Editor’s update: As most readers will know, following a sort of citizenship witchhunt, Chidimma has gracefully withdrawn from the Miss SA competition. Okay, so we suppose it makes sense for competitors to be SA citizens, but the whole persecutory aspect of this saga has left us with a sour taste in the mouth. And Phakamisa’s analysis essentially stands.)
PHAKAMISA MAYABA / Foreign nationals would’ve breathed a sigh of relief that the vigilante-like group Operation Dudula sank like lead in the general election. But thanks to Gayton McKenzie, leader of the Patriotic Alliance and now Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, this relief has been short-lived.
Kept out of Home Affairs, where he’d hoped to implement his ‘#Abahambe’ (let them go) rallying cry, he still seems intent on proving just how ernstig he is about migrants who’ve overstayed their welcome.
His first target has been Chidimma Adetshina, a finalist in the Miss South Africa 2024 pageant, whose origins have triggered a social media storm – and also a political one, courtesy of Mckenzie — which has exposed South Africa’s smallanyana skeletons of race, ethnicity, and all the attendant constructs.
It all started when Adetshina revealed that her father is Nigerian and her mother has Mozambican roots. This triggered xenophobic comments on social media from angry pageant fans who said she should compete for Miss Nigeria and not for Miss South Africa.
(The Miss SA organisation has reportedly confirmed that both Chidimma and her mother are South African citizens, and that she met all the criteria for entering the pageant. But this has done little to quell the storm – after all, why let facts and Constitutional Law get in the way of a good racial brawl?)
Next, one Chris Excel ‘trolled’ McKenzie on his officIal X account, asking him how he felt about Adetshina’s participation in the competition. Not one to mince his words, McKenzie responded: “We truly cannot have Nigerians compete in our Miss SA competition. I want to get all the facts before I comment, but it already gives funny vibes.’ This poured more fuel on the fire, with some backing him and others accusing him of xenophobia.
Among others, Tendai Mtawarira, the retired Zimbabwean-born Springbok prop, has been dragged into the controversy. If Mtawarira was allowed to wear the national rugby jersey, some argued, what’s the fuss with Adetshina being crowned Miss SA? Memories, however, are clearly a little fuzzy. Mtawarira faced similar hurdles – both political as well as in the brutal court of public opinion – in his early career.
Olympic gold medalist Tatjana Smith’s citizenship has also suddenly come into sharp focus. Celebrities have weighed in. Legal gurus, including the former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela, have had their say. A now defunct online petition for Adetshina’s removal from the competition reportedly attracted some 3000 signatures before it was taken down. In record time, the mudslinging has deteriorated into xenophobia and race-baiting – with views reflecting all the colours of the so-called Rainbow Nation.
Springbok prop Tendai Mtawarira. Image: Wikipedia.org.
Although – given its complexity and the attendant historical implications – most people would prefer not to get bogged down in the issue of race, it remains a leitmotif in the national discourse — popping up every so often, even as some pretend it’s not even there. Lived reality is constructed around it. In fact, without it, our politics would be unrecognizable. For one, the Government of National Unity (GNU) had to painstakingly configure itself around persistent racial stumbling blocks and perceptions.
This is not unexpected, if one considers the full sweep of our political spectrum. Liberals (DA) would have us believe that it’s a non-starter: apartheid ended 30 years ago, so can we please forget about the past and move on? Leftists, both extreme (EFF, MKP, PAC) and moderate (the black union movement) fashion their rhetoric around redress and transformation, ostensibly for the benefit of the previously disadvantaged. Conservatives (FF+) prioritise minorities (read: white Afrikaner interests). The PA openly wants to place the ‘Coloured agenda’ on the table. And so it goes on — different racial groups, but with race as a common driver. And an attitude of kraals and laagers – ‘us’ versus ‘them.’
The by-product of this is how issues that ought to be a collective/national concern lend themselves to sectarian racialising. Crime is given a racial face, almost always black or brown. Farm murders are touted as a pointed attack on whites. Inevitably this sends certain groups into panic mode, disseminating the threat of, let’s say, ‘white genocide’ which resulted in then president Donald Trump’s and Elon Musk’s knee-jerk tweets back in 2018.
The unfortunate part of this is how it seems to create a hierarchy of importance in respect of human life, while obfuscating the real and present dangers that dog the nation. Is the former US president aware that the ‘homicide rates are lower for whites and Indians than for coloureds and blacks’? Does he know that in some areas like the Cape Flats near Cape Town or Diepsloot in Johannesburg, people are killed like flies, and even the police often find themselves outgunned and too spooked to enter these hot spots?
Those who still cherish the dream of a non-racial society might be mortified by the comparisons, but major news houses appear fascinated by them. These stories have made for elaborate long-form features and documentaries across various prestigious media. Seemingly the world nurses a peculiar interest in this – a country with one of the world’s highest murder rates outside a war zone – but one wonders what this messaging means for the national image, except to portray a country at war with itself.
Earlier this year, I wrote about a BBC documentary on the life and times of Operation Dudula. This Soweto-based organisation-turned-political-party has styled itself as that township’s last defence against foreign migrants – purportedly the root of all that is foul and degenerate in this country. Ultimately, what the cameras show are black people intimidating, harassing, and essentially waging war on other black people.
A more recent BBC Africa Eye documentary titled ‘Crime and Punishment in South Africa’ pounds on a similar note. On the one hand, it shows gatvol white farmers outside the town of Brits near Pretoria mounting anti-crime patrols under the banner of the Afrikaner lobby group Afriforum. Armed with hi-tech security gear, they prowl around at night, intent on combating the crime affecting the area. On the other, it shows residents of Diepsloot, a township outside Johannesburg, essentially doing the same thing, wearing reflector jackets and armed with the odd sjambok.
What follows next is something skirting on vigilantism and racial paranoia. Reading between the lines, it becomes obvious that were the BBC cameras not there, it would’ve been easy for the patrollers to cross the line – to show the suspected criminals who exactly was in charge. The video is replete with difficult racial undertones and micro aggressions. However, the comments on YouTube leaves one feeling rather surprised, and even a little proud.
Rather than the crass remarks of an Adam Catzavelos on vacation, most responders seemed wedded to a Musketeer sort of political credo. The ad hominems were absent, and so too the black vs white vs Indian vs Zulu vs Shangaan … For a change, social media were agreeable to the notion of ‘all for one’.
This was a welcome respite from the barbarism that has flooded the Adetshina debate. These uncharacteristically sober-minded YouTubers weren’t pointing fingers at their fellow South Africans but at a government that in so many ways has failed everybody, most of all the poor.
They showed that, while the ‘race’ issue may be as embedded in our nation’s DNA as Cornish pies, pap or ‘Die Stem”, some of us still believe the band Simply Red were onto something when they sang: ‘We’re in this together!’
If white farmers are rooted out, where will the nation get its three daily squares? If black kids continue to grow up in slums, with little or no resources to dig themselves out of poverty, what is there to stop them from turning to all manner of self-destructive behaviour, including the lure of crime? But mostly we learn that whether the government is black or white, if it forgets why people put it there in the first place, then we are what those under-resourced Diepsloot patrollers promise those criminals they hunt. We’re f****d.
FEATURED IMAGE: Miss South African hopeful Chidimma Adetshina. Image: Instagram.