OPINIONISTA: Lurking xenophobia — Miss SA saga is a blot on our country’s constitutional DNA

With the resurgence of muscular nationalism across Europe, the US, South Africa and elsewhere, questions of “origin” have resurfaced as one of the key tools in the xenophobe’s quest for “racial purity”.

Remember when Donald Trump called for former president Barack Hussein Obama to prove his American citizenship, demanding he release his birth certificate? This from a man with two Eastern European brides notched on his matrimonial measuring stick.

Mrs Trump No 3 was the former Slovenian model Melanija Knavs, who was introduced to the Trumpster in 1998 at the “hostess” Kit Kat Club in New York.

She was one of those migrants who was processed quickly, so to speak – for her “scarce skills”, we imagine. Very Weimar Republic.

‘Blood lines’

The calls for Soweto-born Miss South Africa contestant Chidimma Adetshina to be disqualified from representing this country because of her parents’ nationalities sprout from the same ignorant, toxic, stagnant pond of xenophobia that lurks in all societies.

Adetshina was born at Chris Hani Baragwanath, a South African citizen the moment she popped out. As simple as that. She has been the subject of “several petitions” calling for her withdrawal because some do not regard her as a “true blood” South African, whatever that means.

Sports, Arts and Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie, who is known for his inflammatory xenophobic attacks, of course joined the mob, telling TimesLIVE that “we truly cannot have Nigerians competing in our Miss SA competition”.

Adetshina is one of the top 11 who will compete in the Miss SA competition.

Her mother is South African, with roots in Mozambique, and her father is Nigerian.

One wonders whether McKenzie has had a DNA test? Would he still qualify to serve as a minister in South Africa if the contours of his physical identity stretch way beyond where his heart and mind are at home?

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba went full xenophobe, claiming: “This young woman is compromising herself identifying with these characters who are likely in South Africa illegally.”

If I were Adetshina I would sue the DNA out of Mashaba.

Thank sanity for the EFF’s Naledi Chirwa – who has had her share of xenophobic vitriol tossed her way because of her Malawian heritage – who called out McKenzie. She correctly pointed out in a tweet that he did not respect South African laws. “You’re not ‘Patriotic’ at all. You don’t know the South African Constitution.”

Any number of nationalities are bound to show up in McKenzie, as has been evidenced by a large cohort of citizens of Indonesian, of Javanese origin, who were brought to our shores as slaves. Many Afrikaners can trace their heritage back to these origins as well.

As professors Jaco Greeff and Carina Schlebusch noted in 2021 in The Conversation, two of the most dramatic migrations to South Africa were European colonisation and slavery.

“The subsequent admixture between slaves, Europeans and indigenous populations led to the formation of new populations. One, at the southern tip of Africa, was a group that became known as Afrikaners.”

So is Pieter Groenewald more African than Chidimma Adetshina? Well, yes, in the eyes of some xenophobes.

Who decides?

A long time ago, people could move through the world, well mostly in the West, without passports. Slaves were moved throughout the world without papers, but brought with them an ancestral passport, their DNA.

Austrian author Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) wrote of how, after World War 1, “nationalism emerged to agitate the world”. Zweig described the xenophobia that followed as “an intellectual epidemic” in which there is a “morbid dislike or fear of the foreigner” and a suspicion of strangers.

“The humiliations which once had been devised with criminals alone in mind now were imposed upon the traveller, before and during every journey,” he wrote.

Now photographs from right to left, and full face, with hair arranged to make ears visible, were demanded. Fingerprints of all 10 fingers were taken, certificates of vaccination and health had to be produced and invitations with addresses of relatives were required.

We contain multitudes, as Walt Whitman once wrote. Your citizenship depends on a few concrete pillars: birth, naturalisation, marriage, heritage (although less and less so).

Read more: Notions of purity or exceptionalism are nothing more than ethno-nationalist xenophobic nonsense

You pay tax, you contribute to society, but most importantly, where you feel at home or where you belong can only be traced in your heart. There you will celebrate the languages, the cultures, the soul of the country you call home.

IT wild man Elon Musk is proudly claimed by some as South African, even though the Muskster identifies 100% as an American who happened to pop out in Pretoria. His only references to this country are of his unpleasant memories of his youth.

Trevor Noah, who is of mixed heritage, is embraced as a homie, so why not Adetshina?

She has every right to represent the very diversity that makes this country One Nation, Many Cultures, and as much as this slogan has been maligned, it is true, and it is our gift to ourselves and the world. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.