General

MBABANE – Pageants Eswatini Chairman Tony Dlamini has gone the extra mile to try and get law enforcement to intervene in the Miss Culture Global issue.

According to Dlamini, they had summoned the potential participant of the Miss Culture Global pageant on Friday to come to their offices to discuss the matter. However, they say that the participant allegedly said they had issues with transport, hence they could not attend the meeting. 

The ongoing issue with this pageant is that Miss Culture Global is an international event and is poaching girls from different countries to participate in their pageant. The challenge with this is that the pageant is not registered with the local governing bodies, which oversee pageants and have come out to say that they will not register.

The Eswatini National Council of Arts and Culture raised their concerns with this, citing that there are great treats that come with allowing pageants to willy-nilly get participants without authorisation.

“We are still maintaining our stance that no one from Eswatini will participate in the Miss Culture Global pageant. We had asked the proposed participant to come to our offices on Friday, but they could not attend due to transport issues. We were then advised to report this to the Eswatini Royal Police, but we were unable to meet with the relevant department as Police Day was ongoing. We will engage the police to deal with the person behind the selection of a local contestant to be part of the pageant which is not registered locally,” Dlamini said. 

He further shared that they are yet to hold talks with the Ministry of Education and Training, as they have learnt that the person behind the participation of the country in the Miss Culture Global is a teacher. “We have a rule that pageants are not operated when schools are open, but this person seems to be defying the rule. We want to approach the Ministry of Education and Training to ask for their support in dealing with this individual,” Dlamini said.As reported in our last week’s edition Eswatini Creativity Platform is behind the proposed participation of the country in the upcoming Miss Culture Global. The stable is directed by Nerville Johnson. During an interview with him he said he has not yet been contacted by the Eswatini National Council of Arts and Culture (ENCAC) about this matter. 

“What happened is that they called Mayenziwe Maseko, the proposed participant and when she answered, she told them that she is managed by me and that they had to call me. They did not do as she said, but she alleges that they made threats, saying they would arrest me.  Another thing which blocked her from attending the meeting was that she was supposed to be accompanied by a family member and that person was busy on the day,” he said. 

Full article available in our paper.

Nerville Johnson. (Pic: Courtesy)