MICHAEL MORRIS: Miss SA finalist should be defended against loutish jingoism - Business Day

Michael Morris

By what seems a truly perverse inversion, a beauty pageant has succeeded — though without intending to — in exposing the ugliest kind of chauvinism in our midst.

There is nothing good to be said for the loutish jingoism that is shamefully on display in the hounding of SA-born 2024 Miss SA finalist Chidimma Vanessa Adetshina other than that it makes itself visible and so provides a necessary opportunity for self-respecting South Africans to defend her — and to defend belonging at its most fundamental and undiscriminating.

It’s not always possible to stay ahead of the news, especially when intense public pressures are brought to bear on individuals and events. Yet, however things turn out for Adetshina, and however distressing and ugly is the idea that her antecedence disqualifies her from belonging in the full, uncomplicated sense that citizenship confers, we must be encouraged by the range of support she has won. 

The not-so-encouraging section of opinion regrettably includes a member of the unity government cabinet — sport, arts & culture minister Gayton McKenzie, whose post on X can charitably be described only as ambiguous: “I just returned from Paris and will definitely get more information. We truly cannot have Nigerians competing in our Miss SA competition. I want to get all the facts before I comment, but it gives funny vibes already.” 

Well, he certainly wasn’t interested in getting any facts before making these needlessly incendiary remarks. But, to their credit, other high-profile individuals had no difficulty identifying the basic principles of our post-1994 democratic setting — at least inasmuch as we are talking about Adetshina. 

EFF leader Julius Malema was forthright: “Your citizenship is determined by where you were born, so if she was born here, she’s South African. It doesn’t matter. She’s not her parents, she’s herself. So why say she’s from Nigeria or Mozambique? She was born here. We cannot punish people based on where their parents come from.” 

TimesLIVE reported that former public protectors Thuli Madonsela and Busisiwe Mkhwebane both made much the same point. In a post on X, Madonsela wrote in part: “... Adetshina is a South African by birth ... Your parents need not have been South African for you to be a citizen by birth. Please, let’s stop the noise and support Adetshina and all Miss SA contestants.”

Mkhwebane pointed out that “the SA Citizenship Act provides various ways to acquire SA citizenship”, including birth, even if your parents are not South African. But the outstanding work goes well beyond speaking up for Adetshina.

Writing in this column in January 2023 on Institute of Race Relations research showing that no fewer than 116 of the 313 racial acts of parliament adopted since 1910 had been adopted since 19 and that all of 132 were still operative, I noted: “In 2023 it is perverse that democratic SA — boasting its credentials as a constitutional state — should remain attached to the brutalising logic of exploiting appearances.” 

In a world perhaps more obsessed than before about identity — ironically, given the reach of science into understanding the scale of what makes us all alike — harder work is needed to contest discrimination.

The task is one of unambiguously repudiating identitarian narrow-mindedness that cravenly claims legitimacy on the pretended grounds of pride, or patriotism, or ethnic or cultural belonging, while only advertising the depleting insecurity of its own poorly conceived nationalism.

Morris is head of media at the SA Institute of Race Relations.

https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2024-08-05-michael-morris-miss-sa-finalist-should-be-defended-against-loutish-jingoism/