Qhawekazi Mazaleni from Gonubie, East London, was crowned Miss SA at the weekend. In her first interview as the titleholder, she speaks to Sowetan about her plans:
How was it like waking up this morning (Sunday)?
It only started to sink... Last night, everything happened so quickly and parts of it felt surreal. Waking up this morning to so much support, seeing the pictures from last night and speaking to my family, I am filled with a deep sense of gratitude.
What was the last thing you did before going to bed?
I kicked my heels off, took a long bath and had a burger in bed. I thought I’d put some music on and have a celebration dance, but I wanted a quiet evening to really soak it all in.
How did growing up in Gonubie shape you?
I grew up in Gonubie, but my dad comes from Falakahla village in Dutywa, and my mom from a township called Thabong in Welkom. They moved to East London for my sisters and I to have access to quality education. We often found ourselves trying to balance the traditional values my parents have with the more Western values.
Growing up in Gonubie helped me understand how to balance different worlds while remaining true to myself.
You have a degree in speech, language and hearing therapy and are pursuing a master’s in speech language pathology. What drew you to this field?
In matric, I heard of speech therapy but didn’t quite know what it entailed. I requested to job-shadow one of our local speech therapists in East London, who was working with adults. The patient she was seeing that day was an elderly Xhosa man, with the speech therapist having an English/Afrikaans background.
It was in that session that I realised that we had a large disparity in resources that our population has access to based on language. It wasn’t until later that I found my calling in children’s speech therapy.
Your master’s research at University of Pretoria focuses on autism. Take us through that.
Last year, I was doing my year of community service at Mamelodi Hospital. I often had families of children diagnosed with autism come in for speech therapy sessions; however, their parents often had limited understanding on what autism is and how to best support their children.
Through my research, I want to explore caregivers’ understanding of autism in the South African context to develop culturally contextual resources to support families.
How do you plan to use the Miss SA platform to take forward your advocacy work?
I plan on using the platform to create books and resources in children’s home languages. Often, our children with neurodiversity have difficulties in understanding. It becomes a bigger challenge when a child is learning to read but is also trying to understand a different language.
Through making education more inclusive, we make it easier for children to meaningfully engage with what they read.
