Healthy Spaces

KEGOBOTJENG MAKUA, 38, is using her interior design skills to create unique and uplifting hospital environments.

- Sisonke Labase

Kegobotjeng Makua is an interior designer whose company, e5 Creations, specialises in interiors for the health sector. When her brother, Sabi, passed away from a brain tumour in 2008, she was inspired to change the spaces she’d come to know in the years her brother battled his illness. “I wanted to make hospitals more homely and warm,” says Kego, as she’s affectionately known. “After Sabi’s passing, I felt my energy being directed towards making the healthcare space more comfortable.”

Kego was born in Soshanguve in Gauteng and comes from a tight-knit family. They moved to Cape Town when her mother got a new job in Parliament, and moved back to Gauteng in 2001. “Sabi was the oldest, then me, then another brother and sister. We siblings have always been close.”