No to girl abuse
Tumie Modise | Monday October 5, 2015 11:30
Miss Botswana competition is now synonymous with controversy, with some people even labelling it a porn show, just to drive home their point.
Almost every year, the licence holders call in new organisers, but before the new queen can even shout “new weave!”, the stakeholders would be throwing salvos at each other, accusing each other of dishonesty and treachery. But still the competition goes on.
Prior to the Friday 29th September pageant, the previous pageant was last held on April 2013, exactly 29 months ago. The competion couldn’t be held last year for whatever reason, really not surprising to anybody.
Many moons ago, the country held its very first Mr. Botswana pageant. A decade or two later, the then winner Felix Chivapi is still the reigning King and it doesn’t look like he will ever hand over the crown, not because he refuses to relinquish the crown, but simply because the organisers simply vanished into thin air leaving him stuck with the sash.
So the outgoing queen has been the reigning queen for more than the stipulated time and finally on Saturday a new queen was crowned, taking over, what I can imagine, is the hot crown from the exhausted queen’s head. Personally I would never allow my daughter to ever enter this competition for several reasons, the main one being the rampant exploitation. It turns out both parents and girls need lots of patience to survive in this pageant, a trait I simply don’t possess.
So it’s a given we would get disqualified the very next day after crowning. For years now, every time after this pageant, accusations and counter-accusations fly all over, between pageant organisers, parents and their girls. The dramas have been wildly reported in the media before, some even ended up at court!
In April 2013 the outgoing queen and her princesses were crowned at another glittering event. Fast-forward to today, we learn, with utter dismay, that they are yet to receive their prizes, which includes a new set of luxury wheels for the queen. Very few people knew about this until last week. Tongues starting wagging when, at the time of the crowning, it became apparent that the outgoing queen was missing in action.
At first most people, including me, thought the queen was just going to be ‘fashionably late’, that she would soon sashay into the venue in style during the proceedings. After all she’s queen. Soon question turned into shock and disbelief at crowning moment, when a strange person then staggered onto the stage with the crown on her head!
The murmurings started, a friend concluded that there had been a palace coup of some sort. We could only pray that the queen and her two princesses were safe wherever they were. I even imagined the queen and her princesses gagged and piled up somewhere in some dark, filthy dungeon. Somebody else crowned the new queen on the night, The outgoing queen and her princesses were nowhere to be found to carry out that duty, which I must add, was theirs to execute in the first place!
But that is just Miss Botswana, never short of drama, like the day they brought a conference chair up the stage for the new queen to sit on three years ago!
Every time you think the worst is over, they pull another rabbit from their bottomless bag of tricks! So it has come to pass that the new queen has been crowned.
But isn’t it time the current licence holders did the most honourable thing, bowing down gracefully and relinquishing the licence too?
When will their own reign end? Is it not time they admitted that even after 50 years, they still don’t have the ‘capacity’ to pull off this pageant? What is the use of this pageant if year after year scores of girls continue to cry foul, all crying exploitation? If these accusations of exploitation are true, why are grown up women even exploiting little girls?
I wish to call upon the Miss Botswana licence holders to take stock (of themselves) and do right by our daughters. We cannot sit back and watch anymore while this exploitation continues.
It is unacceptable that after more than two years, the outgoing queen and her princesses now find themselves embroiled in court battles in a desperate bid to get prizes promised to them, prizes which were used to lure them into joining this pageant in the first place.
This is simply unacceptable and should be condemned in the strongest of terms by all, especially by the women of this country.