Miss Botswana auditions in Maun, F’town and Gaborone

For those who have been curious and wondering about the whereabouts of the Miss Botswana 2017 beauty pageant, fret no more. 

The pageant is back and audition dates for three towns have been revealed. This coming weekend, aspiring beauty queens in Maun have the opportunity to go and try their luck. The Maun auditions were initially pencilled to take place this past weekend but were postponed after it emerged that those who might wish to participate were not given sufficient time to prepare for the big day. 

The next weekend (August 12th), the scouting team will move to Francistown. And the last auditions pencilled for August 19th and 20th will take place in Gaborone. Venues for these auditions are yet to be disclosed. The reigning queen, Thata Kenosi will crown the next queen who will represent Botswana at the 67th Miss World beauty pageant slated to take place on November 18th at the Crown of Beauty Theatre, in Sanya, China PR.

The reigning Miss World, Stephanie Del Valle of Puerto Rico will crown her successor. Close to 120 queens from across the world are expected to arrive in China early November. But while some countries are already busy prepping their queens for the big stage, Botswana will only have a couple of weeks to prepare Miss Botswana for the international pageant. 

The question of time and whether enough time is allocated to getting the next representative ready continues to be a hot topic. Social Media commentators took to the Miss Botswana Facebook where they raised this critical issue. For example, South Africa crowned their queen, Demi Leigh Nel Peters in March, giving her ample time to work on the important Beauty with a purpose project. 

Speaking in an interview one of the organisers, Dorcus Thobega from Botswana Council of Women was confident that they had time to do all the work that goes into prepping the queen for Miss World. “We are going to orientate the finalists about aspects such as grooming and everything else before the final crowning,” she said.

They would have loved to start with the pageant earlier but could not do so. She highlighted that Botswana remains in a better position to reclaim her past positions at the pageant. According to one of the leading observers in the world of pageants, missosology, this year Miss World will have a new format with greater emphasis on Social media and Interactivity. 

Miss World was established in the United Kingdom by Eric Morley in 1951. Following his death in 2000, his wife, Julia took over the chairmanship of the pageant. The pageant was originally planned as a Pageant for the Festival of Britain, says Wikipedia but grew from there.