Women’s Month isn’t over yet and today on #BloemGirlsRock we celebrate another wonderful woman by the name of Dineo Bendile a Political Journalist from Mail&Guardian.
Dineo was born and raised in the dusty streets of Bochabela location in Bloemfontein and went to Christian Brother’s College. She was raised in a very artistic, academic and politically active family and she describes herself as the family snitch, but little did she know that she would eventually turn her snitching into a career.
As a little girl growing up in Bloem, she thought that she would end up in either music or becoming an actress. It is because of this artistic side of hers that she then studied towards an undergraduate degree in Performing Arts in spite of the secret worry that her family harbored. She then went on to study in the field of Journalism and Media. However, as a 7 year old little girl, she never imagined that she would become a journalist who would one day share the room with presidents, ministers and policy makers across the world. When she took on this role, she decided to trust God in the direction that she had been steered in and would work very hard in proving her worth and changing the world, one article at a time.
Her first job was the position of a copy-writing intern at an international advertising agency, Saatchi & Saatchi in Johannesburg. Although she was just 20 years old and had no experience in the advertising field, she chose to embrace the change and make the most of it. Her achievements so far include being selected as a finalist for the MTN Radio Awards in 2014, shortlisted as Fulbright International Scholarship candidate 2016 in and being headhunted by Mail & Guardian as specialist reporter in politics. Her dreams include adding more degrees under her name and starting with her master’s qualification. Dineo also wants to work for a small Communications start-up company and learn the ropes so that she can open her own Communication Consultancy specializing in Development Communication, to get her natural hair business off the ground and to exhaust all her talents before her time is done.
Dineo Bendile is a Bloem Girl that ROCKS because she’s been able to navigate the field of political reporting which was traditionally male dominated and posed many barriers for young women. She has managed to do this while acting as a voice for the voiceless and questioning the country’s leaders who sometimes forget that they are accountable to the people of this country.