General Information

I’m Sibahle, a South African student and the founder and sole developer of BaseGigs (basegigs.vercel.app), a gig marketplace built to connect South Africans who need short-term work done with the people who can do it. The idea came from a simple, everyday observation: our country is full of talented, hardworking people struggling to find consistent short-term work, while clients, whether it’s a family needing a mover, a small business needing a photographer, or a household needing help around the home, struggle just as much to find someone reliable, fast, and safe to hire. That gap has traditionally been filled by word-of-mouth, which is slow, unreliable, and often risky for both sides. I built BaseGigs to close that gap properly.

What makes BaseGigs work is that it treats trust as infrastructure, not an afterthought. Clients post gigs across categories ranging from creative and event work to home services, construction, and domestic support, while gig seekers build detailed profiles showcasing their skills, experience, and portfolios — all reviewed and verified before they go live. From there, the platform handles the entire hiring journey in one place: browsing and applying, real-time chat to negotiate details, and, critically, a built-in digital contract system that locks in agreed terms, payment amounts, and both parties’ details before any work begins. It’s designed to feel less like a classifieds board and more like a proper hiring process, just compressed into a few clicks.

A few features I’m particularly proud of: the contract system doesn’t just generate a static PDF, it lets both parties propose and approve changes to price or scope mid-negotiation, with a full audit trail, so the final signed agreement always reflects what was actually agreed. Every gig seeker profile is manually verified before appearing in Find Talent, which matters a lot in a market where trust is the biggest barrier to hiring someone new. And the platform is completely free for gig seekers, no fees, no commission, because the people looking for work shouldn’t be the ones paying to find it.

Right now, I’m building this independently while completing my studies, and I’m actively looking to grow BaseGigs beyond where one person can take it, through partnerships with organisations that work with youth employment, small businesses, or the informal economy, and through connections with people who understand the South African gig economy and want to help shape where this goes next. My vision is for BaseGigs to become a genuine, trusted front door into short-term work in South Africa, starting local, built for local realities, and growing city by city as more clients and gig seekers put their trust in it. If that’s a mission you or your organisation want to be part of, I’d love to talk.