there are a number of platforms that you
can use to evoke a sustainable and
innovative difference in our communities
and one of those platforms are pageants
and the question that I want to address
today is where have we gone wrong with
pageants and so I’m going to address
this using four key words but using the
letter C and the first C word is
colonization and that spanned for about
200 years or so between the sixteenth in
the eighteenth century
and why is this important because the
very first pageant that had taken place
was in 1839 where a lady was crowned as
the queen of beauty and thereafter the
pageant spreaded across the world and
outside of Britain and the very first
pageant that had started officially who
was Miss America in 1921 and that’s the
longest standing pageant till today but
thereafter there was an influence their
colonization spread to the rest of the
world and that was money power and
status and so the second C word is
capitalism and just after colonization
was at its peak industrial capitalism
started just after 1880 and since then
until now it has grown exponentially so
how does this tie in with pageants so
they used pageant winners or title
holders to be the faces for their brand
or to be ambassadors for their companies
in order to elevate their power same
money and their status and along these
years as we all know from a South
African perspective there’s that one C
word that we all just look down upon and
that is corruption
where we do things against principles
and without a code of ethics but the
reality is that we part of the BRICS
country Brazil Russia India China and
our South Africa and we put so much of
emphasis on capitalism where in fact
we’re 78% of South Africans suffer we
would need to adopt socialism and the
reality is that capitalism is trying to
mirror socialism in socialist country
it’s like trying to take a cucumber an
embedded out of a banana and it’s simply
impossible and so the last key word the
one thing that has been vastly neglected
is our community and so what has been
done is that things have been taken away
from the community where what it should
have happened was that we was supposed
to be plugging it into the communities
until today a vast minority is doing so
so I started to use the platform of
pageants in order to make a difference
within South Africa an exactly year ago
on the 24th of November 2016 I was
humbled to have won this prestigious
title
but it’s something that you don’t know
I’m not the shortest person in the world
but I am the shortest mr. South Africa
in history coming it and what point
seven two meters and more
controversially I’m the first Muslim
mister South Africa and probably one of
the very few Muslim pageant title
holders in the world and so when someone
asks you what a mister South Africa
should look like I’m guessing the first
thing that a lot of you are thinking
about is six-pack ABS eye candy
or being aesthetically good-looking in
my case mm-hmm that wasn’t the case that
if I wanted to mount this campaign
successfully what was I going to do if I
had nothing to show and I knew that was
going to come down to three things to
maintain my heart for the community to
always be authentic and remain true to
myself because whenever you try and be
someone that you’re not it’s a recipe
for disaster and lastly it was about
brawn and using my education as a
background in order to help on that
evening and so that for me was the
recipe of h-e-b but I realized I wasn’t
the only one and so I needed to
additional X factors and so on the
questions on the evening it was I for
Internet and the last one was B for bold
and that’s when I knew I was being true
to myself and so during my reign is mr.
South Africa there’s been perceptions
from the media and some of the
publications that were portrayed was mr.
sa is changing the face of pageants or
pageant winner break stereotypes and you
know what it was never my aim to do such
things my aim was to make a difference
and to use the platform and through
being myself and being authentic most of
the public saw this is out of the
ordinary said this is not normal and so
they formed their own titles for the
articles and labeled it as breaking
pageant stereotypes hence the title of
my talk today and so for conventional
pageants back in the day out of a group
of say 10 people only about 2 to 4 guys
or young gentlemen would be able to
enter a pageant either because they had
the height they had the muscles or they
were statically good-looking but during
my reign fortunately I have now opened
their door I have not opened the
spectrum to a wider range of men to a
wider range of women in order to enter
pageants and say you don’t have to have
the height in order to
nor do you have to have any type of
swimwear modeling experience or NT any
type of patterns before that it’s
opening up the door to a wide array of
people to enter is critical the reality
is that in South Africa we’ve got
something which is known as the triple
challenges which is unemployment poverty
and inequality and so we can invite a
lot more people with so much talent and
skills out there to try in address these
crucial challenges that we face on a
daily basis and so there are three
pageant lessons that I want to share
with you and the first one is the irony
of age as you go through one’s lifespan
there are only three assets that you
will have but never at the same time so
as a child or as a young adult most
would have energy and time but no money
as an adult most would have energy and
some money but no time because we are
too busy and as an elderly person most
would have time and money but no energy
and so you’re always going through your
lifespan having one or two out of the
three or nothing so make sure you know
where you’re putting in your time your
energy and your money every single day
second lesson is that in any facet of
your life people will criticize and
underestimate your potential but it is
your responsibility to prove them wrong
and to show them what you are capable of
and lastly the third thing that I’ve
learned is that there is no problem in
trying to look beautiful the problem is
however that we make Beauty or beauty
with a purpose
our first preference and it shouldn’t be
because there’s a South African nation
we need to remain cognizant of the
triple challenges that we faced
and therefore we need to strive to be a
well-rounded individual not necessarily
putting Beauty first but putting the
hearts of our nation first instead and
so during my reign is mr. South Africa I
embarked in a campaign called 365 days
of heart where every day I do a random
act of kindness a charity initiative or
even some inspirational bites a
motivation for the youth and for South
Africa and for society
I remain under politic for setting a new
precedent within the pageant industry
there are a number of platforms out
there ask yourself which platform are
you going to use to make a difference in
our beautiful country [Applause]
