I do not support beauty pageants, I regard them as an extension of patriarchy that reinforce patriarchal standards for women. But while I am generally uninterested in pageants, I am interested in the issue of recently crowned Miss South Africa, Lalela Mswane, going to Israel to represent SA in the Miss Universe pageant. Contrary to organisers of Miss SA, the issue is not just about modelling, it is a serious political question.
According to Sun International, which was the sole licence-holder for the pageant for almost two decades, and now an associate sponsor, winners of the pageant are “shaped into brand ambassadors for our country”. It stands to reason then that Miss SA represents the values of who we are as a people.
South Africans, specifically blacks, having endured centuries of colonialism and decades of apartheid, are a people who reject oppression. We know too well the brutality of being reduced to pariahs in our own country, of being deemed second-class citizens based solely on the colour of our skin.
We know what apartheid is rooted in separate and uneven development, in economic and political disenfranchisement, in the dispossession of land, in dehumanisation. We also know that Israel is an apartheid state – one that is doing to the people of Palestine what was done to us. No reasonable black person could possibly support the actions of Israel – it would be cognitive dissonance of colossal proportions.
For this reason, I support the calls for Mswane to not participate in the event in Israel – to take a moral position in support of a cause far bigger than her individual ambitions and to truly represent the aspirations of a country whose black majority fought with their very lives to bring apartheid to an end.
If Mswane is to be an ambassador of our country, then she must reflect our values at all times. But the responsibility of reflecting the best values of our people lies more with the South African government than it does with individuals. The government must lead the people in demonstrating these values at all material times.
The stance of the government to withdraw support for Mswane owing to her refusal to withdraw from the pageant being hosted in an apartheid state is one that I support in principle. However, it must be problematised. The South African government does not have an honest stance on Israel. On one hand, we seem to make strides. For example, in 2018, the government withdrew our ambassador to Israel indefinitely following the Gaza border protests. A year later, the embassy of SA in Tel Aviv was downgraded to a liaison office.
But on the other hand, SA continues to maintain trade relations with Israel. In addition to this, the Israeli trade mission to SA continues to build “strategic cooperation” between Israeli and South African companies that include Vodacom, to which the government, through the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF), owns almost 12% of the shares. The Public Investment Corporate, a state-owned company (SOC), holds the largest shares in terms of institutional shareholding. Israel also exports military hardware to Denel, another SOC.
If the government truly wants to take a radical position on Israel, and not the symbolic stance it is doing with Mswane, it must first cut economic relations with Israel. Foreign trade is crucial to maintaining the Israeli apartheid state. We know this because our own fight against apartheid was strengthened by economic sanctions imposed on the apartheid regime.
The government must show genuine and consistent political will in the fight for Palestine solidarity, anything less is mere performance.
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