A South African contestant in Miss South Africa faces an online backlash over her Nigerian name. We should reject xenophobia.
What makes someone South African? Does it even matter?
To my mind, the mere fact that someone chooses to make a life for themselves in South Africa is sufficient basis for welcoming them.
Surely, though, being a South African citizen should be enough? And if not, then being born in South Africa should make one a native South African, not so?
There has long been a view on the far left that many South Africans are merely “settlers”, and should “go back” to wherever they supposedly came from. These attacks have been launched even against people who have many generations of ancestors who lived and died in South Africa.
Now, a 2024 Miss South Africa finalist, Chidimma Vanessa Adetshina, is facing the same xenophobic backlash over her Nigerian surname.
Adetshina was born in South Africa of a Nigerian father and a South African mother (the organisers claim her mother is Zulu). She grew up in Soweto, and at the age of 23 is a law student in Cape Town.
Yet in some quarters online, she is reviled.
Haters
“Let’s go Proud South Africans!”, wrote a self-described social media influencer on X. “Let’s Remove the imposter, Nigerian girl Chidimma Vanessa Adetshina, We are not surrendering nor retreating! #CancelMissSA ”
With her 43 700 followers, her post has been viewed 142 500 times.
“Demand the Disqualification of Chidimma Adechinna from Miss South Africa Competition,” wrote an even more popular individual. “Sign the Petition!”
That post went out to 659 300 followers, and racked up 373 700 views when I last checked.
Yet another online hater called for a boycott of DJ Sbu, allegedly a sponsor of Miss South Africa, for failing to sign a petition against Adetshina. “Celebrities are neva vocal in SA,” they wrote.
The petition in question, as well as an earlier version of it, and another alternative, have all been deleted by change.org for violating its community guidelines (presumably against bigotry). Another deleted petition called for Miss South Africa to be limited to “Bantu South Africans”.
At the time of writing, however, this new petition was still up, falsely claiming that Adetshina is not a South African resident. Another petition referencing Adetshina calls, rather confusingly, for the amendment of identification regulations for individuals of mixed heritage.
Even the new sports, arts and culture minister, noted anti-immigrant firebrand Gayton McKenzie, got in on the act, saying: “We cannot have Nigerians competing in our Miss SA competition. I want to get all the facts before I comment, but it already gives funny vibes.”
“Excited”
“I was so excited to enter Miss SA and honestly, I didn’t think that far as to what the public would think. But once I got to the top 16, that’s when I felt it. People on X were asking why I’m competing because I’m not South African. They questioned my nationality, along with my parents’,” Adetshina told the Sowetan’s SMag.
“At first I ignored it but as I progressed in the competition, the criticism started growing by the day. Until I thought to myself, I am representing a country but I don’t feel the love from the people I’m representing – I even asked myself, ‘Is it worth it?’”
The Miss South Africa competition is open to women (as indicated on their identity document) between the ages of 20 and 30. They “must be South African citizens and in possession of a valid South African ID document or passport”.
As a South African citizen, then, Adetshina certainly qualifies.
This fact alone obviates the need for a lengthy discussion on the merits, or otherwise, of immigration.
Net benefit
I have argued before that immigration, legal or otherwise, is in almost all circumstances a net benefit for the receiving country. Foreigners who do productive work in South Africa grow the economy, which makes everyone better off. Hurdles to immigration are, in fact, the biggest constraint on global economic growth, even bigger than hurdles to the flow of goods or capital.
Martin van Staden recently offered another excellent argument on immigration, saying that it isn’t about legal versus illegal, but about easy versus difficult immigration.
“The last two centuries have been ones of finding inborn characteristics and removing them as legitimate factors of political discrimination,” he wrote. “Arguably the most important remaining inborn characteristic that remains on the political table is place of birth. By the end of this century, if not significantly sooner, the world will have produced an answer to whether or not the place of someone’s birth may legitimately be used as a reason for political discrimination against them.”
So there’s a moral dimension here, too: we ought not to discriminate against people merely on the basis of an immutable characteristic over which they have no control. We ought to judge people on their words, their actions, their character, and their achievements, and not on their mere identity.
Unity
“You try so hard to represent your country and wear it with so much pride but all these people are not in support of you,” said Adetshina in the SMag interview. “I’ve gotten to a point where I don’t know what to say or not to say because this is such a sensitive topic. I don’t want to end up saying something and then offend people.”
And further: “I just feel like the attention is on me because of my skin colour which I think is a disadvantage… it’s also been something I had to overcome growing up,”
It is tragic that a South African citizen, 30 years after the advent of a democracy in which everyone was supposed to be equal, should feel so afraid of her fellow South Africans over something as immutable as her skin colour or her ancestry.
Adetshina reportedly remains determined to compete for the Miss South Africa title, and intends using her platform to promote unity and understanding.
South Africa needs more people like Adetshina, not fewer.
[Image: Chidimma Vanessa Adetshina, a finalist in the 2024 Miss South Africa competition. Source: Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/chichi_vanessa).]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend