As PRISA’s PRISMS Summit & Awards takes place from 22 to 24 October, The Media Online profiles this year’s Top 10 Young Voices, emerging talent shaping the future of public relations and communications in South Africa.
Selected from a competitive pool of youth entries, each brings a distinct perspective to this year’s theme, Kaleidoscope, Patterns of Impact Across Past, Present and Future’, reflecting on the ideas, experiences and ambitions that will influence the profession’s next chapter.
We asked them:
- What do you think is the biggest challenge facing the South African PR and communications industry today, and what role can young professionals play in addressing it?
- South Africa’s communications landscape is shaped by issues such as inequality, social change, political polarisation and declining trust. How should the next generation of communicators navigate these complexities while protecting credibility and reputation?
- AI is rapidly changing how communications work is researched, created and distributed. What do you see as the biggest opportunity – and the biggest ethical risk – AI presents for young South African communicators?
- Young professionals are entering an industry where traditional PR, social media, content creation, marketing and journalism increasingly overlap. What skills do you believe communicators need to remain relevant and influential over the next five years?
- The PRISMS theme, Kaleidoscope: Patterns of Impact Across Past, Present and Future, asks us to think about how the profession is evolving. What is one thing you would change about the communications industry in South Africa to make it more inclusive, innovative or meaningful for the next generation?
PRISM YOUNG VOICE: Percy Letlhage
I think one of the biggest challenges facing the PR and communications industry in Southern Africa is the erosion of public trust and credibility. Trust has become much harder to earn, but very easy to lose. In a region where people are navigating a lot of different economic realities, political developments and social pressures, trust is influenced by more than what organisations say. It is also shaped by people’s lived experiences and whether the institutions communicating with them understand those experiences.
Communicators are often expected to build confidence in organisations at a time when audiences are increasingly questioning the information they receive and the intentions behind it. With social media accelerating the spread of information, misinformation and competing narratives can quickly influence public perception.
In South Africa, for instance, research by Edelman in 2025 found that 65% of respondents felt it was becoming harder to distinguish reputable news from content intended to deceive. This illustrates the environment in which communicators are expected to establish and maintain credibility.
I believe young professionals can contribute by being more intentional about listening, understanding context and questioning assumptions. We are entering the industry at a time when audiences are more vocal, information moves quickly and people expect more than polished messaging. People want communication that acknowledges their realities and feels credible. We need to be curious about why people feel the way they do, listen before making assumptions and understand the context behind the conversations taking place.
Lived experiences
I think the next generation of communicators needs to understand that South Africa’s social, economic and political realities cannot be separated from the work we do. Inequality, political polarisation and declining trust all influence how people receive information, which voices they believe and how they respond to organisations.
A message that appears reasonable from an organizsational perspective may be received very differently by people whose lived experiences have shaped a different understanding of the issue.
From my perspective, navigating this complexity starts with resisting the temptation to treat audiences as though they all think, feel or experience things in the same way. Communicators need to listen beyond the immediate conversation, understand the context behind people’s reactions and recognise that public criticism is not always a communications problem to be managed. Sometimes, it reflects genuine concerns that organizations need to address.
I believe social media adds another layer to this. Information travels quickly, reactions can escalate before the facts are fully understood and there is pressure to respond immediately. While speed matters, responding without sufficient context can do more damage than taking the time to understand what is happening.
I also believe young communicators need to develop the judgement to know when to speak, when to listen and when to challenge the narrative an organisation wants to present. Protecting credibility is not about pleasing everyone or avoiding difficult conversations. It is about communicating honestly, understanding different perspectives and ensuring that what an organisation says remains consistent with what it does.
Human judgement
The biggest opportunity AI presents to young communicators is not simply the ability to produce content faster. It is the ability to expand our capacity to think, research, analyse patterns and explore possibilities that may previously have required considerably more time and resources.
For a young practitioner, I believe that can be particularly powerful. AI can help us interrogate information, test ideas, identify patterns across large volumes of material and approach problems from different perspectives. If used well, it can give emerging communicators greater intellectual range and allow us to spend more time on the parts of the profession that require human judgement.
However, I think the greatest ethical risk is that efficiency begins to replace judgement. Communication deals with people, culture, context, emotion and consequence and these cannot always be reduced to patterns in data. There is also the risk of bias being reproduced at scale, of audiences being misled about what is human created and of communicators becoming overly dependent on systems whose outputs they do not critically interrogate.
I think the generation entering the profession now has a particular responsibility to learn how to work with AI without allowing it to think for us. The competitive advantage will not belong simply to communicators who know how to use AI, but to those who know when to trust it, when to question it and when human judgement must take precedence.
Cultural intelligence, curiosity, critical thinking
I think the next five years will reward communicators who are both specialists and generalists. It will reward people with enough depth to understand communication strategically, but enough range to operate across disciplines.
Strategic thinking will remain fundamental. Communicators need to understand the objectives behind a communication problem before deciding what to create. Business literacy will become equally important because it is difficult to influence organisational decisions without understanding the organisation itself, including its commercial realities, stakeholders, risks and operating environment.
Technological and data literacy will also become increasingly important as AI changes how information is researched, produced, distributed and measured. But technical ability alone will not be enough. Cultural intelligence, curiosity, critical thinking and judgement will become increasingly valuable precisely because technology cannot replace the human understanding required to interpret context and consequence.
I would also add the ability to communicate across disciplines. The boundaries between PR, marketing, journalism, digital media and content are becoming less rigid, so communicators need to understand how these disciplines intersect without losing sight of the distinct strategic role of communication.
Lastly, I think the most relevant communicators will be those who can move comfortably between ideas, data, technology, people and business.
Access to networks
If I could change one thing, I would make access to the profession’s networks, knowledge and opportunities more deliberate and more inclusive.
Talent does not develop in isolation. Much of professional growth comes from being exposed to experienced practitioners, challenging work, different perspectives and conversations that are often difficult to access early in one’s career. The industry can therefore become more meaningful for the next generation by creating more intentional pathways for young communicators to participate in those spaces, not simply as observers, but as contributors.
This matters beyond South Africa as well. Across the region, there are young practitioners working in markets that do not always receive the same level of visibility or access to regional professional networks. Creating stronger connections across Southern Africa could allow the profession to exchange ideas, experiences and approaches that are shaped by different cultural, economic and organizational contexts.
I would like to see a profession where geography, organizational hierarchy or access to established networks does not determine whose ideas get heard. The next generation should not only inherit the profession. We should have meaningful opportunities to help shape it.
