Hoërskool Jeugland head girl campaign reaches 1.5 million TikTok views

What started as a simple Head Girl 2027 campaign video ended up as a viral clip recognised by US hip-hop icon Missy Elliott.

Koketso Bogashu, a Grade 11 Hoërskool Jeugland learner who dreams of becoming her school’s 2027 head girl, created a campaign with the help of her schoolmates that was posted on TikTok on September 2 and caught the world’s attention.

The video has accumulated more than 397 000 likes and 1.5m views. People on TikTok showed support for Bogashu, sharing that they do not know her but are definitely voting for her to be head girl.

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Bogashu shared that the main reason she created the video was to get the learners’ attention with something new and creative. She was helped by her friend Kgalalelo Sesinyi to shoot, edit, and post the video.

“I didn’t expect the video to get so much attention and go viral because my main focus was the school and now, literally almost the whole of South Africa has seen the video and it’s just been crazy. I didn’t believe it when I was told that Missy Elliott saw the video and commented about it. I actually asked three people if this was real just to make sure and when I actually saw that it was Missy Elliott, I was like, wow,” said Bogashu.

According to Bogashu, she did not imagine the video would reach an international celebrity.

This meant a lot to her because it shows the support of the people and how big they made it get by commenting, liking, and viewing it.It was heartwarming and made her feel grateful for all the support.

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Bogashu wants to become head girl because there are many issues that she would like to address.

For the Grade 11 learner, today’s generation is different from past generations because young people react to what they receive, which she feels teachers do not fully understand yet.

The 2027 head girl contestant wants her fellow schoolmates to build a strong relationship with teachers so that they can communicate easily and stand together.

“I want to also bring back what Jeugland once had. We had so much spirit when it comes to sport, supporting each other in every aspect that we have, that is culture, academics, everything and that’s just something I want to bring back.

“As well as our pride of wearing the Jeugland uniform, when you are going out wearing your uniform, you act accordingly because that is what the people see and when they come to the school, that’s what they expect to see,” Bogashu added.

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Making the video was not a big challenge for Bogashu and everyone who helped her, however, editing the video was a bit hard because there was so much work.

When it comes to asking the learners to participate in the video, it was quite easy because they were willing and wanted to be in the video.

The learner’s main goal is to make Jeugland a family, to make it a place where learners can talk to teachers easily, and to make it a fun place.

For Bogashu, despite the work and everything, when learners are supposed to go to school, they just do not want to go, however, she wants to change that so that learners can look forward to going to school every day when they wake up.

“With this video, I wanted to portray what type of person I am in terms of my flamboyant energy, my personality, how fun of a person I am. I’m quite easy going, I’m easy to talk to, learners find it easy to just approach me and that’s the type of characteristics or type of person I wanted to show through this video,” Bogashu said.