a dayone publication
Miss Beautiful South Africa in pageants
Stan Engelbrecht Tamsen de Beer
dayone Email missbeautiful@dayone.co.za www.missbeautiful.co.za ISBN 978-0-620-42373-1 First published 2009 Copyright Š Day One Publisher
Day One, South Africa
Original Concept
Stephan le Roux
Photography
Stan Engelbrecht
Text & Editing
Tamsen de Beer
Layout & Design
Michelle Son
Design Consultant
Gabrielle Guy
Cover
Kelda van Heerden
Scanning
The Prophoto Lab
Color retouching
Bruce Henderson
Premedia
Hirt & Carter Cape (Pty) Ltd
Production
Day One, South Africa
Printing
Tien Wah Press (Pte) Ltd, Singapore
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.
Introduction by Tamsen de Beer The characters that populate these pages have very little in common except that they have all won a beauty competition. The application of this single common denominator across a range of cultures, sub-cultures, lifestyles, aspirations and points of view, reveals what South Africans aspire towards, and the lives they live or wish to leave behind. In essence, Miss Beautiful is a book about South African aspiration. For these characters, the trajectory from bathroom mirror to the many ramps and runways of the beauty pageant world often has less to do with what nature has given them, than it has to do with who they believe they can be. Originally, we set out to establish what it was that South Africa’s multi-cultural communities celebrated as beautiful. (At some point we envisioned secret beauty tips; home-made potions for shiny hair or smooth skin.) We photographed and interviewed the winners of beauty pageants and competitions across the length and breadth of the country. But it was the socio-political context of their personal narratives and the agendas behind the often quirkily-named competitions they had entered (Mr HIV/Aids-Awareness, Miss Anti-crime, the Meat Festival queen) that made us realise Miss Beautiful had become something else: the beauty competition was a lens through which to better understand South Africa and its people. We met each of our 32 main characters first at his or her crowning, and then again at home. Additional telephonic interviews were conducted with pageant organisers and others relevant to each story. It is regrettable that we were not able to interview each character in his or her first language. It should also be noted that not all of our winners are beauty queens – one is a bride, at least two are plain exhibitionists, and nine of our winners are men. But in our society – as in all others – it is the beauty queen, the benevolent female, that is the archetype – and for the beauty queen archetype that we have named our book Miss Beautiful. We connected with these lives at the moment when they became Somebody – Different; Better; Special – and found it was impossible to separate the beauty queen as spokesperson, from the community that had elected her, and on whose behalf she was now expected to speak. Over a single weekend, we attended the Miss Soweto and Miss Rivonia pageants. The differences were striking. Miss Soweto
revealed a generation of urban women entirely of their place in time – they lived it, felt it, had a vision for its future. At Miss Rivonia, the Top Ten finalists may have come from some of the best schools in the country, but their society had made them fearful and inward-looking, and their parents’ desire to protect them had left them isolated from any real notion of a community outside of their suburbs. We learned much about the psyche of our country through beauty pageants. It was not what we had expected. Miss Beautiful is a record of lives at a point in time: South Africa, fifteen years after its first democratic election. Topics of the day: HIV/Aids, crime, unemployment, poverty, a fractured ruling party, Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), the mass exodus of white South Africans, an unstable currency in the face of a global financial crisis, and the global cultural empiricism of satellite television and its impossible aspirations: Music Television, Fashion Television, fame, fabulousness and instant celebrity. It is also a contemporary South African take on the beauty pageant – a symbolically loaded, global phenomenon best understood by those that have walked away victorious, but rarely by anybody else. We learned that you need a brain to be a beauty queen and that inner beauty is more important than outer beauty. You can study for a beauty pageant like you can for a test, but if you do not display confidence, you will not take the crown. You can win a beauty pageant with personality and a smile. Beauty is a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you do not believe you are beautiful, nobody will. Beautiful people are good and kind – pretty faces are just that. Titles only work for people who use them to their own advantage. Beauty queens often believe they have God on their side and it remains unclear whether God or faith makes the winner. The most beautiful people do not necessarily enter beauty pageants – and if they enter, they do not necessarily win. Winning a beauty title can change your life. A title opens doors – with a title, you are Somebody. The kind of bravery it takes to walk in front of a panel of judges and a roomful of people in a bathing costume is the kind of bravery that will serve you in good stead for the rest of your life – no matter what size bum you have. Ultimately, beauty queens are ambassadors, role models, spokespeople, charity brokers and agents for change. At least, this is what they can be. And in South Africa, it seems that this is what they should be – because it is what we need the most.
