UNIVERSAL SEARCH FOR AN AFRICAN QUEEN

It's been 10 years since Africa experienced it's glory year at Miss Universe. Back in 1999, three delegates from Africa made the Top 10: Botswana, Ghana and South Africa. Miss Botswana went on to the win the title, with South Africa in the Final 5.

The continent had good years in 2000, 2003 and 2007 with 2 African delegates progressing to the Top 10, but in 2001 and 2002 only one delegate made the Top 10, and there were none in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2008. I realise that there has been at least one African delegate amongst the semi-finalists every year since 1999, but that was "engineered" to give the illusion of diversity. This does not only apply to Africa, but all continents.

The number of semi-finalists was increased to 15 in 2003 (there were 20 in 2006) and the Miss Universe Organisation reserves the right to replace at least 5 semi-finalists that might not appear on the judge's merit list, but whom they want or need on the list. This allows them to "cast" the semi-finalists so as to achieve diversity, and to avoid situations where suitable girls are excluded from the semi-finals for some inexplicable reason known only to the panel of judges. The glaring disparity between the scores of the leaders and the tail-enders in the semi-finals is proof enough.

Since only four delegates from Africa have been named to date, it appears that whomever progresses to the semi-finals at the pageant in August, at this stage, will most definitely be a "casting" since none of them will get through on merit. As there are usually about 16 delegates from Africa at the pageant, perhaps we will get our gorgeous African Queen from amongst the ranks of the delegates yet to be named.

Whilst surfing the net for information on the other African delegates for Miss Universe this year, I came across the following piece written by Abraham Adegoke for MyNaija News, a Nigerian online publication:

"Quite a number of issues were raised in the responses of the respondents. One of them is the beauty of the winner. Most of our respondents posted that the new queen is not beautiful. One respondent went on to say real beautiful girls don't go for pageants... it was a unanimous conclusion that the whole event was uninspiring and uninteresting, a far cry from what was expected from the organisers of the event. It was dull. The girls were not looking like beauty queens AT ALL!!! The girls were not the type to classify as picture perfect, camera friendly nor stage worthy...the only logical conclusion to arrive at is that the Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria beauty pageant is on a decline."

So it appears that the phenomenon is not unique to South Africa, and that another national pageant on the continent is experiencing "pageant rot".