Zimpapers Logo

Annie-Grace Mutambu

Peter Tanyanyiwa Arts Correspondent
Harare auditions for Miss World Zimbabwe are on from today to Saturday and from February 25-27 at the Miss Zimbabwe Trust head offices in Highlands.

Running under the theme “Celebrating the Life of our Icon Kiki Divaris”, the finale will be held on April 16 at the Borrowdale Brooke Golf Course where reigning queen Annie-Grace Mutambu will crown her successor.

This year, contestants will first swear that they do not have nude pictures or sex tapes. This follows incidents where the past two winners of the Miss World Zimbabwe contest had to step down when their nudes surfaced.

In the last edition of the pageant contestants had to sign a declaration saying they had never posed for nudes but that did not stop Emily Kachote entering and winning the contest before being unseated.

This has also forced organises to look for new faces and all contestants from the previous editions will not be considered.

Miss Zimbabwe Trust programmes and communications manager Tendai Chirau said this time around they are looking at nurturing a whole new batch of models.

“All contestants from our previous editions or anyone who got into boot camp last year is not welcome, especially those who walked on the ramp on the finale. We want to give new faces a chance.

“Auditions commenced in Bulawayo last Friday and from this Thursday (today) we will be selecting new faces from Harare.

Many can ask why we do not have auditions in all provinces but we have identified that Harare and Bulawayo provide the majority of contestants at all grand finales.

“Also this year it is a whole new different day for the contest, to safeguard that we do not encounter the same challenges as the previous years, we will conduct thorough background checks. We cannot reveal the methods to the public but we will do background checks differently,” said Chirau.

Boot camp will commence on March 15 at the Rainbow Towers Hotel in Harare.

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.”

Miss World Zimbabwe beauty pageant will be searching for aspiring queens, who in addition to having a clean record, are aged between 18 to 26 years, are at least 1,71 metres tall and slim, single and never been married or given birth and should be able to communicate well in English.