Miss South Africa pageant Chidimma Adetshina.
The latest manifestation of Afrophobia in South Africa has been a row over the nationality of a contestant in the country’s most prestigious beauty pageant. Chidimma Vanessa Onwe Adetshina has been at the center of debate raged her eligibility to participate in the Miss South Africa competition. A stream of online abuse and threats took its toll on the 23-year-old law student who announced on Thursday that she was removing herself from the competition for the “safety and wellbeing of my family”.
Adetshina is the daughter of a Nigerian father and a mother of Mozambican heritage who is naturalised citizen of South Africa. Incidentally, her status only became a major issue after she was named in the pageant shortlist, opening a path to winning the crown. The issue has snowballed from questions about her nationality to a sparring topic between South Africa’s politicians and now a full-blown fraud investigation by the country’s authorities.
Earlier in the week, South Africa’s Home Affairs department said there may have been identity theft by the person registered as Adetshina’s mother. Miss South Africa Organisation, which requires all pageant entrants to be South African citizens and in possession of a valid South African ID or passport, sent an official request to the department seeking verification of the Adetshina’s citizenship.
The department undertook to deploy all the resources at its disposal, including archival research, visits to hospitals and other sites to verify the information. In a statement, it said its preliminary findings showed that fraud and identity theft may have been committed by the person recorded as Adetshina’s mother, though the contestant herself could not have been party to the irregularities as she was an infant at the time.
South African mother
“An innocent South African mother, whose identity, may have been stolen as part of the alleged fraud committed by Adetshina’s mother, suffered as a result because she could not register her child,” the statement claimed. Identity theft, where fraudsters assume the identity of a victim is prevalent form of fraud in the country with the South African Fraud Prevention Services reporting an increase of more than 350 per cent in reported cases between April 2022 and April 2023.
It comes as no surprise that the political class has jumped onto the issue, given the history of anti-immigrant intolerance in post-apartheid South Africa. The Patriotic Alliance (PA) filed a case in court, challenging the decision by the Miss South Africa Organisation to admit Adetshina into the competition. The lawsuit was only withdrawn on Friday after the contestant pulled out of the pageant.
The party leader, Gayton McKenzie, who took over as Sports, Arts and Culture Minister just over a month ago, stoked the controversy by posting on social media on 29 July, “We truly cannot have Nigerians compete in our Miss SA competition. I wanna get all facts before I comment but it gives funny vibes already.”
McKenzie, a former gangster who served seven years in prison for bank robbery, led his party to claim 2 per cent of the vote in the recent South Africa elections on the back of its campaigns against undocumented immigrants. His party slogan “Abahambe” Zulu for “let them go” has been denounced by critics as xenophobic.
Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema also waded into the matter during a podcast, saying, “Your citizenship is determined by where you were born, so if she was born here, she’s South African. It doesn’t matter. She’s not her parents, she’s herself. So why say she’s from Nigeria or Mozambique? She was born here.”
The Nigerian Citizens Association South Africa chairman, Frank Onyekwelu, hailed Adetshina as the epitome of “beauty, brains and bravery”, saying that taking South Africa as her home meant showed she would be a good ambassador for the country. A video doing the rounds on social media showing Adetshina celebrating her success in the competition amongst her Nigerian relatives and friends, further drew the ire of her detractors.
The large Nigerian community in South Africa has frequently been the victim of hate attacks by locals venting at being economically “marginalised” by foreigners and blaming them, without evidence, for criminal activities.
Adetshina was born at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, Johannesburg, and spent her early childhood in Soweto, Johannesburg. Her parents, who met in Johannesburg in the late 1990s, eventually relocated to Cape Town. In an interview with The Sowetan newspaper in July, she credited her multi-cultural upbringing with shaping her world view and her sense of pride as a South African. Her profile on the Miss South Africa website describes the Varsity College, Cape Town Student, as ambitious, confident and optimistic. She is passionate about sports, especially netball, and supports the campaign for an end to violence against women and children.
Miss South Africa competition
This was her second stab at the Miss South Africa competition after failing to make it to the final stage in 2023. She ignored the initial attacks on her, assuming that that it would all blow over. “At first I ignored it, but as I progressed in the competition, the criticism started growing by the day,” she said. “Until I thought to myself, I am representing a country but I don’t feel the love from the people I am representing. I even asked myself, ‘is it worth it?’”
The mother of a one-year-old son, who divorced from her husband in February this year, has described attacks on her as “black-on-black hate” and claimed she is being singled out because of her skin color. The Miss South Africa pageant has been contested by people with foreign parents before, notably winner of the 2001 crown, Vanessa Coutroulis, who is of Portuguese-Angolan heritage. This year, Sherry Wang, a South African of Chinese heritage, who was competing for the third time, had been subjected to abuse but none as intense as that faced by Adetshina.
In a statement released shortly after Adetshina’s withdrawal from the competition, the Miss South Africa Organisation acknowledged her difficult decision to withdraw from the competition. It also reiterated its mission of using the event to celebrate “South Africa’s rich and inclusive culture and diversity” and “contributing to the self-belief, self-confidence and fulfillment of aspirations of all girls and women in Africa and worldwide”. Unfortunately, those words will ring hollow, given the debacle involving a contestant who embodies everything that the Rainbow Nation should represent.