can use to evoke a sustainable and
innovative difference in our communities
and one of those platforms are pageants
and the question that I want to address
today is where have we gone wrong with
pageants and so I’m going to address
this using four key words but using the
letter C and the first C word is
colonization and that spanned for about
200 years or so between the sixteenth in
the eighteenth century
and why is this important because the
very first pageant that had taken place
was in 1839 where a lady was crowned as
the queen of beauty and thereafter the
pageant spreaded across the world and
outside of Britain and the very first
pageant that had started officially who
was Miss America in 1921 and that’s the
longest standing pageant till today but
thereafter there was an influence their
colonization spread to the rest of the
world and that was money power and
status and so the second C word is
capitalism and just after colonization
was at its peak industrial capitalism
started just after 1880 and since then
until now it has grown exponentially so
how does this tie in with pageants so
they used pageant winners or title
holders to be the faces for their brand
or to be ambassadors for their companies
in order to elevate their power same
money and their status and along these
years as we all know from a South
African perspective there’s that one C
word that we all just look down upon and
that is corruption
where we do things against principles
and without a code of ethics but the
reality is that we part of the BRICS
country Brazil Russia India China and
our South Africa and we put so much of
emphasis on capitalism where in fact
we’re 78% of South Africans suffer we
would need to adopt socialism and the
reality is that capitalism is trying to
mirror socialism in socialist country
it’s like trying to take a cucumber an
embedded out of a banana and it’s simply
impossible and so the last key word the
one thing that has been vastly neglected
is our community and so what has been
done is that things have been taken away
from the community where what it should
have happened was that we was supposed
to be plugging it into the communities
until today a vast minority is doing so
so I started to use the platform of
pageants in order to make a difference
within South Africa an exactly year ago
on the 24th of November 2016 I was
humbled to have won this prestigious
title
but it’s something that you don’t know
I’m not the shortest person in the world
but I am the shortest mr. South Africa
in history coming it and what point
seven two meters and more
controversially I’m the first Muslim
mister South Africa and probably one of
the very few Muslim pageant title
holders in the world and so when someone
asks you what a mister South Africa
should look like I’m guessing the first
thing that a lot of you are thinking
about is six-pack ABS eye candy
or being aesthetically good-looking in
my case mm-hmm that wasn’t the case that
if I wanted to mount this campaign
successfully what was I going to do if I
had nothing to show and I knew that was
going to come down to three things to
maintain my heart for the community to
always be authentic and remain true to
myself because whenever you try and be
someone that you’re not it’s a recipe
for disaster and lastly it was about
brawn and using my education as a
background in order to help on that
evening and so that for me was the
recipe of h-e-b but I realized I wasn’t
the only one and so I needed to
additional X factors and so on the
questions on the evening it was I for
Internet and the last one was B for bold
and that’s when I knew I was being true
to myself and so during my reign is mr.
South Africa there’s been perceptions
from the media and some of the
publications that were portrayed was mr.
sa is changing the face of pageants or
pageant winner break stereotypes and you
know what it was never my aim to do such
things my aim was to make a difference
and to use the platform and through
being myself and being authentic most of
the public saw this is out of the
ordinary said this is not normal and so
they formed their own titles for the
articles and labeled it as breaking
pageant stereotypes hence the title of
my talk today and so for conventional
pageants back in the day out of a group
of say 10 people only about 2 to 4 guys
or young gentlemen would be able to
enter a pageant either because they had
the height they had the muscles or they
were statically good-looking but during
my reign fortunately I have now opened
their door I have not opened the
spectrum to a wider range of men to a
wider range of women in order to enter
pageants and say you don’t have to have
the height in order to
nor do you have to have any type of
swimwear modeling experience or NT any
type of patterns before that it’s
opening up the door to a wide array of
people to enter is critical the reality
is that in South Africa we’ve got
something which is known as the triple
challenges which is unemployment poverty
and inequality and so we can invite a
lot more people with so much talent and
skills out there to try in address these
crucial challenges that we face on a
daily basis and so there are three
pageant lessons that I want to share
with you and the first one is the irony
of age as you go through one’s lifespan
there are only three assets that you
will have but never at the same time so
as a child or as a young adult most
would have energy and time but no money
as an adult most would have energy and
some money but no time because we are
too busy and as an elderly person most
would have time and money but no energy
and so you’re always going through your
lifespan having one or two out of the
three or nothing so make sure you know
where you’re putting in your time your
energy and your money every single day
second lesson is that in any facet of
your life people will criticize and
underestimate your potential but it is
your responsibility to prove them wrong
and to show them what you are capable of
and lastly the third thing that I’ve
learned is that there is no problem in
trying to look beautiful the problem is
however that we make Beauty or beauty
with a purpose
our first preference and it shouldn’t be
because there’s a South African nation
we need to remain cognizant of the
triple challenges that we faced
and therefore we need to strive to be a
well-rounded individual not necessarily
putting Beauty first but putting the
hearts of our nation first instead and
so during my reign is mr. South Africa I
embarked in a campaign called 365 days
of heart where every day I do a random
act of kindness a charity initiative or
even some inspirational bites a
motivation for the youth and for South
Africa and for society
I remain under politic for setting a new
precedent within the pageant industry
there are a number of platforms out
there ask yourself which platform are
you going to use to make a difference in
our beautiful country [Applause]
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