Little Miss Skwatta Camp Balungile Zikalala ‘She always wants to go to church on Sundays. She wears such nice dresses. She wants to be clean. She wants to be so nice – more than other children. And she is so clever, even in school. The teacher can tell you … She always phones me to say “Why is Sweetness so clever?”... Her homework is always clean and nice. And shame, she is so bright.’ – Lucia Zikalala, mother of Little Miss Skwatta Camp, Balungile Zikalala
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he little girls of Makausi squatter camp have just a few minutes to strut their stuff. They are the curtain-raiser before the final game (Basset vs. A1) of the Papadi Skwatta Camp Soccer Tournament; something for the wives and daughters of Makausi’s soccer fans to look forward to over two days of soccer play-offs. An announcer uses a megaphone to tell the crowd – whistling and cat-calling throughout – who is second princess; first princess; queen. A sudden downpour interrupts him, and everyone runs for cover just as Balungile’s name is called out. Balungile means ‘sweetness’. The nine-year-old wears a smile and carries her dripping wet prize – a large box wrapped in red paper – to a nearby shack, where she poses for photographs and peels open the soggy wrapping to find a brand-new school satchel, pens, pencils, crayons. It is Grant Nicholls who carefully spells out ‘skwatta’ the way he uses the word – without the correct English ‘qu’, but a street slang equivalent. Grant is a forty-something white man who feels more at home in a squatter camp, township or shebeen than anywhere else. Everything about today is Grant’s doing. Years of organising community soccer tournaments and brokering sponsorships for brands wanting to access South Africa’s mass market have made Grant, in his own words, ‘the Johnny Clegg of community football’. ‘I look at these community events and think the kids always get left out … it’s so easy to bring the little boys in, because they can play soccer. So it was an idea to do something and recognise the girls. The poor little girls in the squatter camp are nothing … so here we put them on a pedestal; we brought them out in front of the whole squatter camp. They were super-proud and they are like bloomin’ heroes now.’ Makausi is the largest of 16 huge informal housing settlements on the East Rand. For its 30 000-odd residents, Makausi is prime real estate. It is close to the city where they work. It is cheap – a plot of land costs only R500, while a shack can be built for just R1 200, or R3 000 including a little toilet and internal walls. And, it is safe – R20 per month paid over to the camp leaders buys not only access to water, but also security patrols at night and a DIY law enforcement system that is so much more effective than the South African Police Service that nobody here bothers with the real police any more, even if the camp leaders do dish out their justice via a Kangaroo Court. On the surface of things, life in Makausi is good – as far its residents are concerned. But, unfortunately, over the years the camp leaders at Makausi have ignored the low gravel wall erected to demarcate ground that is unfit for human habitation and traded land and shacks directly above the abandoned Primrose Mine. Here, a rabbit-warren of disused mine workings begins a few hundred metres below the surface, extending hundreds of metres further down. Ask anybody involved in the mining industry: you cannot build on the unstable land above a mine. Three weeks before Balungile became the first-ever Little Miss Skwatta Camp, Makausi made headline news when one of its grannies, Joyce Shongwe, was swallowed by a hole. Joyce was sitting where she always did – in her favourite chair under the tree in her yard, burning copper pieces she had picked up from a dumping site – when she disappeared. Her body was found 80 metres underground. On the surface, a small hole about the width of a person remained where Joyce used to sit. Joyce’s neighbours continue to hang up their washing in the yard next door to the piece of metal sheeting that has been placed as a cautionary measure over the spot where Joyce used to sit. They are nonplussed. This was not the first hole that appeared from nowhere. In a shack nearby, a man pulls back the wooden plank he
has placed in one corner of his bedroom to reveal a small black hole that disappears into the ground with no visible end; another resident points at the never-ending cavity next to his toilet. Everybody in Makausi knows about the holes. They have simply become a part of the landscape one must navigate around, because nobody wants to move to the RDP houses that the government has offered, 50 kilometres further from the city. Balungile, however, will have to move from Makausi. She must go and live with her grandmother because her guardian, Margaret, is moving to a smaller house. It was Margaret who entered Balungile in the Little Miss Skwatta Camp beauty pageant. Balungile’s mother, Lucia, also lives here in Makausi, but she has remarried. Balungile’s father was a Mozambican, shot dead when she was 11 months old. Margaret is Lucia’s best friend. The two women glow with pride over their little girl. Lucia says she wants Balungile to win Miss South Africa one day. Lucia says that winning beauty pageants will make it easier for Balungile to become whatever she wishes. Lucia says: ‘You know what I want? I want her to respect other people, to be nice and clean, to grow up in school. And she must finish. I don’t know what she wants exactly, but to be clean and nice, to understand the teachers. You know at this time, other children don’t understand nicely. Maybe the teachers say: “You are wrong”, then: “No, you can’t tell me – you are not my mum”. You see, they don’t understand. ‘So, I want her to respect the teachers in school … I just want her to finish school; to just finish without having a boyfriend to have a baby. If she finishes school, then she can do anything she wants.’ Balungile’s school principal has the highest hopes: ‘Sweetness will be crowned Miss World in years to come. Good luck!’
