Aspirant Miss Teen South Africa finalist Keitumetse Morake from Eersterus Tshwane
Aspirant Miss Teen South Africa finalist Keitumetse Morake has asked the community of Eersterust and surrounding areas to help her out in her quest to win the aforesaid title.
The 11-year-old Keitumetse is a grade 6 learner at Fred Magardie Primary School and her favourite subject there is Life Sciences with her emphasis being on creative arts.
“My hobbies include drawing, and dancing and I’m also interested in ballet and gymnastics and towards this end I intend joining gymnastics training club,” she said.
“My mom says I’ve always shown signs of a beauty queen and that is why she got me into beauty pageants from an early age,” said Keitumetse.
“My mother says that at an early age I always enjoyed a situation whereby she would take pictures of me after bathing me and that I would even make poses without her telling me how to pose for the camera,” she said.
Keitumetse would like to go to university after Matric but continue with her modelling career at the same time.
“It is nice growing up in Eersterust because we are close to a lot of things like shops, petrol-filling stations and clinics, but sometimes it is not nice living in Eersterust because I feel like Coloured kids like to bother Black kids,” she said.
“I want to say to my peers that their background does not determine their future but that hard work does,” she enthused.
She said her peers must believe in themselves and in that way they will go far,” she said.
Her mother Portia Morake told Tshwane Talks that she feels humbled by the grace of God who has helped her daughter to get to the stage that she is in at the moment in the pageant because the journey to get her to this stage journey was challenging.
“The Miss Teen pageant is not her first pageant but it is the first one at national level and a lot is expected of her,” she said.
Portia Morake said she is a woman who believes in giving not because she has enough, but that she understands that even if she only has a little of something, there’s someone our there who might not be having anything at all, so sharing is caring,” she said.
“I help a lot of needy families at House4All informal settlement in Eersterust where I live with my daughter Keitumetse,” she said.
“Apart from that, I have been involved in charity work work at the Eersterust-based Food For Life project run by Colleen Jacobs, which feeds those who are in need in our community of Eersterust,” enthused Portia Morake.
“Helping my daughter win the Miss Township South Africa would mean a lot to us as a family because we’ve given it our all to help her in her beauty pageant journey,” said Portia Morake.
“Through beauty pageants it’s like we are setting up a foundation phase for her future and sometimes it gets challenging to raise a young girl who is still learning the reality of many things in life,” she said.
“I constantly encourage her and her peers to stay true to themselves without taking to heart what others say about them, and it seems to be hard for them when some of their peers make them feel shameful for eating food provided to them by the school’s feeding scheme programme or staying in a shack at the local informal settlement,” explained Portia Morake.
“We believe instilling a strong sense of acceptance among all the kids here at the informal settlement about who they are and where they come from will help them in their lives,” she said.
“I would really like to thank the organisers of the MTSA for their understanding of our situation as informal settlement residents which almost led to us quitting the competition, and by the grace of God my daughter Tumi is still in the competition,” emphasised Portia Morake.
“I would also like to thank Mrs Colleen Jacobs for the great support she has shown us, starting with allowing us to be part of the Eersterust Food For Life initiative and also pointing us in the right direction; we are grateful,” she said.
“We urge the community of of Eersterust to please help Keitumetse in her beauty pageant journey by donating sanitary towels and care packs and also vote for her to win the Public Choice Award category of the pageant,” said Portia Morake.
The Miss Teen South Africa pageant will be held on 6 September 2025 at Manhattan hotel Pretoria.