THE SOUTH AFRICAN QUEEN !

The South African queen
By Sean Coughlan BBC News Magazine.

How a beauty queen was helped by Nelson Mandela to catch up on her lost education. The story of Peggy Sue Khumalo and a changing South Africa.
When beauty queens are crowned, what are they going to take away as a prize?
Peggy Sue Khumalo, winner of Miss South Africa, had a steely certainty about what she wanted: the university education that she'd been denied.
Unconventional perhaps. But Peggy Sue, who grew up in the grinding unfairness of apartheid, has spent a lifetime defying other people's stereotypes.
Blocked ambition
"I was born in a very rural setting in KwaZulu Natal. My mum didn't have an education, not because she wanted it that way but because of apartheid, she wasn't afforded an opportunity," says Peggy Sue, speaking in the City of London where she now works as a banker.
"All her life she was a domestic worker or maid. All she did was look after people, look after other people's children and serve them."
But her mother was determined that Peggy Sue should have a better chance in life.
"The little money she had she spent on my education, buying me a school uniform, sending me to school. I drew my motivation from her struggle," says Peggy Sue.
There were also political struggles taking place outside the classroom ­ and in 1990, the year that she finished high school, Nelson Mandela was released from prison. This didn't mean any instant changes.
"I wanted to be a lawyer, I wanted to defend people when someone had done wrong to them," she says. "But it was a far-fetched dream. We couldn't afford it and that was hard to accept."
Serious smiles
Instead of becoming a lawyer, she was trapped in a series of menial jobs and without any prospect of a professional career, Peggy Sue needed to find another way out.
Her escape route was a local beauty contest.
But when she entered - in a competition with furniture as a first prize - her mother was refused time off to attend the contest, which infuriated Peggy Sue.
"I was even more driven, I've got to win this - I've got to get my mum out of this environment, where people can dictate what she can and cannot do."
She won and in 1996 she became a contestant in the Miss South Africa competition.
From the outside, this beauty show might have seemed to be about glamour, glitz and small-talk. But for Peggy Sue it was an intensely serious opportunity.
Living with her mother, in the house where her mother worked, she couldn't afford to lose.
"I thought this is my moment now - no-one is going to take it away," she says.
Miss university
It proved a successful night for her in a way that she hadn't anticipated.

After putting on the winner's sash she had a phone call from Nelson Mandela, now the country's president, who had been watching the show on television. He wanted Peggy Sue and her mother to pay him a visit the next day in Pretoria.
"If there's anything I can do to make your year a success, let me know," Mandela told the newly-crowned beauty queen.
While some beauty queens wanted to "pop champagne bottles, cut ribbons, look pretty and find a rich man - that wasn't my plan", she says.
Her ambition wasn't so much Miss Universe as not to miss university - and she asked the president to help her find a way into higher education.
"He's very passionate about education," she says - and Mandela arranged for the Investec investment bank to sponsor Peggy Sue to go to university.
Mandela had great faith in British universities and he guided her towards Manchester, where she graduated in 2004 with a MSc degree in economics.

Peggy Sue must have been an exotic undergraduate. While the other students had just finished their A-levels, she had just come fourth in Miss World.
And whenever she went home for her holidays, she went to see her famous mentor, Nelson Mandela.
"He was with me every step of the way, encouraging me when it was difficult. He remains a very humble, genuine person - and he told me never to forget where I came from.
"He's a moral image for South Africa - it's about being valued and having principles."
Having grown up in a rural area where people still used candle-light, Peggy Sue is now working in an investment bank among the flickering computer screens of the City of London.

But she remains deeply influenced by her own struggle ­ and the tough years faced by her mother. South Africa 'has tough challenges ahead' Next month she is moving back home, where she hopes to use her skills to help the modern South Africa. Peggy Sue is already involved in supporting projects ­ including the Starfish charity, which supports HIV/Aids orphans - and she has set up a scholarship to help young women through university.

And as part of the changing identity of South Africa, she is also using her Zulu name, as Nonhlanhla Peggy Sue Khumalo. She has no illusions about the scale of the problems facing her country - highlighting crime, unemployment, lack of skills and HIV/Aids as among the biggest issues. "I've witnessed so many people lose their lives through HIV and Aids, we've all got a moral obligation to do something about it. It's gone beyond a crisis - it's now an emergency."
And she warns about the poverty still blighting rural South Africa, where people are "still living hand to mouth", where lives have changed little since the end of apartheid.

But she is resolutely optimistic about the capacity for progress. "Ordinary women who have made a difference for their communities, they are the people who inspire me."

BBC NEWS REPORT.