‘I’m so proud, because I didn’t think that she could win it … By the time I saw all the girlies walking there, I said “No, she can win it!”’ – Lucia Zikalala, mother of Little Miss Skwatta Camp, Balungile Zikalala
‘I always want to keep her beautiful. I don’t have enough money ... but I always try.’ – Lucia Zikalala, mother of Little Miss Skwatta Camp, Balungile Zikalala
The SACTWU Spring Queen Bianca Adams ‘Some people say “queen of queens” – because they are all queens. But I am the queen amongst the 67 now.’
‘I was praying she would win. But I was praying and saying may the best one win – because all of them are beautiful, and all of them have hope. I didn’t ask God that she must win; I said let the best win. But when they called her name and they said “Bianca Adams”, I wanted to jump out of my skin. Really, I wanted to jump out of my skin! I thought: God, my child has it – and it just depends on her what she is going to do with it.’ – Anna Cloete, mother of Spring Queen, Bianca Adams
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eventy-three spotlights illuminated the already bright smile of Cape Town’s 31st Spring Queen. Billy Ocean’s 80s hit ‘African Queen’ played on six stacks of 24 speakers each, and over the din of 8 000 whistling, screaming clothing and textile workers, her name was called: Bianca Adams. When the photographers waved for her attention and a smile that would make the pages of the local dailies, 20-year-old Bianca waved right back at them. But then Bianca is no professional beauty queen, familiar with the attention-grabbing tactics of news photographers. She is just a pretty young woman whose sincere desire to earn a weekly wage took her to the factory production line of local textile giant Monviso, where six weeks of edging labels and inserting sleeves on locally-produced garments suddenly became a golden highway. The annual South African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (SACTWU) Spring Queen pageant is the world’s largest pageant and fashion show where factory workers take to the runway as models and beauty queens. Each year, union members from around 70 factories that form the backbone of South Africa’s clothing industry, nominate their most beautiful members to vie for the coveted Spring Queen title. Trade union politics of the day: massive job losses in the face of cheap Chinese imports that threaten the survival of the local industry and the livelihoods of thousands of predominantly female workers. The Spring Queen pageant is the mouthpiece of the union’s aim to promote South African garments. Its face is the thousands of men and women parading around the Good Hope Centre under factory banners; vuvuzelas at their lips, glow-light alice bands on their heads, gold in their teeth and alcohol on their breaths. Its ambassador is ‘queen of queens’ – one of 67 hopefuls to meet all of the judges’ requirements and garner the loudest support from the crowd. In the words of Cape Town radio celebrity and MC, Julian Naidoo: ‘Tonight there can only be one queen’. It’s a lot to ask of a 20-year-old. But as any smart young woman born and raised on the Cape Flats knows only too well, if opportunities come your way, they must be grabbed with both hands. Bianca’s mother explains it thus. ‘I said to her: “Bianca, this is not my future, it is your future. Go to school. If you want to fuck it up, then fuck it up; if you want to make something of it, I will stand behind you one hundred percent”. And now she has shown me; she wants to make something of her future.’ Unlike her mother – who raised two daughters single-handedly after the first father, and then the second, abandoned her to her fate – Bianca has reached her adulthood with choices. She chose to finish school when many of her peers at Delft High were getting pregnant, turning to prostitution, using drugs, dropping out. Presented with her choice of evening dresses custom-made for the Spring Queen by top local fashion designers, Bianca hand-picked ‘the perfect dress that I always wanted’. Best of all, Bianca’s bouquet of Spring Queen prizes included a R10 000 bursary sponsored by the union, to study a course of her own choosing once her year of reign has come to an end. And herein lies the great blessing for Bianca in becoming the 31st Spring Queen by virtue of her smile, her Matric education and the six-inch heels that caught the eye and the vote of her coworkers when she wore them to the factory every Friday. Bianca will put her year to good use in advancing the aims of the union – and the union will give her the opportunity to make something of herself thereafter. It was Monviso boss Ian Steyn himself who whispered into her ear as she posed on his knee for the Cape Flats paparazzi:
