Chidinma Adetshina: The Power of Tenderness
By James Eze
Watching Chidinma Adetshina dazzle at the Miss Universe contest in Mexico in the early hours of today, a verse from the poetry of Dennis Brutus flashed through my mind… “Somehow we survive/and tenderness, frustrated does not wither.” Brutus was a colossal anti-Apartheid figure whose poetry framed the brutal atrocities of the minority white regime in South Africa and the hate it planted and watered. There is something about Chidinma that makes it difficult for anyone to look at her with unkindness. But somehow, South Africans found a way around that.
Indeed, nothing succinctly captures the poignancy of Chidinma’s storied rise to the second most beautiful girl in the universe that the verse from Brutus. Tenderness does not wither in the heat of frustration. Nor does it die from the acid bite of a common hate. Paradoxically, ‘A Common Hate’ is the title of another famous poem of Brutus in which he sang; ‘hate gouged out deeper levels for our passion/a common hate enriched our love and us.’
It is intriguing how the word ‘hate’ has continued to define South Africa while ‘tenderness’ seems to distance itself from her. From the hate injected in a healthy dose into the black townships by the Apartheid regime down to the current scenario where the descendants of the victims of hate have now become the leading purveyors of hate on the continent, South Africa makes a shocking case study. The country has made rapid progress on the hate lane; accelerating from cyclical xenophobia to nursing a national hatred for one little girl that was born and raised in home soil. There’s nowhere else in history where a whole country has ever risen in unison to demonstrate unmitigated hatred for one person as South Africa has done to Chidinma. And what’s her crime? She had the effrontery to aspire to represent the country of her birth rather than Nigeria, the country of her ancestors, in a beauty pageant. But shame on South Africa! Chidinma is the second most beautiful woman in the universe today!
Born 22 years ago in Soweto, Chidinma’s troubles compare quite favourably to the tortuous history of her birth city which is pockmarked by the infamous Soweto Massacre of over 700 youths in June 1976 by the Apartheid regime. There’s a cruel twist of irony here, though…that a child born 26 years after the Soweto Massacre had her dream of representing the country of her birth slain by hate-filled relatives of the victims of the massacre. And that is the story of modern South Africa; a place where dark passions flare up in unbridled bloodlust and a setting where people who rallied the support of the conscionable world to survive the flames of incinerating hatred are gleefully wielding the cudgels of hate against others.
It has to be said that it is shocking how South Africa was not content with throwing Chidinma out of the Miss South Africa pageant and mustered enough bitterness to petition the owners of the Miss Universe for her disqualification from the pageant. Pray, what is the colour of South African hatred, biko? How evil-minded can a people be? In attempting to cut Chidnma off from the Miss Universe pageant, South Africa had provoked the cosmic law as Okonkwo did in Chinua Achebe’s ‘Things Fall Apart.’ Okonkwo had defied the warning of the sagely Ogbuefi Ezeudu who had told him, “that boy calls you father. Bear no hand in his death.” The consequences of Okonkwo’s disobedience was telling. Until she was cast away, Chidinma had no other country except South Africa. But Chidinma’s beloved country of birth had thrown her out and replaced her with someone else. Karmic laws soon caught up with them and against their thunderous clamour for Chidinma’s disqualification the woman they replaced her with was forced out of the contest by fate. Divine chastisement? May be!
I can’t lie. There is sufficient reason to be mad at South Africa. It is heartrending that Nelson Mandela’s country and the country about which Dennis Brutus wrote some of his definitive poems on justice and fairness, has become the modern day cesspit for bitter hatred and meaningless resentment against fellow Africans. I hope tomorrow doesn’t meet South Africa in another precarious situation. The fire next time may not be kind!
Congratulations, Chidinma Vanessa Adetshina!
You reign in our hearts!
