Times Of Swaziland: WHY AREN’T INTERNATIONAL QUEENS SPONSORED?

WHY AREN’T INTERNATIONAL QUEENS SPONSORED?
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Nombuso Dlamini on 17/08/2022 09:17:00


MBABANE – Adopt an ‘adoption’ spirit.
Eswatini currently has six beauty pageant queens who are representing or
prepping for international competition.  In no particular order we have; Miss
World Heritage, Miss Eco-Tourism, Miss Teen Eco-Tourism, Miss Africa Culabar,
Miss University Africa and Miss Heritage Global. From September each one of them
will be leaving the motherland with only one common purpose, representing the
kingdom in India, Nigeria and South Africa (SA), to name a few. This also came
about after an interview was held with Eswatini president of pageants, Catrien
Potgieter. The former model and beauty pageant enthusiast elaborated on the
struggles of taking the contestants onto international stages.
Expenses
The expenses include; flight tickets fees, accommodation, pocket money, dressing
them from face-beats to the actual outfits which all do not come cheap. Also
worth noting is that Eswatini is now receiving invites for all these
competitions, meaning that they are being recognised and the last competition
that the country attended in India, they took third place.
In SA, there’s always a scrabble to be the main sponsor of their participation
in these international pageants. So far, 25-year -old Lalela Msane, the SA model
and beauty queen was crowned Miss Supranational 2022. She was previously crowned
Miss SA 2021 and represented SA at Miss Universe 2021.
In her reign she was supported and sponsored by companies like Kia Motors SA,
Dark and Lovely, and Cell-C also came on board. This is besides the aid the
model had received from the Miss SA committee, which is the one boost the local
pageant is gunning for, for our local queens. Potential sponsors could be the
Ministry of Tourism, because they currently have a Miss Eco-Tourism, who will be
leaving the country for India in the next coming months. The Ministry stated
that they didn’t know much about the current queen. It was also mentioned that
although the ministry focused on the broad tourism aspect of promotion, they
would gladly aid where they could if approached by the Arts and Culture
department as they focus on pageantry.
Stressful
The beauty queens have also expressed how life away from home becomes quite
stressful and intimidating, and any support from the nation would be of great
help to them.  Also, the environment becomes very over-whelming to them and this
is justifiable as the contestants are young and quite vulnerable to being
homesick especially if they under immense pressure of any sort.