‘Let the next step be Miss South Africa!’ Bianca’s eyes might have widened for a moment at the thought of it: six weeks’ edging labels and inserting sleeves and now this. But unlike many other beauty queens – and in spite of the big boss’s best wishes for her – Bianca’s spotlit runway won’t be the kind we find her model-walking tonight. Rather, it will be the kind that aeroplanes use to launch themselves skywards – just like Bianca wants to do when she fulfills her dream of becoming an air hostess. ‘I told myself that I didn’t want to work in a factory if I pass my Matric. Hell no! And then when I was in standard nine [grade 11], my cousin passed Matric and she started working at Shoprite. And they only paid you R200-and-something. So I told myself: no ways! Having Matric and you earn that little money? No! … I am not a gold-digger; I just love having money. It just gives you that independence; you don’t need to be struggling. So I thought that education was very important.’ Before Bianca built the wooden shed that is her own bedroom behind her mother’s small house, she shared a bed inside with her mother and sister. Now she has her own double-bed and a shoe collection numbering more than a few pairs of the high-heels she so loves. Earning a wage changed Bianca’s life. So did Kenny, her Nigerian bodybuilder boyfriend who has his own business, drives a BMW convertible, and keeps at bay any of the unwelcome attentions that his pretty girlfriend can’t handle by herself. It was Kenny’s car that became the topic of discussion at Monviso when the big boss gave Bianca a week off work to celebrate her new title. ‘The staff … told me: “No, you could have come to work, you don’t need to listen to Mr Steyn!” because they wanted to parade around with me. They told me: “Tell your boyfriend to come and drive you around because he has the sun-roof on his car”. But when I came back the next Monday, they didn’t parade around with me, they said: “No, you must allow Mr Steyn to parade around with you, because you listen to him.”’ After Bianca was crowned, the mother of the girl who placed second angrily hurled a discarded piece of foliage in her direction, and shouted to deaf ears that the competition had been rigged. The woman’s bitter disappointment echoed the eternal politics of the workplace; the entrenched antipathy between workers and their bosses, and the factory-floor rumour-mongering that almost swept Bianca out of the running. ‘Every year they say that Monviso needs to come in, and Monviso needs to win … Other people say that my boss is paying the judges. The things I have heard! I was told that no, your boss didn’t even contribute any money. So I believe that if he didn’t even contribute any money, then it must have been me … There was a time when I felt so sick and tired of this; when I told myself I just needed to leave. My boyfriend told me, “No you don’t; you are going to win – don’t worry about what the other people say about your boss. If people are not going to be scamming, then you will win just like that!” So that gave me a bit of encouragement.’ In fact, Monviso had not won the year prior to Bianca’s crowning. Neither was there a more beautiful face in the Dromedaris Hall on the night her name took its place alongside 30 others on a magical silver trophy that transforms a factory worker into a queen. And the fact that Bianca believes this to be true, is all that will ever matter.
‘People at work will tell me when I sit with a whole bucket of hot chips: “You cannot eat like that, your dress won’t fit you!” A dress is made for me to fit me. I can’t starve just for one day and then when I am on that ramp, I am going to be fainting of hunger! I said “No, I will eat whatever I want to eat, and that dress just needs to be made to fit me!”’ – Spring Queen, Bianca Adams
‘Usually on Fridays, then I will wear high heels to work. I take a pair of slippers to work on the machines. And then when I have to walk around, I will wear my high heels. It is not uncomfortable, it is very comfortable!’ – Spring Queen, Bianca Adams
‘My best feature – my smile – comes from the inside and the outside. I believe that it can put people at ease and make people comfortable.’ – Spring Queen, Bianca Adams
‘You don’t need to be wearing gold shoes; you don’t need to have a car or a big wallet filled with notes – just as long as you are considerate over others.’ – Spring Queen, Bianca Adams
Miss SPCA Le’-Mari Smit ‘There is a difference between a model and a beauty queen … A beauty queen is this poppie, if I can put it that way – she’s a role model to other girls. Other girls look up to her and say … not “I want to be like her”, but “She makes a difference” – and I want to make a difference as well.’
