To participate or not to participate – for some it seemed like a no brainer after it was announced that the Miss Universe pageant was to be held in Israel, a country, which especially in 2021 has been the stake of a hotbed of contestation surrounding mass human rights violations.
To Miss South Africa, Miss Lalela Mswane, her answer toward the participation was just as obvious. She was going, and no amount of boycotts, protests, or pressure from the government would stand in the way to her steps on the universal stage.
In a recent interview, one that loudly shattered her silence on her decision to participate, Mswane expressed that not attending would have been a life-long regret.
“If I had not come to Israel to compete in the Miss Universe pageant, I think I would have regretted it for the rest of my life,” she said as per the Jerusalem Post.
Last night, Mswane’s heels saw the preliminary stage of the pageant where she debuted herself as a symbol of peace by dressing in a dove inspired gown.
Some may have found the showcase lovely, others, a trigger point. Twitter is currently up in arms about the display as we speak.
After all the hate! @Lalela_lali did something incredible on the @MissUniverse prelim stage tonight! She was indeed a dove of peace ? ❤️ #MissUniverse #MissSouthAfrica pic.twitter.com/QjbelhbWf7
— Cllr Sakhile Mngadi ?? (@Sakhilemngadi) December 11, 2021
At the end of the day @Lalela_lali is representing a country that didn’t wanna be represented.
— jalebi babeh ❣️ (@JalebiBabeh) December 11, 2021
However, the display served what it was comfortable to serve, in my opinion, writes Cape {town} Etc’s Ashleigh Nefdt. That service pertaining to a display, to a symbol of goodwill, of utopian dreams. It is, like many parts of pageantry, the emblem of a dream. Perhaps it was a foreshadowing for the peace Mswane will bring in other realms of her responsibility.
What South Africa’s representation on the Miss Universe stage really asks us, is who exactly is being represented? Not all South Africans were against participation, but many were. Some wondered why it mattered at all. It wasn’t a representation of the government’s alignments, as even when the government had spoken, pulling their support in a boycott stance, the crown of their country still went forth.
If you can’t appease people, then perhaps you can appease an idea and represent that, I pondered. However, the echoes of an idea being represented sounded a lot more like a dream to walk on the Miss Universe stage – Mswane’s dream.
If there has ever been a time where the blurred lines between the political, the individual and the symbol have come into question, Mswane’s footing on the Miss Universe stage in Israel encapsulated it. Miss South Africa may represent a country as the sashay writes in bold, but there is an individual who wears said sash. Mswane decision to participate highlighted the individualism of the triangle – a tricky trope when it comes to situations where one wears the flag of a nation. The defence against the apolitical became rife.
The Miss South Africa organisation expressed that Mswane’s childhood dreams were at stake. They aren’t a political organisation, Miss SA argued, and neither is Miss Universe.
This might have made sense – if some Miss Universe history stood unbeknown to us. In the late 1970s, it was the same Miss Universe Organisation that sanctioned South African participation given our human rights violations under the apartheid regime, as Bubblegum Club writes.
I found myself asking a series of questions amidst the blurred lines of the Miss Universe Pageant in theory. Since when do humanitarian rights only fall under political agendas? When do some take prevalence over others? When did we take the individual, the human out of the ‘humanitarian?’ as a concept? Whose universe can the crown belong to?
What this all indicated for me, was that the organisation is a platform. Miss SA is a platform. It might not be political in profession, but it can be political when it chooses to be. Similarly, Miss SA may not be a political figure, but she can be when she chooses to. What we look to now is what those choices are and will be, and Mswane’s has placed herself as steadfast in her own choices – a dove of choices.
So, we return to the power of pageants – a space where often the meat of messages toward ‘world peace’ has been criticised for being a bare plate, and proven wrong many times in the same vein. Whether Mswane wins Miss Universe or not, her platform has more eyes on it than ever. What the white dove will do with her sky, and whether she fills up the plate, will undoubtedly see many watch hungry in anticipation.
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Picture: Official Miss SA