A thing of beauty may be said to be a joy forever, but it is not one hundred percent true. A thing of beauty may fade, deteriorate, decay and the beauty then begins to decline and vanish. But still, something beautiful is worth hailing while we see it or feel it.
Ms Chidimma Vanesa Adetshina is the reason for this little homily on beauty today. The 23 year-old law student has beauty and a complicated identity. Her father is a Nigerian of Enugu extraction. Her mother is a Mozambican and she was born in Soweto in South Africa. Soweto has a history that neither South Africans nor the world can afford to forget. The pretty lady who has been living in South Africa was trying to compete for the Miss Universe South Africa in the hope that if she won she would represent that country of her birth in the global Miss Universe competition. But the country that went through hell due to apartheid but which got liberated by the weight of Nigeria’s voice and resources treated her very shabbily. I think the apartheid struggle taught South Africans the wrong lesson, namely that xenophobia was and is an admirable quality. South Africa has treated Nigerians several times as if Nigeria is their enemy, not their enabler.
The two countries may be competing politically and economically but that should not deprive them of their humanity or their spirit of brotherhood and adorable co-existence. As two prominent countries in the same continent they have a lot to live for. But that is a story for another day.
To cut a long story short South Africa did not let Chidimma to contest in their country. Nigeria invited her to come and contest under the Nigerian flag. She came, she contested, she won. That gave her the opportunity to contest at the global level a couple of weeks ago in Mexico.
She did not get the top prize. That went to a 21-year old girl from Denmark, Viktoria Kjaer Theivlig who is a multi-talented beauty, an entrepreneur, a dancer and an animal activist. Our girl Chidimma emerged as the first runner up and the winner for the Africa and Oceania Regions. This is a feat when you realize that there were contestants from 130 countries, a sharp increase from 94 beauties that competed in 2018. This is the second time that Nigeria would win a major beauty pageant. In 2001 Miss Agbani Darego won the Miss World contest.
That remains a record for which Nigeria must be proud. Before then no one in Nigeria thought that it was possible for a Nigerian to win a major international beauty contest because there are actually no universally accepted criteria for beauty in the world. Most African women have big buttocks. Most white women have flat buttocks. Most African women are of medium height. Most white women are higher in height. So it can be said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, whether the beholder is white or black, tall or short, fat or slim.
It is instructive that the white lady who represented South Africa in the competition Mia Le Roux suddenly withdrew from the competition based on alleged “health challenges.” Some online irritants described it as “karma at work.” So South Africa that lost the opportunity of giving Chidimma the chance to feature for them lost out completely because of its xenophobic tendencies.
The craze for ethnicity and xenophobia in Africa must be something to agitate the minds of African leaders. While our leaders make grand speeches on African unity at their major conferences they are not interested in working on policies that can cement that unity among Africans. The recent very primitive treatment of Nigeria’s Super Eagles players and officials in Libya is an ugly example. And on top of the ill-treatment they had the temerity to defend it as something that was done by their government and not their football organization.
And to add insult to injury they said their sovereignty must be respected. That would never happen in any of the developed countries some of whom are opening their doors to educated immigrants from other countries to gain the benefits of globalization and universal education.
Despite the problem of racism in America, it has produced a Black American President Barack Obama and a non-white Vice President Kamala Harris. Britain has also produced Rishi Sunak who is not a regular British citizen. And even a Nigerian woman Kemi Badenock is now leading a major political party, the Conservative Party in the UK. When will African leaders grow up and accept the fact that the world is becoming a global village with universality of values.
The Governor of Enugu State where Chidimma comes from Dr Peter Mbah has made the girl the State’s Brand Ambassador. A good decision because as Mbah said “Chidimma’s story will serve as a beacon of hope to our young people particularly young women.” For me the real beauty apart from the physical beauty of this girl is her perseverance, her tenacity and her resilience.
Even as the competition was on some South Africans were writing petitions to the organisers to disqualify our girl. She kept pushing on relentlessly to her goal. She is a determined and focused person. She says to other young people through the BBC. “Don’t give up on your dreams, set those goals for yourself. It might seem too scary, but set them. Always do anything in your power to make you achieve them.”
Those words indicate that the real beauty in her is from within. So she is not a peacock with external beauty only. She has complete beauty which will last forever. That complete beauty is made up of her tenacity, perseverance, grace under pressure, resilience and the knowledge that you cannot be a pretty woman without being a source of trouble to the world because every pretty person is a source of envy. And, often, it is not her fault.