‘It’s every girl’s dream, to be a princess one day, just to have a crown.’ – Miss SPCA, Le’-Mari Smit
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rom her father, Le’-Mari Smit inherited her blue-green eyes, her relaxed attitude, and her ability to shoot a buck stone dead with a single shot. From her mother, Le’-Mari got the inspiration to become a primary school teacher and to make a difference in the lives of children. She got the scars on her forehead and upper lip from the Staffordshire bull terrier that her parents had treated as their only child until the day that Le’-Mari arrived. (The dog had its revenge 18 months later when it slipped through a gate it was not meant to slip through to tear her little face open.) Le’-Mari gained confidence and thousands of rands in cash prizes, winning 34 of the 36 beauty pageants she entered in the four years since her life changed on a stage in Los Angeles. (That day, she won three Gold medals in the Modelling category of the Beyond 2000 World Championships of Performing Arts – ‘In that moment I knew that this is what I want to do: I want to be a beauty queen’.) The body that won her Best Child Model of the World in Swimwear on a stage in Bulgaria, she got from dance classes six days out of seven. From her modelling teacher she got an incredibly useful list of 100 questions that beauty pageant judges are most likely to ask. But what sets Le’-Mari apart is the beauty queen ‘x’-factor that she believes was a gift from God. ‘I’ve got this mystery that’s something that the other girls don’t have. And I think, to be honest, that’s what God gave me because He wants me to make a difference for Him ... I think He gave me a different face and He gave me a personality that other girls don’t have, so I can make a difference in His Kingdom.’ It is true that 16-year-old Le’-Mari is no blue-eyed blonde. But the ‘different face’ she is talking about comes from that lifealtering childhood experience with the family dog. Le’-Mari would always cover her scarred lip with her hand or touch her scarred left eyebrow self-consciously when she met somebody new. But since she became a beauty queen, Le’-Mari’s confidence rests in her firm belief that she possesses that most elusive of qualities – inner beauty – that has nothing to do with lips or eyes. Nevertheless, she instructs us in the art of the beauty queen: be as natural as you can be. Have a personality. Smile. Walk straight up, tummy in, bum in. Pretend you have a 50-cent piece between your buttocks and hold it in place. Upon arriving on stage, stand with one leg in front of the other and place one hand on the hip of the extended leg. In the Evening category, place both hands on your hips. Take three seconds to look at each of the judges in turn: first the judge in the middle, then the judges to left and right. Release the hand and start walking. In the Evening category, keep your hands in place for three seconds after you have started walking, and then release them. When walking down the ramp, look at the audience. Upon reaching the T-shape at the end, look only at the judges. Smile. Walk along the T, allowing the judges to look at your dress, your shoes and the way you walk. Turn and walk back down the ramp, making sure to look at your audience. These have served her well. Le’-Mari scored more points than 50 other contestants across a range of categories to take her 35th title, Miss SPCA, at the Edenvale Community Centre, four hours’ drive from her home in Bloemfontein. She entered Miss SPCA as practice for the big one: Miss Junior South Africa. She also entered because she ‘really loves animals’. Since Le’-Mari took her 36th title and became Miss Junior South Africa, she is contractually obliged to stop entering pageants. Miss Junior South Africa is the recognised little sister of the Miss South Africa and Miss Teen South Africa pageants, and it behoves all national title-holders to focus their efforts rather on the international
