When law student Chidimma Adetshina clinched a coveted spot as a Miss South Africa finalist, her triumph unleashed a vicious backlash, unearthing a seam of xenophobia that lies close to the surface for some in the country.
The 23-year-old’s name hints at her connection to Nigeria, but internet detectives wanted to know more and combed through every inch of her life. They found that her father is Nigerian and though her mother is South African, her family had come from neighbouring Mozambique.
Ms Adetshina is South African, as verified by the organisers of the pageant. She has said in interviews that she was born in Soweto - the township next to Johannesburg - and grew up in Cape Town.
However, the “go-home” sentiment, and even harsher attacks, flooded social media. There was also a petition demanding her removal from the high-profile televised competition that amassed more than 14,000 signatures before it was taken down.
You’d think that South Africans, unless we’re talking about the white ones here, wouldn’t be like this.
White Afrikaner here, we support her fully. She was born here, grew up here, she is South African. Unfortunately due to the piss poor ANC government, since the 2008 with Zuma at the helm, South African employment figures started going down where we have the lowest employment rates in the world, 33% officially, closer to 50% realistically. So they started showing fingers to foreigners taking their jobs, basically a scapegoat to hide behind their failures.
Luckily since the end of May, we now have for the first time a coalition government, no more single party ANC that became complacent after 30 years in government.
Also fuck your comments about us white people here in South Africa. Most of us are truly working hard to better our country, we acknowledge our past and the injustices caused, but we will be vocal about discrimination in all its forms, be it xenophobia or like your racist comments.
What comments would those be?
You’d think that South Africans, unless we’re talking about the white ones here, wouldn’t be like this.
You specified whites, as if would be understandable that they in South Africa would be xenophobic
I think everyone but you understood that I didn’t mean that every single white South African was racist. I would have talked about white Americans the same way if it were a similar situation.
A statement doesn’t have to be about every member of a racial group to be racist. It can allow for there to be “some good ones.”
Do you really think that’s what I meant?
I think you meant black South Africans wouldn’t be xenophobic or harbor deep resentment against members of black ethnic groups other than their own, whereas white South Africans would be different.
Imagine if you and the other guy had asked me to clarify rather than assume that is what I meant. You still seem to be assuming it despite replying to a comment where I said it wasn’t.
Right. Only white people have been racist and xenophobic in the whole history of Africa.
It’s little known, but the Hutu oppressors in Rwanda who brutalized the Tutsis were very pale skinned.
That’s not what I was even beginning to suggest. I was suggesting that you would think people who lived under the oppressive thumb of apartheid for decades would be less closed-minded when it came to racism.
Yes and no. It takes a lot to unlearn and heal from a system like that. I’m not surprised there’s internalized xenophobia.
And my point was that people, even in South Africa, don’t just learn these things from whites. Xenophobia is a human traits. There are many tribes in South Africa with a history that includes conflict.
Yes, colonizers exploited those conflicts to seize power for themselves, much like they did in North America. But they were feeding off existing discord.
Absolutely. Good point.
Sometimes the oppressed becomes the oppressors, take us whites in South Africa, after being put in concentration camps in the Anglo Boer war, which Nazis took inspiration from, became oppressors afterwards to protect Afrikaner interest. Now we realise the injustice of perpetuating injustices. Israel and Palestine really remind me of being oppressed, claiming to protect your people afterwards but letting other people suffer and becoming an oppressor.
I get that you’re very proud of your whiteness. You don’t need to keep going on about it.
Try reading the comment again. It criticizes responding to oppression by becoming oppressors, including when Afrikaners did it.
Edit:
comingbecomingThis person has put the fact that they’re white in bold in every comment. Sounds like they’re pretty proud of it to me.