Nigeria’s Chidimma Adetshina capped off a remarkable but riotous journey when she emerged as the first runner-up in the Miss Universe global pageant in Mexico. The 23-year-old Nigerian law student faced fierce competition from 123 other beauty queens from around the world to finish on the podium, and place Nigeria on the map again as a country of bold, beautiful and resilient women. Chidimma especially embodied resilience as she journeyed to world stardom.
Born in South Africa to a Nigerian father and a Mozambican mother, she was initially billed to represent South Africa in the global pageant before a cyclone of controversy erupted, threatening to consume her dream.
As the race for Miss Universe South Africa heated up with an eye on the global competition and prize, South African authorities accused Adetshina’s mother, who is Mozambican by birth of using a false identity to remain in the country.
Despite the legalese, Adetshina’s case has recalled a conversation that that South Africa would rather avoid but one which is necessary for its healing.
Easily one of Africa’s most gifted countries, South Africa has a remarkable history of resilience, even defiance, in the face of unprecedented and improbable adversity. For many years in a country whose mineral deposits made it a lodestar for foreign explorers many decades ago,
Apartheid—a ruinous system of racial segregation- of was the official state policy of British colonialists. Under apartheid, racism was the tool of governance as the government deliberating widened and mined the gulf between the White and Black South Africans, with Black South Africans largely treated as expendable fodder.
Apartheid finally crumbled in 1994 after years of sustained struggle by such anti-apartheid heroes like Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and others. After historic elections and independence in 1994,the immortal Nelson Mandela emerged as president.
But wounds have endured for many South Africans. Despite remarkable progress made since emerging from the stygian darkness of apartheid South Africa, inequality remains a major fault line.
With poverty, unemployment, and crime rife across the rainbow nation, many South Africans have turned their ire against foreigners, and unfortunately, even against their fellow Africans from countries such as Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and Nigeria.
They accuse foreigners of appropriating their jobs and committing crimes in their country. This has fueled many deadly xenophobic attacks.
Years of steep poverty and staggering inequality have made South Africans weary and wary of strangers in their country. The historical trauma which informs this national disposition that is as much a disease as it is a disorder is understandable, even if not permissible given the unmatched evil that apartheid was. Yet, South Africans must be careful about vilifying Africans over a collective trauma that many Africans shared in out of sheer solidarity.
As for Chidimma, her runner-up position is guerdon for her unyielding perseverance and for those who argue that women must remain without a voice, vote or visibility.
In a world where women continue to suffer from the poison of patriarchy, with many of them affected by what others have eaten, Chidimma’s win is a vote for women.
One suspects that her gender was also the reason many South Africans jumped on her back.
She deserves to be celebrated. It is thanks to one woman’s resistance, resilience, and rebellion that the subtleties of racism, xenophobia, misogyny have suffered a devastating blow on the world stage.
A thought then for Afghanistan where a government run by terrorists has even banned women from speaking to each other in public.
*Willie-Nwobu can be reached at ikewilly9@gmail.com
