Miss Culture Lesotho sets her sight far

’MAKERESEMESE LETUKA

MASERU – Reatile Molefe has been invited to represent Lesotho in the Miss Culture International Beauty Pageant scheduled to be held in November. Molefe is the current reigning queen of Miss Culture Lesotho after she won a pageant held in Leribe district in 2018 while she was still a student at Lesotho High School.

She is expected to finally hand over her crown during the much-awaited Mr and Miss Culture Lesotho pageant in March 2022 during the King Moshoeshoe Film Festival. Up to 53 female contestants and 23 male contestants registered for the event in March 2021 and will be eliminated periodically until March 2022 when there will only be a short list of 12 female and 12 male finalists to battle it out at the event.

Since then the pageant has not been physically staged due the prevailing Covid-19 pandemic which hit Lesotho. The other delays relate to the transfer of the license to host the pageant which was granted to the new organisers, Film Sector Groundbreakers Lesotho (FSG) by the Beauty Pageants Association of Lesotho (BPAL) late 2019.

Aubrey Silinyane, Supervisor of the Miss Culture Lesotho and the Director of Moshoeshoe Film Festival said they have been trying very hard to expose their pageants to international pageantry. “This is actually the first one from the cultural pageantry that our pageant goes to; we are very honoured and hope to support her enough for her to be able to win and we will be with her every step of the way,” he says.

“I am excited because I have been waiting for a very long time to be on the international stage. Miss Culture Lesotho has really given me the platform to go and raise the flag up high; I am ready for all those African countries that I will be competing against. I am really honoured to be trusted by Basotho to present their culture. I really have a strong feeling that the crown will be brought back home,” says Molefe.

Molefe has met the criteria for suitable candidates which include, amongst other things, age, being a citizen of the country she is representing and meeting all the administrative requirements. The management of FSG will be working with her and the BPAL to support her on her journey which not only involves participating in the event in November but also other programmes such as national casting and a boot camp that will be held in South Africa.

Among some of the things Molefe will be judged on includes the cultural costume, knowledge of global cultures and knowledge of how to prepare some of the world’s cultural dishes, physical beauty and personality. The reigning Miss Culture International queen will also travel across the world and visit over 50,000 school children, members of the business community and cultural organisations. She will be a routine guest speaker, a custodian of culture, high fashion- wearing, smile-bearing example of diverse beauty and intelligence.

Miss Culture International is a platform created to empower and showcase beauty and fashion talent globally. Its head office is in Cape Town, South Africa, but it operates in other countries in Africa and globally through national directors. This year around November 52 African countries will be competing for the Miss Culture International Crown but the host country is yet to be announced.

Its core focus is to bring together women from diverse cultures to learn from each other and find common ground in pursuit of transformation and change agenda. The Miss Culture International organises and manages quality pageants in order to unite people from diverse cultures, learn from each other, and celebrate different cultures through beauty and fashion.