Chidimma Adetshina and the Danger of Xenophobia

The rejection of Chidimma Adetshina by the South African public perhaps reflects a complex post-apartheid conception of Blackness—and more specifically, Black womanhood—that is rigid and unaccommodating to those who differ, whether by ethnicity or nationality.

In August 2024, due to online bullying and heckling that resulted in an investigation into the validity of her citizenship, Chidimma Adetshina dropped out of the Miss South Africa pageant. Two weeks after the incident, I stood at the immigration desk at O. R. Tambo international airport about to leave South Africa. After inspecting my passport, the home affairs official asked me if my name was Nigerian and then enquired as to how I got my citizenship. ‘Not even one South African name,’ she said with a look of disgust.

It is universally accepted that the immigration line at any airport is not the place for snarky remarks or talking back. But I wonder if it would have mattered if I had replied her question saying, ‘In the 1800s when my ancestors were brought to South Africa as slaves that would racially be classified as coloured, or in 1994 when Bantustans were abolished and Black people gained citizenship rights in South Africa.’ I could tell her about my mother being South African but all she had to go by was a name, a Nigerian name that invalidates space and removes belonging. In this same way, although on a much larger scale, I can imagine that the release of Adetshina’s name on the list of top 30 contestants for Miss South Africa evoked a similar feeling of unease. For Adetshina, her presence in the competition was enough to stir the latent tensions that have simmered between South Africans and Nigerians for years. Her beauty became politicized, and the discourse around her presence became a reflection of the broader cultural anxieties about nationality and belonging...