A high-profile citizenship and deportation case involving 25-year-old beauty queen Chidimma Adetshina has been delayed until February 2027, leaving ongoing questions about her legal status in South Africa unresolved for the near future. The controversy first erupted in 2024, when Adetshina advanced to the finals of the Miss South Africa pageant, sparking public scrutiny over her family background and immigration eligibility.
With a mother of Mozambican descent and a Nigerian father, Adetshina has consistently maintained that she was born in Soweto, a major township outside Johannesburg, and raised in Cape Town, meaning South Africa has always been her home. But South African authorities launched an investigation into her citizenship after contesting her eligibility for the pageant, ultimately revoking her South African national identity documents and travel papers in 2024, on the grounds that her mother, Anabela Rungo, had previously obtained South African citizenship through identity fraud. Rungo had her own citizenship revoked by officials in 2025.
Under South African law, birth on national soil does not automatically grant citizenship to a child; at least one parent must hold South African citizenship or permanent residency for that status to be conferred. Following the revocation of her documents, Adetshina was classified as a prohibited person, prompting her to leave South Africa for Nigeria. There, she accepted an invitation to compete for the Miss Universe Nigeria title, which she went on to win.
Earlier this year, Adetshina was arrested on charges of unlawfully reentering South Africa through a border crossing with Mozambique. She was later released from custody on a formal warning. South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs has argued that Adetshina’s own actions confirm her non-citizen status: when she was in Nigeria, she applied for a South African travel visa and obtained Nigerian passports for herself and her young son, a step officials say would not have been necessary if she were a South African national.
Outside the Cape Town courthouse this week, anti-migrant activists from the group March and March led a protest calling for Adetshina’s deportation. After Adetshina exited the building following the ruling, many demonstrators chased her vehicle as she left the premises. Speaking to reporters after the hearing, Adetshina pushed back against both the government’s case and the public hostility against her. She stated that authorities have targeted her and attempted to use her case as a warning to other migrants, calling her treatment unfair.
Adetshina added that she has followed all formal legal processes to have her citizenship status officially reviewed, and she rejected attempts to allow xenophobia and misinformation to shape how people in immigration situations are treated. The court granted the postponement to give Adetshina’s legal team time to finalize her judicial review challenging the Home Affairs deportation order. Until the next hearing in 2027, Adetshina will remain out of custody and at liberty in South Africa.