Black Lives Matter: South Africa’s first black Miss Universe uses platform to fight racism

When Zozibini Tunzi marched in the Black Lives Matter protests in New York City, the Miss Universe kept thinking how young people in her native South Africa died fighting for the same cause 44 years ago. Known as Youth Day in the present day, Tunzi recalled the Soweto Uprising on June 16, 1976 when tens of thousands of students protested against apartheid laws that segregated and controlled the black majority.

“South African students were marching against systemic racism,” said Tunzi.

“So many years later, that’s still happening, not only in South Africa, but across the world,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview from New York, where she is spending her year as Miss Universe.

As one of only a handful of black women to have won the title, Tunzi was intending to use her influence to challenge racism, inequality and perceptions of beauty even before the Black Lives Matter protests erupted in the United States.

More than a quarter of a century after the end of apartheid - a system of segregation and white minority rule - South Africa is considered one of the most unequal countries in the world, according to the World Bank.

Tunzi grew up with four sisters in rural South Africa and started entering church beauty pageants aged about 6 because her mother thought it would help her make friends.

In an Instagram post she put up a few days ago, Zozibini says, “What an emotionally taxing week it has been. From #BlackLivesMatter peaceful protesting, to ongoing news of GBV and femicide. That even during a pandemic, women do not only fear for getting ill but also getting killed. Murdered by strangers and by their partners. Murdered in their own homes and in the streets. The world is not safe for women. A shift needs to happen..It’s been way too long. Personally I am tired. This has to stop💔”

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