Pageantry promotes ethic pride
Atraditional and contemporary dancer, Pearl Ntshole has established a beauty contest dubbed Mr and Miss Culture Heritage Botswana aimed at promoting and preserving culture and traditions while instilling pride in one’s ethnicity. The beauty contest was started in 2019.
Ntshole decided to use the pageantry to promote culture more especially amongst the youth, as they are the future leaders of the country. Speaking to Arts & Culture in an interview, Ntshole said she realised that there were Batswana who still believed in minority and majority groups, thus making the so-called minority groups feel less confident and be ashamed of where they came from.
“Young people are ashamed of their own language, dance, songs and traditions thus the idea to form this pageant was to fill the gap of ethnic identity. We want young people to be proud of their roots and who they are. Mr & Miss Culture Heritage Botswana has not left the boy child behind because in our culture a boy child is groomed to head his family,” she said confi
dently. Ntshole added that as they groomed the girl child into being a socially responsible and culturally oriented person amidst the chaos of the world they live in, and they could not afford to leave behind the boy child.
Furthermore, she stated that COVID-19 has made organizing their pageantry difficult because they had to cut the activities they had
planned to do prior to the fashion show such as heritage sites tours.
She added that their cultural dance involves lot of contact, but now with the pandemic it means the choreography had to be changed to adhere to COVID-19 regulations. Ntshole also pointed out that they decided to host the fashion show in an open space to make it safe for both their contestants and audience. As a new pageant found locally with the aim of launching it to other African countries, she said COVID-19 slowed all the arrangements. The other challenge, she revealed, was that sponsors had to withdraw from financially supportin their event because their businesses had been affected by the pandemic.
“Only limited audience will be allowed and the sitting arrangements will ensure safety.
We also have sanitising points and the event will not take long. From the auditions we have 24 finalists who have been doing assignments that earned them points. On the fashion show, the ones with the least points will be cut off, and the remaining 16 will proceed to the grand finale,” she said.
Ntshole also announced that the grand finale will be scheduled for December while the venue will later be confirmed. She said contestants will showcase local designers clothes and there will also be performance by Young Storms, PoeticBlood, Lucia Dotie and Batsumi Dance Group to mention a few.
The pageantry will start with a fashion show at the University of Botswana Open Theatre Space (Block 253) on October 30, 2020. Entrance fee is P550 VIP and P250 normal ticket.