terrain for the year of their reign than the little local competitions that do a lot for ego, but little for status. But most importantly, Miss Junior South Africa must spend her year becoming involved in charity work in her community. Since it is generally accepted that a girl with a sash and a title is more persuasive than a plain schoolgirl when it comes to separating corporates from their profits, beauty queens and charities have always gone hand-in-hand. Between overseas trips, charity work and fitting in some schoolwork (she confesses that school has somehow lost its appeal lately), Miss Junior South Africa will be invited to attend numerous functions. These will include the beauty pageants run by Carolyn Baldwin of Pageants SA and her modelling school owner and partner, Jackie Allen – King and Queen of the Universe, Miss and Mr Africa, Cinderella Scholarship of South Africa, Miss and Mr Tourism, Best Model South Africa, Miss and Mr Photogenic, Miss and Mr Christmas Masquerade, Little Miss World and the South African Modelling and Talent Awards. Indeed, Carolyn and Jackie really know how to make a spectacle of an otherwise ordinary Saturday afternoon. The Miss SPCA pageant – Jackie’s pet fundraising project – is teen, pre-teen, tiny and petite heaven: tiaras and sashes for all the queens, kings, princesses and princes. Backstage, current and previous Mrs Africas rub shoulders with current and previous Miss Tiny Queens, Queens of the Universe, Miss Pre-teens and an array of pretty Misters. Here everybody is somebody, and nobody ever has to give back a sash or hand over a hard-earned crown; once a winner, always a winner. This is the child pageant circuit: spotlights, ball gowns, high-heels and lip-gloss. It is the closest thing to Hollywood that a child growing up in suburban Africa can imagine. ‘I was speaking to Auntie Carolyn and Auntie Jackie last weekend – because they were here to train me for Miss Cinderella now in Las Vegas. So they were here, and I was speaking to them. I want to have a competition in Bloem so I can raise money to take those 30 kids [at Rooikappie School] to the sea. And I think in that way God wants to use me to make a difference. I’m going to speak at different schools about how a girl must react. Because a lot of times, girls are very easy targets to everything – to group pressure, to how boys use them, anything like that. And I think the big thing is, it starts with role models. If you have the wrong role model, you are not going to have the right values and morals and standards ... I’m going to do it in that way because that’s what God wants me to do, to make a difference for Him, not for myself. The Glory is not to me, it’s for Him.’ Le’-Mari’s father also believes that his beautiful eldest daughter has God on her side. Before every competition she enters, and no matter where in the world this takes her, Hendri Smit phones: ‘He will … tell me: listen, good luck, quickly close your eyes. And then he will pray for me’. Although it is Hendri who pays for Le’-Mari to travel to the many stages and T-ramps in the world of childhood pageantry, it is her mother, Sariana, who travels by her side. Sariana and Le’-Mari spent six months preparing for Miss Junior South Africa. Every day they would work their way through the list of 100 questions: ‘I’ll sit here and we’ll watch TV, like Egoli – my mom’s a fan of Egoli – so we watch, and if it’s a break, we’ll mute the sound and she’ll ask me questions. And then we watch Egoli again; ‘mute’; ask me questions…’ There were only two questions that Le’-Mari ever had to answer that were not on the list of 100 questions. The first was: ‘What qualities do your friends have?’ The second was: ‘If your friend was pregnant, what advice would you give her?’ Underneath the stuffed head of a wildebeest she shot dead in
‘I think you must teach your child from small: some you win, some you lose. There’s always going to be a girl prettier than you; always. You are not the prettiest … If you win, it’s good for you. If you lose – well, that’s life.’ – Miss SPCA, Le’-Mari Smit
a family hunting ritual devised by her father, Le’-Mari poses like a beauty queen is supposed to – her hand on the hip of her extended right leg. Hendri is a professional hunter. He did not mind that Le’-Mari was only 15 and a girl when he told her she was expected to eat the testicles of the wildebeest after she shot it. She counts herself lucky she did not have to carry the animal’s carcass herself, as is customary when one shoots one’s first buck. But she did have to submit to having her face smeared with its blood. ‘Ah, it was … actually amazing, you could say. It’s like pumping here [her heart], and you have to shoot now, and you don’t know if you’re going to miss it or you’re going to shoot it … it was amazing!’ At any rate, our story ends well: Le’-Mari donated dog and cat biscuits to the Bloemfontein SPCA, and her picture appeared in the local newspaper asking the Bloemfontein public to do the same. Sixty per cent of the net profit from Jackie’s Miss SPCA pageant went to her local SPCA in Edenvale. And the jealous dog that very nearly ruined the face of Bloemfontein’s pre-eminent child beauty was put to sleep by lethal injection.
