Miss SA accused of being racist after Soweto visit

Miss SA Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters went to a soup kitchen hosted by Sun International at a children’s home in Soweto on Wednesday. In pictures circulating on Twitter, Nel-Peters can be seen interacting with the kids and serving food while wearing gloves, and social media users are not impressed.

She has been accused of being racist, as she wore the gloves while serving food to black children. Other volunteers can also be seen in the same pictures wearing gloves.

These were some of the negative comments on social media:

“Doesn’t latex gloves taste like condoms? Our very own Miss SA really stooped that low?!”

“There is eating gloves & medical gloves. Doctors must come save Miss SA for eating wearing medical gloves.”

“And here again people re trying to defend Miss SA! Wrong is wrong.. she’s still cancelled! Lets not justify please.”

“Miss SA is just f*cken racist no reason for the gloves just pure home bread racism.”

Nel-Peters saw the negative comments on social media and said she was “saddened” that her intentions were completely misunderstood.

“I just want to clear something out. All the volunteers wore gloves on site today because we honestly thought it’s the right thing to do, as we were working with food and we were handing out food to young kids.

“That was our only intention with wearing gloves, purely to be as hygienic as possible, and I really felt that my intentions were completely misunderstood. To me, the moral of the story was that 300 kids got a proper, warm lunch, and they got that with or without gloves, so I’m a bit saddened because my intentions were taken completely wrong, and I really apologise if I offended anybody, it definitely was not my intention.

“I’m sorry about that, I really hope that you can see my heart, and you can see the true intentions that went into today.”

Some on social media also defended her, saying everyone else was just “blowing things out of proportion”. They further shared past pictures of Nel-Peters interacting with black kids without gloves, explaining that she only wore them because she was serving food.

Do you think social media users are blowing this out of proportion?

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