The beauty queen and xenophobes

The news

CAPE TOWN – Beauty pageant contestant Chidimma Adetshina officially withdrew from the Miss South Africa pageant on Thursday, 48 hours before the event, following a storm of controversy and public protests questioning her citizenship.

Since the 23-year-old law student announced her place in the competition in May, she has been the victim of brutal cyberbullying and xenophobic abuse, with online trolls saying she is “not South African enough” to compete.

Adetshina was born in Soweto, a historic town in Johannesburg. She had already said that her father is Nigerian and that her mother is South African with Mozambican roots. South African law states that citizenship can be acquired if you were born in the country and at least one of your parents is a citizen or permanent resident.

Trolls focused on his Nigerian heritage, but it was the dispute over his mother’s nationality that was the last straw. In response to a request from the competition organizers, an investigation by the Ministry of Internal Affairs found initial evidence that Adetshina’s mother committed fraud and identity theft in 2001. It suggested that she may not be a South African citizen.

Marché’s vision

The wave of criticism directed at Adetshina highlights a very particular type of intolerance in South Africa: Afrophobia.

The furore began long before the investigation into his mother. Her legs really grew after a video of Adetshina celebrating her place in the final with her Nigerian family members went viral.

Nigerian citizens living in South Africa have been used as scapegoats by local politicians to cover up their own failures. The prevailing myth, propagated by various right-wing parties, is that Nigerians are drug traffickers who bring crime into the country.

This dangerous rhetoric led to waves of xenophobic attacks, most notably in 2008, where violence was perpetrated against African migrants across the country. Since the beginning of democracy in 1994, these hostilities have led to the displacement of more than 100,000 people and the deaths of several hundred. according to Xenowatch.

Three decades since the birth of the so-called “Rainbow Nation” and some leaders of the Government of National Unity (GNU) continue to proliferate Afrophobic messages.

Minority parties such as the Patriotic Alliance (AP) and ActionSA (with nine and six parliamentary seats respectively) ran election campaigns on an anti-immigration ticket and the AP specifically promised mass deportations if elected to power.

These parties, which once existed on the margins of South African politics, are conservative and populist in both ideology and practice. They have records of using poverty as a weapon and the legitimate struggles of millions of the country’s citizens to fuel their rise to power.

The fact that blatant fanatics now hold decision-making power within the GNU is frightening and could, in all likelihood, exacerbate a scourge that keeps the country in a stranglehold.

The Miss South Africa fiasco is not about the law. It is about the deep contempt for foreign African citizens and the politicians who use it to their advantage.

The view from NIGERIA

There has been an outpouring of anger on Nigerian social media over the treatment of Chidimma Adetshina. It is an especially sensitive topic because there have been numerous reports of xenophobic attacks and discrimination against Nigerians in South Africa for many years.

In response to the news of her withdrawal from the Miss South Africa pageant, organizers of Miss Universe Nigeria invited her to participate in your competition. “This is an opportunity to represent your father’s homeland on an international stage and we believe you would be an outstanding candidate,” national director Guy Murray-Bruce said in a statement.