Chidimma Adetshina’s long-running immigration saga has entered its most serious phase yet, with South African authorities now actively pursuing her deportation after the former pageant queen was arrested in Cape Town earlier this month.
The 25-year-old, who currently holds the Miss Universe Nigeria title and made global headlines as Miss Universe’s first runner-up, was picked up in the Summer Greens area of Cape Town and brought before the Cape Town Regional Court on June 9.
She was released on a warning but is due back in court on July 16, while the Department of Home Affairs presses ahead with efforts to have her removed from the country.
For anyone unfamiliar with how this story started, it stretches back to 2024, when Adetshina, born in Soweto to a Nigerian father and a mother of Mozambican origin, advanced to the Top 30 of the Miss South Africa pageant.
Her surname triggered intense public scrutiny of her nationality, which eventually led the Department of Home Affairs to open an investigation.
That probe produced allegations that her mother, Anabela Rungo, had committed identity fraud years earlier by assuming a South African woman’s identity in order to register Adetshina’s birth as a citizen.
Rungo was later arrested and charged under the Immigration Act and the Identification Act. Adetshina withdrew from the Miss SA pageant amid the backlash, and Nigeria’s Miss Universe organization invited her to compete instead, a move that ultimately carried her to the global stage in Mexico.
The citizenship questions, however, never went away. According to court filings in the current case, immigration officer Adrian Jackson told the court he had previously investigated Adetshina and that, after cross-checking her details against the Department of Home Affairs’ electronic systems and conducting a status interview, officials determined that neither she nor her young son holds valid legal status in South Africa.
Jackson’s affidavit argued that she had “wilfully and intentionally remained resident unlawfully in RSA in contravention of the Immigration Act 13 of 2022,” and on that basis asked the court to approve her detention pending deportation.
This latest filing builds directly on an earlier setback for Adetshina. Back in March, Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber rejected her bid to challenge the department’s refusal to issue her a letter of good cause, essentially a formal pardon that would have let her regularize her stay despite past violations.
In his ruling, Schreiber laid out a fairly detailed timeline: he said the department had warned Adetshina in September 2024 that it intended to cancel both her and her son’s South African identity documents, but that she never responded before the deadline passed.
He also alleged that she had obtained a Nigerian passport in September 2024 before applying for a South African visitor’s visa, an application that was denied after officials accused her of submitting a fraudulent bank statement, a decision she reportedly never contested.
By December 19, 2024, Schreiber said, she had been formally declared a prohibited person, a designation that, under South African immigration law, disqualifies someone from receiving any visa or permit to remain in the country.
Despite that status, the minister alleged she crossed back into South Africa from Mozambique through the Lebombo border post in June, presenting herself as a South African citizen before later applying again for relief.
Her son’s case, Schreiber noted, was tied entirely to her own, since his application had been filed as her dependent, meaning his fate in the matter rises or falls with the outcome of her case.
Pending the July hearing, the court has ordered Adetshina to remain at the residence where she was arrested and to alert immigration authorities to any change in her address, employment, or travel plans, standard conditions meant to keep her within reach of the law while the process plays out.
What makes this saga particularly striking is the contrast it draws: a young woman celebrated on global pageant stages for representing Nigeria, now fighting in a South African courtroom over the very question of where she legally belongs.
Reports suggest Adetshina has largely brushed off the backlash on social media, but the legal stakes facing her on July 16 are anything but lighthearted. Whatever the court decides, the case is likely to keep both Nigerians and South Africans watching closely, given how much public attention her citizenship status has already drawn over the past two years.
