The month of June marks Youth month in South Africa, with the sixteenth being Youth Day, observed to honour the youth of 1976 Soweto Uprising who fought for liberation. Now fifty years on, the youth are making strides and creating new paths of success that will be studied by generations to come.
In celebration of Youth Month, we’re putting the spotlight on brand influencer and content creator, Sni Mhlongo. The 28 year old South African influencer has experienced leaps of success in an industry that is still figuring it out and on a continent that always and often gets left behind, be it monetization, fair compensation or influencing and content creation not being considered a real career despite being one of the fastest growing industries in Africa.
From iconic brand partnerships that break the internet to being the first of many in influencing and speaking on panels, there’s no stopping Sni’s go. The award winning influencer recently shared her journey at the 2026 Young & Building Brands Dialogue, from how it all started to where she plans on taking it next.
Sni began creating content in her first year while studying at the University of Cape Town. Her goal was to become a magazine editor, a decision she made in resistance to being an actor like her parents. She picked up a camera and started a YouTube channel before it was lucrative in South Africa and the rest became history as she puts it.
“Now I create content across major platforms and it’s the only job I ever had.”
Content creation and being a brand influencer has been Sni’s only job and career path. The beauty creator revealed how she used to watch and get inspiration from overseas creators and monitored how they interacted with brands.
“When I started doing things they were doing with brands, I was like ‘ Ohh, I can do it too’. It wasn’t one big brand campaign. It was all the little ones that were giving me my allowance. I stopped getting allowance because I was [now] getting money,” she said on her early brand campaigns.
The beauty recently made headlines and trended across all social media platforms with sixteen million views of her uMemulo (coming of age) ceremony content. What makes it even more impressive is how Sni and her team managed to incorporate brands that she’s been part of into the ceremony; creating a first of it’s kind brand influencing in the country.
“My team and I were like, ‘What if for the next one we include some brands?'” Sni revealed on how it all came together while planning her uMemulo six months after the first ceremony. She felt strongly that could achieve with her ceremony (which she dubbed Snichella) what major festivals like Coachella achieve with brands activations.
One of the brands was Vaseline South Africa. “Vaseline stood out because they’re a heritage brand and culturally relevant in South Africa. That was a no brainer,” Sni shared.
Another brand that came on board was Maybelline, sponsoring make-up for Sni and her girls.
Sni had also just started a new partnership with Brutal Fruit, she used the ceremony to showcase the brand’s non-alcoholic range, as a non drinker herself.
And that’s how Sni Mhlongo became the first brand influencer to have brand partnerships for her uMemulo.
Whilst Sni has experienced many career highs, she admits it all hasn’t been easy; especially the public scrutiny that comes with it. “The fact that you can’t separate yourself with your work because you are the work… if anyone catches you slipping, you trend for the next two weeks. It’s the fact that so much of myself is the job, that is the hardest thing.”
The challenges have however not discouraged Sni to look for another career or slow down and hide. She made it clear she’s in it to win and for the long haul. “I’m an all or nothing girl. Unfortunately there’s no stepping back. You just have to accept and be okay with the fact that you want to do this; it’s your passion, purpose and calling [but] it also has shadows and this is the shadow of doing that,” she said.
How seriously does Sni take her influencing career? She has invested in building a team to build ‘brand Sni Mhlongo’.
When you move from just creating content to the business of influencing, it’s like, ‘I need things that’ll give me a bit of credibility for the brands I speak to to take me seriously’. Not speaking for myself was a really important thing in that regard. It’s also realizing that I have done everything I can do for myself, now I need someone else to look at Sni Mhlongo and ask ‘What can she do next?’
Sni also recently became one of the Fenty beauty SA squad members. She shared her excitement saying, “I love Fenty. It feels amazing because Fenty is one of those brands that pioneered inclusion in beauty and bringing it home to Africa where there are mostly darker shades and also being part of telling the story is iconic.”
Global Africa is Sni’s next mission in wanting more and doing more.
On finance challenges influencers and creators face in dealing with financial institutions, Sni says she learnt early on from her freelance parents.
“I recognized the problem in 2020 when no one was taking me seriously when I’d want to get things. And now Sni the influencer operates under a company. It’s been a lot easier navigating that because every brand pays me under my company and if I want to apply for credit I just send them six months of my company statements because that’s what they require. I feel like that’s the easiest way right now. I watched my freelance parents as artists, I’ve seen how hard the financial world is for them; that’s how I got the idea that I should be a company and operate under that,” she shared.
She went on to add how she doesn’t see that situation between influencers and financial institutions getting better anytime soon. “I’ve told everyone who asked me to start a company.”
