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Newly crowned Miss South Africa Ndavi Nokeri is looking forward to her homecoming in Gavaza village, Tzaneen, Limpopo. The 23-year-old beauty will be welcomed in pageant queen style by her home village next week.
“There have been a lot of celebrations from home. Everyone has been celebrating. I have seen videos sent to me of people out in the streets, dancing. It is such a beautiful moment that people from the village feel represented and I am sure that they also feel that their dreams are valid, seeing that it was possible for one of their own.
READ: Photos | Crowd favourite Nokeri crowned new Miss SA
She said:
Nokeri said she could still hardly believe that she had been crowned Miss SA after working towards it for the last two years.
“I am still in disbelief so, what I do to help myself get a reality check is to sleep with my crown next to my bed so, when I wake up, it’s the first thing I see. I am reminded that, yes, I am Miss South Africa; I have the crown,” she laughed.
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Nokeri, who said she had quit her job after making it to the top 30 of the pageant, to focus all her attention on the contest, spent her first week as Miss SA moving into her luxurious penthouse, worth R10.5 million.
Nokeri graduated with a BCom in investment management from the University of Pretoria and held a job at an asset management firm. On Monday, she was at the Union Buildings in Pretoria for her official induction as a brand ambassador to South Africa.
She said her few days in her new role had been filled with a lot of interviews and that her induction as a brand ambassador had been a highlight:
This year, the reigning queen has the privilege of representing the country at the world’s top three international pageants, namely, Miss Universe, Miss World and Miss Supranational. Nokeri said she was looking forward to walking on the Miss Universe stage and following in the footsteps of her predecessor Zozibini Tunzi, who won the Miss Universe title in 2019.
“I am so happy that I get to go to all the pageants this year, but I am hopeful that I won’t have to go to all of them because I would have won one, but I am looking forward to going to Miss Universe because one of my inspirations is Zozibini. I just can’t get over how she walked on that stage in her natural hair and just took up space. She really lived in the words that she spoke, so I want to walk in her footsteps and raise the South African flag high.”
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Nokeri added that she was looking forward to championing a cause closest to her heart: education.
“A cause I feel closest to is bridging the educational inequality gap in our country, as someone who witnessed and experienced it up close growing up in a village, while being fortunate enough to attend more advanced schools. I got to see first hand the difference between the education that I was getting and that of my peers.”
