By Alicia Mmashakana
Minister of Home Affairs Leon Schreiber has announced an official investigation into controversial Miss SA contestant Chidimma Adetshina’s citizenship following a request from the organisers of the beauty pageant.
Schreiber said on Tuesday that in addition, the family of Adetshina have also asked Home Affairs to verify her citizenship status and put the matter to rest.
“We will update the public once we’ve done that, but I want to make it very clear that we are doing so with the consent of the individuals involved. We are doing this because they approached us, and we will not violate the Protection of Personal Information Act or undermine the rule of law in cases where people don’t bring evidence or don’t submit proper applications,” he said.
Adetshina has been in the news lately after it was alleged on social media that both her parents were not South African citizens although the 23-year is said to have been born at Soweto’s Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital to a Nigerian father and a Mozambican mother.
She also appeared in a video where a group of her Nigerian supporters were calling out South Africans for criticising her participation in the beauty pageant saying she doesn’t represent any South African culture.
Sports Minister Gayton McKenzie was also drawn into the fray by those who believed that the Miss SA beauty pageant falls under his department.
Although McKenzie said the pageant was privately owned, and therefore the department had no control over it, he said he would launch an investigation to determine if Adetshina was in fact eligible to enter the pageant.
However, McKenzie stressed that Nigerians could not be allowed to compete in the Miss SA competition the same way as South Africans wouldn’t be allowed to represent Nigerians in their own beauty pageant.
At the time of the social media storm, Schreiber had said his department would not be swayed by social media calls to investigate without evidence to back up the claims that Adetshina is not South African.
“According to the law, Adetshina is a South African. We cannot be governed by social media, and we’ve seen some of the results of that over the years as well,” Schreiber said.
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