Two years in a row, Miss World Zimbabwe winners have had to step down after nude photos of them were leaked and this year the frustrated organizers are not taking any chances.
The organizers are taking a tough line by making contestants swear on the Bible that they have never had nude photos taken, a report says.
“They’ll take oaths holding a Bible upon checking in for boot camp next month,” Miss Zimbabwe Trust spokesperson Tendai Chirau told the official Chronicle newspaper on Tuesday.
Models last year had to sign a declaration saying they’d never posed for nudes but that didn’t stop Emily Kachote entering and winning the contest before being dethroned. She argued that she’d not knowingly posed for the pictures, which were apparently taken by an ex.
Kachote’s dethronement followed a similar nude photo leak for Miss World Zimbabwe 2014, Thabiso Phiri. She too lost her crown, though the trust insisted she’d stepped down of her own accord.
Chirau told the Chronicle: “All we ask for this year is honesty and integrity from our queens.”
One of the rules of the competition reads: “Winners of the Miss World Zimbabwe beauty pageant whether a title holder or a runner-up, must not have posed nude professionally or socially in all forms of media.”
The Miss Zimbabwe nudes scandal opened up a conversation about who was really to blame for Zimbabwe’s sex tape scandals, and why the ex-boyfriends who leak photos are not prosecuted.
This year’s final is to be held on April 16 in Harare.
Apart from making models swear on the Bible, the trust is taking extra precautions to make sure they don’t lie: if nudes leak during or after the competition, the winner will have to pay back “all the money we will have used on her,” Chirau was quoted as saying.
Dethroned queen Emily Kachote maintains an active Facebook page — on which she regularly posts news of other people’s sex tapes.
