'Black people hate themselves': PAC on backlash against Miss SA's Chidimma Adetshina

The criticism and outrage towards Miss SA contestant Chidimma Adetshina for her Nigerian heritage is just “antiblackness” and Afrophobia is caused by white supremacy which makes black people hate themselves, says the Pan African Congress of Azania (PAC).

Adetshina, who has made it through to the upcoming Miss SA contest has faced backlash for having a Nigerian father and a Mozambican mother, despite having been born and raised in South Africa.

Adetshina, 23, was born at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto and was raised in Pimville until moving with her parents to Cape Town.

While some have defended her, saying she was indeed South African due to being born in the country, many others have called for her removal from the pageant. This includes Patriotic Alliance leader and Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture Gayton McKenzie. 

However, the cause of such Afrophobia and ethnophobia was based on the complex racial history of the country that still prevails, said PAC spokesperson Azania Tyhali.

Tyhali said such remarks were rooted in antiblackness that was a direct result of colonisation and the “white power structure” which governed the country’s society.

“The world over, everyone hates black people, even black people themselves, and South Africa is no exception. To be black in this world is to be available for scorn and ridicule.”

Tyhali said the country's colonial structures which aimed to preserve white privilege surivived through the division of the colonised African people.

“The intra-black violence that is exhibited through the afrophobic attack on Chidimma is as a result of white supremacy and the fear of the colonised black subject from confronting the real cause of their hate for themselves. White supremacy that has turned black people into fungible objects.

“The PAC maintains that the primary contradiction of SA has been consistent since 1652. It is the ideology of white supremacy and settler herrenvolkism [promotion of a master race]. This ideology is happy when Africans fight among themselves while it continues to appropriate and divide the wealth of our land among the white settler group of SA,” said Tyhali.

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