Last month, beauty queen Lalela Mswane was named Miss SA in a glitzy event in Cape Town.
In the days to follow, her reign would be marred by controversy after it emerged that she would be representing SA at the Miss Universe pageant to be hosted in Israel next month.
Perhaps predictably, pro-Palestine individuals and groups in our country called for her to pull out of the pageant in solidarity with the people of Palestine and in line with SA’s stand on the Middle East conflict.
This week, the Miss SA organisation finally responded in a statement which appeared to lack full appreciation of what this global conflict represents, as a human rights matter, to many South Africans.
The organisation said those who called for it to pull out of the global event were a vocal minority, who it believes had sinister intentions to derail Mswane’s prospects on an international stage.
Importantly, it said Miss SA is not a political organisation and therefore, presumably, it ought not to be expected to act in line with the ideological expectation of one grouping or another.
First, let us be clear that Miss SA as an organisation and Mswane as an individual have every right to make their choices on this matter.
We also appreciate that those choices may be informed by the social consciousness of their decisionmakers as well as corporate obligations they each may have to the Miss Universe entity.
Be that as it may, those choices will still be subject to public scrutiny, in particular in the context of an organisation that has positioned itself as the embodiment of our nationhood.
This creates a legitimate expectation that in its choices, the organisation would make decisions that represent the collective will of South Africans.
Where this is not the case, we must at the least expect that the organisation would communicate its position in a manner that is meaningful and engaging, rather than dismissive of those who differ with its decisions.
In a world defined by inequality and injustice, our values as people and organisations must be seen in the decisions we make that ultimately impact on the world around us.
Doing so is not aligning to politics.
It is demonstrating our commitment to social justice, a principle we all have a moral obligation to promote.
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