The Miss South Africa beauty pageant contestant embroiled in a nationality dispute has withdrawn from the competition, citing concerns for her and her family’s safety and well-being.
Chidimma Adetshina’s Instagram announcement came a day after a preliminary investigation by the Home Affairs Department revealed that her mother may have committed “identity theft” to become a South African citizen.
Ms Adetshina, a 23-year-old law student, said she was born in Soweto, a Johannesburg-area township, and raised in Cape Town.
In media interviews, she revealed that her father was Nigerian and her mother was a South African of Mozambican descent.
For weeks, her roots have been the focus of a social media storm, with some South Africans questioning whether she was truly South African.
As the controversy grew, the Miss South Africa pageant organizers requested that the home affairs department conduct an investigation prior to the event on Saturday.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, the department said it had discovered that the identity of an “innocent” South African mother “may have been stolen” by Ms Adetshina’s mother.
However, the department stated that Ms Adetshina “could not have participated in her mother’s alleged unlawful actions because she was an infant at the time.”
It added that it was conducting additional investigations with the goal of filing criminal charges, as well as obtaining legal advice “on the implications of the alleged fraudulent activity on Adetshina’s citizenship status”.
In an Instagram post, Ms Adetshina did not respond to the findings but did say she had made the “difficult decision” to withdraw from the competition.
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