Entertainment Africa
The reigning Miss SA, Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters sparked a heated debate on Twitter when she was spotted at a soup kitchen hosted by Sun International at a children’s home in Soweto on Wednesday.
Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters wore gloves when she met orphans and HIV-positive children at a soup kitchen in Soweto | Photo Credit: The Times
In the pictures circulating on Twitter, miss Nel-Peters can be seen wearing disposable gloves while interacting with the kids and serving food.
Subsequently, the beauty queen came under fire as her followers questioned the reason behind the gloves. As a result, she has been accused of being racist, as she wore the gloves while serving food to black children. Despite the fact that other volunteers can also be seen in the same pictures wearing gloves, Twitter won’t take any of it.
The situation got out of hand, causing the beauty queen to come out publicly to apologise and explain why she wore gloves.
Consequently, she posted a video, explaining why she was wearing gloves in the pictures.
“I just want to clear something up. All the volunteers on site wore gloves today because we honestly thought that it’s the right thing to do while working with food, and while handing out food to young kids. That was our only intention with wearing the gloves, was purely to be as hygienic as possible,” she said in the clip.
Apparently, her intentions were completely misunderstood and she feels sad about it. Nevertheless, her joy comes from the fact that she was able to feed some hungry underprivileged kids.
“To me the moral of the story today was that 300 kids got a proper, warm lunch, and they got that with or without gloves. I’m a bit saddened that my intentions were taken up 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.”
Watch Miss SA explain the reason behind the gloves here;
https://youtu.be/Wcb6ljCHSnk
To buttress her point, a press release by Sun International on Thursday says: “All volunteers, including Demi-Leigh, wore disposable sanitary gloves while working with the food and handing it out.
“While Demi was handing out food she was asked to pose for photos so still had the gloves on. She did not wear disposable gloves throughout the entire visit. She was also involved in handing out blankets to those who attended.”
Besides, Miss SA wasn’t wearing gloves the whole time of the outing with the kids as shown in the pictures below.
Notwithstanding her explanation, Black Twitter was not buying any of it and has been dragging her on Twitter.
Tweeps went as far as digging up pictures of her posing with white children without gloves and also found pictures of her preparing food for the Knysna firefighters without any gloves on.
https://twitter.com/Yung_TheoLogySA/status/882721288715894784
…..but why did Miss SA not warn the kids to wear gloves for "Hygienic Purposes" when receiving food?
Just asking…. #MissSA pic.twitter.com/2b42HrlQlS— Bra Hloni (@BraHlonisky) July 6, 2017
Ladies and gentleman welcome your Miss SA 👏👏 pic.twitter.com/MPQoZ2Z9Qy
— flacko (@MozzeyFlaco) July 6, 2017
