[imagesource: Facebook / Miss SA]

Congrats to the women chosen as the top 30 for 2021’s Miss South Africa.

We can only hope the contestants enjoy the pageant more than Chandré Goosen-Joubert enjoyed Mrs South Africa, which she likened to slave labour.

The top 30 will have to impress the judges, who are all former Miss South Africa titleholders – Bokang Montjane-Tshabalala (2010), Liesl Laurie (2015), Melinda Bam (2011), and Tamaryn Green (2018).

In addition, the public will act as a fifth judge, but we will get to that in a moment.

To kick things off, Miss SA released this video yesterday, featuring each contestant:

Great.

I’m happy for all of them.

Here’s something I actually did find interesting – the voting process for the public.

You head to the official Miss SA site, find the full top 30, and pick who you want to vote for.

I chose number one, Andile Mazibuko, for illustrative purposes, and clicked ‘Vote for Andile Mazibuko’, which took me here:

See that bit on the right about voting bundles?

It turns out the public can vote, but they will have to pay for the privilege.

This from Miss SA Facebook’s page:

Nothing like the democratic process of buying voting bundles to choose your favourite.

As was pointed out in the comments below that post, it’s not exactly a level playing field:

Members of the public have until midnight on July 21 to buy their favourite a spot in the top 10 cast their vote for the top 10.

The pageant says the top 30 “refused to be silenced and commanded their powerful voices to be heard”.

For the right price, yours can be heard, too.

[source:misssa]