‘To me, inner, true beauty lies within. So you can be beautiful outside and you can have this non-nice personality. But you have to be beautiful inside, and that will come out and make you more beautiful than you are now.’ – Miss SPCA, Le’-Mari Smit
Mr HIV/Aids-Awareness Sam Manganye ‘[Winning Mr HIV/Aids-Awareness was] the best thing that’s ever happened to me … because it’s good to win something; good to be a winner ... I feel like a hero. I feel like a president. I feel like I can control everyone. I feel like a giant. And everyone was checking me up and down, hugging me, kissing me – even my competitors, they were so happy for me … it was so good ... That whole week I couldn’t even sleep; I was dreaming about that, it was so good.’
‘I begin to walk tall now. If someone says “Who are you?” - I’m Mr What-what … It’s referring to the title. So everyone must know now: this is a person, you know.’ – Mr HIV/Aids-Awareness, Sam Manganye
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he day Sam Manganye won his ninth beauty pageant, his mother and four sisters leapt from their orange plastic seats and ran to the stage in a shrill frenzy to mob their handsome boy. They had twittered, giggled and cheered at lunch-time when the Mr and Miss HIV/Aids-Awareness pageant began; passed around Marie biscuits at tea-time; and been rewarded this wonderful bounty just before dinner: a prestigious title, a gift-box of staple foods, a happy ending. The manly posturing that had taken place all afternoon in front of the judges combined ramp modelling and stage acting in a manner so particular that you would be unlikely to find it anywhere else in the world but on a Saturday afternoon at the Soweto YMCA. The contestants modelled underwear, sportswear, casual wear and eveningwear. They had fastened to their garments, for the purposes of identification, scraps of paper bearing random three-digit numbers in no sequential order. One had written ‘MAFIA’ on his. The outfits were self-styled: a blue-and-orange Hawaiian beach ensemble with a flower necklace; white swimming trunks with matching cuffs and collar; a black Speedo with orange armbands. ‘MAFIA’ wore grey underpants and carried a snooker cue, then mimed sinking an invisible black into an invisible pocket on an invisible table. Number 111, Sam Manganye, doused himself with water and appeared in checked board shorts as though fresh from the surf. Later: green slacks with a tropical jungle shirt and white slipons; a caramel three-piece suit with a coat-tail; a white pin-striped coat-tail. ‘MAFIA’ wore black and carried a bamboo cane. Number 111, Sam Manganye, wore a red-and-black biker jacket and a white belt with a gold buckle. But the outfits were secondary to the straight-faced strutting, staring and posing. This remains imprinted on the mind: South Africa’s ‘lost’ generation, staring sober-faced at its future. Sam Manganye entered the pageant because he wanted to be part of their struggle. ‘These days we are not fighting against Apartheid; we are fighting against Aids now. It’s our struggle. So let me be there – and it will be a title to be remembered when I am old.’ Before the Aids epidemic, South Africans died when they were old. But statistics show that since around 1997, South Africans have been dying in their 20s, 30s and 40s – at a rate of 800 people per day. Well over five million South Africans live with HIV/Aids, including around 250 000 children under 15 years old. Sam is not HIV-positive, but he sees Aids all around him. He has personal experience of its effects – the youngest member of his family is an Aids orphan whom his mother took in. Sam is both of, and witness to, the generation that health workers and anti-Aids campaigns have not reached; that newspapers cannot understand; that statisticians have written off. ‘My age-group, they are so ignorant – in the sense that they kill themselves. They like fast lives … they like to imitate other people. And they like to compromise their values, their dignity, where they’re coming from – because of peer pressure… ‘I’m an eyewitness, and it’s so embarrassing and so bad. I don’t want to lie … Teenagers, they are not abstaining, they are not … I cannot understand the main reason, but I think it’s this generation – there’s something wrong. It’s pressure. Because even those who are educated … like lawyers … he finished school and he’s a lawyer; a doctor – but the money that he’s earning, at my age, and he thinks: “I have to impress girls; I have to drive a fancy car to get girls”. Even those who are not educated, they rob, they do hijacking – to get money to impress girls. Those who are educated and those who are illiterate, when they get money it’s one thing: party.’
