Miss SA Zozibini Tunzi has spoken out against trolls who have left negative comments about her blackness.
Tunzi has been vocal when it comes to social justice issues such as gender-based violence and femicide.
During the pageant, when asked by Anele why women had to keep smiling, she said: "We have absolutely no reason to keep smiling because South African women are dying every day.
"And mostly people are doing nothing about it. I think it's time we stop asking women what to do and start asking perpetrators to do better, to be better, to start treating women the way that they deserve to be treated. It is not up to us, it is up to the perpetrators to start doing right. "
Taking to her Instagram page on Wednesday, Tunzi shared a post dedicated to brown skinned girls concerning the negative comments she'd received due to her blackness, saying the comments received was nothing new for women of colour.
She said society had been programmed to view anything not black as beautiful and the furthest "you are from being fair-skinned the uglier you".
"This universal standard of beauty has been an uphill battle for people to unlearn".
Tunzi hoped that, at the Miss Universe pageant, she'd be able to shatter these "misconception and stereotypes people have of beauty". "People of colour should keep inserting themselves in spaces where we (people of colour) have been told we do not belong".
A post shared by Zozibini Tunzi(@zozitunzi) on Sep 11, 2019 at 11:35am PDT
Tunzi recently walking at New York Fashion Week for local design house MaXhosa and while she was overjoyed to be in the Big Apple, she mentioned in an Instagram post that her "heart is back home with all the women in this difficult time."