ConnectUs Youth Spotlight EP 18 : Bonolo Rammego, on education, STEM and heritage in South Africa

In today's episode of ConnectUs Youth Spotlight, we talked with Bonolo Rammego, a senior from South Africa passionate about STEM, education, and using research to solve real-world problems. Through participating in various Youth Advocacy programs and competitions, she showcases her great dedication to innovation, leadership, and making a positive impact in society.

The South African School Curriculum

Before we dig into her achievements, here's some overview of the South African school system for context: South Africa runs three school curricula, and the one your school follows decides which exam you sit at the end.

• CAPS is the national curriculum, taught in every public school and plenty of private ones, and it ends in the National Senior Certificate.

• IEB is the independent version, written mostly in private schools, and it ends in the same certificate through different exams.

• Cambridge is the British route and ends in A Levels.

Currenlty, Bonolo is on CAPS at Cultura High School, a public co-educational school in Gauteng, a northeastern province of South Africa.

"The schooling system this side, it's pretty good, but it has also a lot of its own stuff going on, if I may put it like that. But it really offers opportunities for learners to express themselves or to venture into their talents and their abilities."

CAPS learners take seven subjects. Four are fixed for everyone, two languages plus maths and life orientation, and you choose the other three. Bonolo's languages are English and Afrikaans, and her choices are geography, life sciences and physical sciences. The last two are the ones she cares about, biology and physics under their South African names.

"I've always had a love and passion for science since primary," she says. It came with her into high school and stayed.

RCL: The Representative Council of Learners

Every public school in South Africa with Grade 8 and up is legally required to have an RCL, a Representative Council of Learners, elected by the learners themselves, per the South African Schools Act. In 2025 Bonolo was president of hers, which is roughly the head girl position. This year she is a senior RCL, which means she is no longer the one in charge. She is the one advising whoever is.

"I guide over president of 2026, just giving some guidance on how to take on the role."

The part she wanted to talk about happens above the school level, where RCLs from across the province meet to raise what learners are actually dealing with. We asked which problem comes up hardest. Education, she said, and mental health, especially in the townships.

"They look at mental health like a disgusting thing. Like, why is a person, why is a young person struggling with mental health? They don't pay bills. They don't do this. They are not supposed to be having this business! But there are a lot of things that can actually stress out a learner..."

How do you think this issue could be fixed?, she replied first, addressing the stigma. "So destigmatizing, and actually accepting that you have a problem and we need to address it," she says, and from there it gets practical. "Having safe places for the youth to go to and say I have a problem and I need help. Having people in places where they can hear our youth, so that they can express themselves in the best possible way, and eventually find help."

To address this issue, and many other educational/regional problems pertinent to the youth, she has also worked as a chairperson at the Teens and Learners Command of South Africa, a youth political party seeking to address national and local issues and at Learners of South Africa, an organization unaffiliated with politics, where she sits on the national learner council and works on policy and programmes to address social problems.

"One goal that I have would definitely be to work in a space that empowers learners. If I can impact learners in the best possible ways and change a life or two,... [that] would be my definition of success."

The ultrasound

Other than Youth Advocacy, she also actively participates in science research, her passion. She recently took the gold medal at the Northern Gauteng regional fair for the national Eskom Expo for Young Scientists with a project  focused on improving ultrasounds, a cheap and safe imaginig tool which doesn't reach most people in South Africa, or Africa as a whole.

She does not treat the science as separate from everything else on her list. Asked whether her STEM work and her learner advocacy pull in different directions, she replied:

"My work in STEM focuses on helping. You'd see and compare that with the work that I do. You'd see that it's a way in which I use STEM or science to help people."

Heritage

The last project she brought up runs through the National Heritage Council's schools programme, which runs with the Department of Basic Education. Teams of learners from Grade 8 to Grade 11 research a heritage question, present it to judges, and work their way up from district level to a provincial round and then a national championship. One of the set topics were heritage as a strategic resource instead of a memory, which is close to Bonolo's aforementioned argument:

When her team came out of the Gauteng North district, she opened her presentation with a question in two of the country's languages before translating it into English. Who are you, where do you come from, and where are you going.

"I was basically researching what heritage means for people and how it can impact us as we are growing and expanding as individuals. And I found that your heritage, your culture, is you. It's who you are. So we cannot be who we are without our heritage."

We also asked, given that many of our listeners (including I, the podcast host, who moved through three countries) are third-culture kids, what she would tell a learner who has moved between countries and cultures and cannot tell which one to claim:

"First and foremost, everyone has a culture. That is known. So it's a matter of trying to find where you come from, what makes you, your history. But don't put pressure on yourself in trying to find all the answers. Just take it one step at a time. Do your research very well, and the rest will unfold by itself."

From passion in STEM to Youth advocacy and culture, Bonolo gave us a lot of insights into how different, seemingly unrelated sections of interests could intersect to solve the problems plaguing the society and the youth. Echoing her last minute remark about following ones' culture according to oneself, we hope you find inspiration on finding each of yours' journeys...

We hope you enjoyed this episode of the ConnectUs Youth Spotlight, available on Spotify and across our social media platforms.