophy and medical doctors to come. Yes, it is challenging, but if I could do it, you can do it as well.”
Asked what was next for her, she said: "I wanted to breathe, lol! A PhD is not only academic, it is also psychological and takes a lot of strength and energy.“
She says career guidance was a must for learners as she could have saved herself some time on her learning journey.
Had she received this guidance at high school, Zuma says she would have made better and informed decisions regarding her career path.
“The career guidance could have helped me assess my strengths and weaknesses, set realistic career goals and create action plans for achieving those goals.”
Zuma now believes that the lack of career guidance can hinder the potential of a young person to pursue what they are good at, with many merely settling for a career in a faculty where they happened to get space at a university.
“We should be frank in saying that the other courses at university cannot shape a young person to be self-employed and create employment. Young people also have the tendency of not taking courses offered by TVET colleges, which in my opinion are very good as they give young people practical experience.
“Career guidance could help in this regard by shaping young people towards their goals," Zuma said.
Zuma has a passion for youth economic participation, which she says is the reason she loves her job at the NYDA.
NYDA is a South African-based agency established primarily to address challenges faced by the nation’s youth. Through this organisation many young people to gain access to financial and non-financial business development support, to enable them to establish their businesses.
And as South Africa celebrates Youth Month, with more than 60% of those aged 15-24 are currently unemployed, according to Statistics South Africa, Zuma's journey can help inspire other South Africans find their passion.
“I would like to grow and witness a bigger picture of youth self-employment and job creation. I cannot rest until youth unemployment is attended to in KwaZulu-Natal and is reduced.”
BUSINESS REPORT