Khadija Magardie
Cynthia Shange’s eyes light up when she describes the summer night in 1972 that she says changed her life for ever. The then reigning Miss Natal remembers the smoke-filled venue, brimming with a capacity crowd, screaming, whistling and calling for her as she stood before them, her white swimsuit glowing under the lights.
“That Durban girl! That Durban girl!” she says they shouted.
As her white counterparts were parading on stage in the lily-white Miss South Africa contest, Shange, then in her early 20s, was crowned Miss Africa South.
The former beauty queen is still a strikingly beautiful, immaculately tailored woman whose age, she says, “is anybody’s guess”. Winning the prestigious pageant, then the only beauty contest open to black, Indian and coloured women, meant several trips abroad opening Shange’s eyes to the ugliness of apartheid. She was a queen abroad, but a “kaffir” back home.
One of her most vivid memories was having a waiter assist her in taking off her coat, at a restaurant in Paris. She remembers that the waiter called her “Madame”, and treated her and her dining companions with the utmost courtesy.
“I began to think, why must I settle for being inferior back home, when here, I am treated like a human being?” she recalls.
If you drive down Central Road in Fordsburg in the daytime, you could virtually miss the Avalon cinema, tucked away in a corner. The green and pink neon sign is switched off, and the doors of the once grand old lady of the “bioscope years” are closed. Perhaps the only hint of its former glory is when you drive by at night when the flashy sign is on, and groups of people, some couples, others alone, are queuing outside for tickets to the latest Hindi or Urdu movie.
Today’s generation remembers the Avalon as the seat of “Bollywood” movies for the predominantly Indian and Pakistani community of Fordsburg. Grand apartheid was in its heydey, and the pageant was the only one that black, Indian and coloured women could enter. And with racial segregation meaning that no “respectable” hotelier would allow blacks to congregate in large numbers on his premises, the Avalon was the only place the organisers could hold the contest.
Venue was not the only problem there was an endless battle to find sponsors, who were reluctant to help a cause that, they reasoned, could not afford to purchase their products. Today’s pageant winners bag prizes totaling millions of rands, including cars, cosmetics, jewellery and designer clothing. Shange won a set of suitcases, a then much-prized electric stove, a R200 cash prize, and a “wireless” (radio). Shange laughs when asked whether she should have got better or at least similarly valued prizes to her white counterpart in the Miss South Africa pageant. She says she valued what she got but perhaps what she valued most was the spin-off of the pageant, an opportunity to travel beyond the borders of apartheid South Africa.
Back in South Africa, Shange remembers a life of discrimination, despite her good looks that, she acknowledges, “always opened doors for her”. During casual work for John Orrs department store she was involved in an altercation with other staff who complained to the store manager that she was using the whites-only staff toilet. Shange refused to stop using the toilet, and the store manager, afraid of negative publicity if he persisted, eventually relented.
Shange “That Durban Girl”, originally from Lamontville, Durban, and now living in Meadowlands was never uncertain that she would win the contest.
“I had confidence, loads of it,” she says, adding that there were times, during the pageant preparations, when she felt that being black had disadvantages.
Laughing, she recalls that many of the coloured contestants “felt sorry” for the black contestants, who had short hair, and could not be as versatile in terms of styling. Unlike today’s pageants, which are a proliferation of false eyelashes, hair extensions, even evidence of the surgeon’s knife, the Miss Africa South contestants were not allowed to use any “unnatural” beauty tricks, like wigs even make-up was banned.
Shange’s predecessor, Pearl Jansen, went on to be placed second in the Miss World contest during her reign, but the Miss South Africa contestant was placed fifth. Despite the tense political atmosphere at the time, the Miss Africa South contestants were warned by their sponsors not to become “involved in politics”. That is why, Shange says, she was always reluctant to answer questions put to her relating to the situation in South Africa when she was abroad.
But politics did get the better of her following a trip to the United States. Shange and a companion decided to pretend to be African Americans and proceeded to a Durban beachfront restaurant then reserved for whites only. After an evening of utmost courtesy and deference by the staff, who were, she says, “thrilled to meet real Americans”, she asked them why they had treated them specially, yet would not accord similar treatment to local blacks. When told by a waiter that local blacks were “not civilised”, like they (Shange and her partner) were, the couple dropped the act, and revealed their deception to the astonished waiter. The waiter and Shange have since become firm friends.
When her reign came to an end, Shange began a successful and lucrative acting and modelling career, and says she always feels good when people remember her for her many acting roles, such as in the popular film, u-Deliwe. Though an unfortunate stroke of fate saw her lose the entire collection of photographs she had accumulated during her beauty-queen years, she says she fondly remembers her earlier years as a time when people looked up to her, and her achievements. Her experience made others feel that despite their conditions, they could still aim for higher things.
“At the end, I was still proud to represent my country,” she says.