The win by Jacqui Mofokeng in 1993 as the first black Miss SA unleashed a long reign of ebony beauties who snatched the coveted crown from the lily-white winners who made it their own terrain.
The history of beauty contests in SA bears the same dark past as the nation’s history. Black women could only enter Miss Africa South and later Miss Black SA, while Miss SA was the preserve of the white women.
Even with the cultural boycott of the 1970s, beauty was never just skin deep. It became a hot political issue until the early 1990s when black contestants were allowed in.
Nothing could have prepared the then 21-year-old Mofokeng for what was to follow her famous victory in the Sun City Superbowl. No sooner had she taken her victory lap atop a Mercedes Benz inside the Superbowl had the hate started.
Callers jammed radio stations complaining about how unattractive she was for a beauty queen, from the size of her lips to her backside. The gears had shifted and for people who for decades had been served white beauty it became a bitter one to swallow.
The ownership of the pageant also exchanged hands when Sunday Times/Rapport sold the right to Doreen Morris, a TV visionary personality who set off to make it more inclusive. Winners like Basetsana Makgalemele (now Kumalo), Peggy-Sue Khumalo and Kerishnie Naicker became household names and carried so much power at the height of beauty pageants.
Back to Mofokeng. She was probably the most photographed woman at the time, thanks to the publishing muscle of the Sunday Times and Rapport. Also, she was a necessary social experiment of how national cohesion and reconciliation was to be achieved.
It came at a great cost and pain to her, but the rewards were bigger. To this day, Mofokeng’s name is synonymous with the 1990s and the young people who are today facing midlife crisis relive their youth through the times of Mofokeng. To a generation, Mofokeng still represents the original black girl magic.
A nation finding itself and its new identity, some of the firsts that were staged was the SA Fashion Week in 1996 under the direction of former model Lucilla Booyzen, bringing together established fashion houses with newbies from the townships and the suburbs.
This would lay the foundation for the success of fashion titans like David Tlale, Ephraim Molingoana and Palesa Mokubung.
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