South Africa to strip beauty queen of ID documents

South African beauty pageant titleholder Chidimma Adetshina, who was recently at the centre of a fierce nationality row, is to be stripped of her South African identity (ID) and travel documents.

South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs began investigating her case after she became a finalist in the Miss South Africa pageant. Adetshina faced criticism around her eligibility to compete in the pageant, because her mother has Mozambican roots and her father is Nigerian.

She withdrew from the competition in August after the department announced that her mother may have committed identity theft to become a South African national.

Adetshina, a law student, went on to win Miss Universe Nigeria after she was invited to participate by the organisers.

The controversy sparked a wave of xenophobic vitriol in South Africa, after which Adetshina told the BBC she would need therapy to recover.

The Department of Home Affairs made the announcement about the withdrawal of her ID papers to a parliamentary committee on Tuesday.

Tommy Makhode, the top civil servant in the department, said Adetshina’s mother would also have her documents cancelled as they had both failed to meet Monday’s deadline to provide reasons why they should be eligible to keep them.

Neither Adetshina nor her mother have commented on the move to revoke their papers.

Makhode said the case was referred to the Hawks, a special police unit that investigates serious crimes, which concluded that it was a case of fraud. Officials are waiting on prosecutors to determine how to proceed.

After the department’s revelation in August, it was noted that Adetshina “could not have participated in the alleged unlawful actions of her mother, as she was an infant at the time”.

Adetshina has previously said she was born in the South African township of Soweto.

After winning the beauty competition in Nigeria, she told BBC that she still saw herself as “proudly South African” and “proudly Nigerian”.

Adetshina recently arrived in Mexico to represent Nigeria at the Miss Universe competition, to be held on 16 November.

She will compete against contestants from across the world, including Mia le Roux, who won this year’s Miss South Africa contest. – BBC