Sam really is an eyewitness. He lives in his parents’ house in Meadowlands, across the road from a nightclub and tavern where the township boys and girls come to party. But Sam does not visit the tavern. The first reason is that he is a gospel Christian, raised to respect his Zulu mother and Tsonga father. The second reason earns Sam his place on stage at the YMCA alongside the other young posers: Sam would dearly like to be bourgeois. It is his best friend and personal stylist, Khulisa, who explains: ‘Actually, the word “bourgeois” comes from the French language. We believe the bourgeois are people who have a high standard of life and who are also metrosexuals; who wear different clothes from others – you know, attractive ones, expensive clothes with labels … because they are the ones who girls – actually I can say beautiful and expensive girls – go for. They are first-class.’ Bourgeois boys do not drink in township taverns. They drink in Rosebank. They do not wear last year’s boot-cut jeans when skinny jeans are in fashion. Last year, when Sam had a job at a call centre, he could afford to run with the bourgeois boys. But this year Sam does not have a job. He looks at Khulisa’s skinny jeans and back to his own boot-cuts. ‘Style changes. But my inspiration – I don’t want to lie – it’s my friend; this one. He has taste in clothes, my friend. As I said, my background was church, school, church, school … so I was not exposed to a lot of things – clothes; modelling.’ Sam’s father believes modelling is for girls or gays; Sam should have been a soccer player, a runner. If he had the money to pay for it, Sam would have gone to university and studied marketing. Sam’s father has borne his son’s serial pageant-entering with some reluctance: his first win at nine years old; the second at 13, Mr Tiyani, at his secondary school in Diepkloof; Mr Spring, Mr Winter and Mr Jules at the pricey Model C Jules High School in Jeppe where his parents registered him ‘with the little they had’. Sam Matriculated with good marks. But there was no more money for education – and no jobs for young men from the township without degrees behind their name. It leaves Sam just where it leaves the other young contestants: staring sober-faced at their futures. Stuck between his religious past and the fTV/MTV future beamed into his parents’ Meadowlands lounge courtesy of the satellite dish on their modest roof, Sam is surprisingly quick to answer the question: who is the real Sam? ‘The real Sam is the churchgoer. The real Sam is a very good guy … that’s the real Sam; the real Sam who one day had a vision … to be a pastor; to speak life to people, to heal, to preach the gospel, to be a pastor, to be a bishop – that’s the real Sam.’ Khulisa giggles and agrees: everywhere Sam goes, he attempts to convert the bourgeois boys to a more conservative lifestyle. ‘Sometimes they are even bored. They say “Hey you … go away’”. Sam takes his title seriously. And his evangelical past has been an unlikely training ground: Mr HIV/Aids-Awareness finds it easy to stand up in front of crowds of people and present his point of view. At schools, hospices, orphanages, he dons his sash and delivers a self-help sermon of his own creation: sexual abstinence, positivity, life, possibility. ‘When they said I won, it was like a dream come true. I was so happy – especially my parents, they were there, my sisters – it was their first time … to come and watch me doing something … I was so happy; I thanked God, I cried and I was so happy, really. It was a step, you know? That means I can do it – to warn me that there’s something in you, so you have to grow it, that potential. There’s a seed, so you need to plant it, and the time of harvest will come.’
‘You can judge a person by the way that person dresses. You can see: that one is a thief, that one is a worker …’ – Mr HIV/Aids-Awareness, Sam Manganye
‘I think why I’m winning is the way I’m conducting myself. First impressions last.’ – Mr HIV/Aids-Awareness, Sam Manganye
‘If you could be president for a day, what would you change about South Africa?’
‘I want world peace, and we all want crime to stop. If I was president now, I would help all the homeless people, and I would make sure I give all the children on the streets food and money. They are causing crime because they don’t have houses and money.’ – King of the Universe, Patrick Gird (21)
‘I think one of the biggest problems that we have in South Africa is miseducation. So, if I were president for a day, I would put together a programme that encourages young people to get involved with what is happening in their country. I would make debating mandatory because it promotes sharing accurate information, and I believe that would solve many problems because people would be more educated about different subject matters.’ – Miss SA Teen, Zizo Beda (19)
‘I would make the death penalty become law – because there is so much violence and it would be a scare factor for people not to commit crime, and make the crime rate go down. I would create more jobs by building more factories – and I also want to attract international investors to make the economy stronger. I would create government housing for the poor and, most importantly, ensure that every child has a decent education and every family has a home to live in.’ – Queen of the Sea, Talia Ferreira (17)
‘There is a lot of poverty in South Africa – and an electricity crisis as well. I would solve the electricity crisis, and also help to build homes for the underprivileged and create more job opportunities. That would decrease the crime rate in our country. There are many children that have the potential to do well in schools but cannot afford a tertiary education, or even a high school education. So I would like to provide free education for the children and medical attention too, if possible.’ – Miss Friendly City, Bianca Pillay (16)