A South African beauty pageant contestant with a Nigerian father has been subjected to relentless online abuse and interrogations of her right to compete for the Miss South Africa title, as a persistent strain of xenophobia against immigrants from other African countries has resurfaced.
Since Chidimma Adetshina, a 23-year-old law student who was born in Soweto and lives in Cape Town, was announced on 1 July as one of the contestants in the running to represent South Africa at the Miss Universe pageant, there has been constant questioning of whether she is a South African citizen.
In recent days, politicians have waded into the debate, media figures have come to her defence and TV news and talk radio shows have discussed her nationality.
Adetshina said last week that, after about three weeks of the unexpected online onslaught – including questions over whether she favoured Nigeria after a video of her celebrating with Nigerian relatives went viral – she began to ask whether it had been worth entering the Miss South Africa competition.
“I accept criticism,” Adetshina told the Sowetan SMag, in an interview where she also clarified that her mother is South African with Mozambican roots.
“But it’s just a matter of you trying so hard to represent a country, and you wear it with so much pride and so much grace, and the people that you’re representing are not even in support of you.”
She added: “I’m still finding my feet as to how do I go about [it]. Not taking away from the fact that I am South African, but also understanding that I am still proudly Nigerian and I am proudly South African and just being that symbol of peace and unity.”
However, the tide of questions has continued. This includes from South Africa’s minister of sport, art and culture, Gayton McKenzie, who told a radio station on Wednesday: “I have to go and investigate.”
Minister Gayton McKenzie speaks on the Miss SA saga involving Nigerian born contestant Chidimma Vanessa Adetshina @NkosinathiShazi pic.twitter.com/vcHCEfyzVS
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“It would be a travesty for this country to be represented globally by someone who identifies more with Nigeria than South Africa, but I made it clear that I hadn’t made up my mind,” said McKenzie, a self-described reformed bank robber who leads the Patriotic Alliance party, which calls for the mass deportation of illegal immigrants.
“The intense scrutiny and vitriol aimed at Adetshina reveal a continued colonised mindset among many South Africans,” the leftwing Economic Freedom Fighters party said in a statement on Wednesday.
It said that white and Asian former Miss South Africa contestants with foreign parents had not received the same “Afrophobic” scrutiny.
Chronically high rates of unemployment – more than four in 10 adults are out of work – and violent crime have fuelled anti-African immigrant sentiment in South Africa. Operation Dudula, which was founded in 2021 and takes its name from the Zulu word meaning to “push away” or “drive back”, has attacked people accused of being foreign drug dealers, as well as businesses thought to have had non-South African employees.
