PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA - OCTOBER 25: Qhawekazi Mazaleni at the Miss SA 2025 Finale Show at SunBet Arena on October 25, 2025 in Pretoria, South Africa. The premier national beauty pageant empowers young women to become leaders and change-makers through its flagship mission, Empower Youth Africa. Miss South Africa 2025 will be the 67th edition of the Miss South Africa pageant. (Photo by Gallo Images/Oupa Bopape).
To twist that feminist saying from the 1970s, a country without a beauty pageant is like a school of fish without a Tour de France’s worth of bicycles…
This deep into the 21st century, young and gorgeous – and sometimes married and mature – women get up on stage to strut their stuff.
They still gabble on about hoping for world peace or that hunger and poverty will be cured in our lifetime. They still prance along displaying a fair amount of flesh… as the cynics would say, for the pleasure of lustful men. That’s why it’s nothing more than a grotesque, demeaning cattle show, say the critics.
Yet, there are persuasive counter-arguments. Many contestants are not dumb animals like cattle and they go into it eyes wide open, wanting to use success in a pageant as a stepping stone to greater things… whether that be a modelling or acting career.
And, let’s face it, with the internet as full of sleaze as it is, men don’t need to ogle what is, by comparison, a very tame display.
So, let’s allow our newly crowned Miss South Africa 2025, Qhawekazi Mazaleni – a 24-year-old speech therapist from East London – her brief time in the limelight.
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