Her Nigerian heritage sparked a national controversy
Image: Chidimma Adetshina
Miss South Africa contestant ” Chidimma Adetshina” whose Nigerian heritage sparked a national controversy and a government investigation withdrew from the beauty pageant a few days before its grand finale.
Ms Adetshina’s announcement that she would not take part in Saturday's final came a day after the Home Affairs ministry accused her mother of fraud and identity theft.
The 23-year-old law student said she was born in Soweto, a township next to Johannesburg, and grew up in Cape Town. She explained her father was Nigerian and her mother was a South African of Mozambican descent.
She has been the subject of vicious, xenophobic attacks on social media since she was announced as a finalist in July 2024 , with many questioning her credentials because of her Nigerian descent.
As the row escalated, the organizers of the Miss South Africa pageant asked the home affairs department to conduct an investigation ahead of the grand finale event scheduled to take place on Saturday 10th/August/2024.
In a statement released, the department said it had so far found that the identity of an "innocent" South African mother "may have been stolen" by Ms Adetshina's mother.
However, Ms. Adetshina "could not have participated in the alleged unlawful actions of her mother as she was an infant at the time", the department said.
It added that it was conducting further investigations to press criminal charges, while also obtaining legal advice "on the implications of the alleged fraudulent activity on Adetshina's citizenship status".
Announcing her decision to quit, Adetshina thanked everyone who "stood beside me right from the start of my Miss South Africa journey".