Reigning Miss South Africa, Zozibini Tunzi has been crowned Miss Universe 2019. The Beauty queen’s crowning as the 68th Miss Universe took place on Sunday, 8 December 2019 at the Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

The show which lasted 3 hours was hosted by the famous comedian, Steve Harvey alongside former beauty queen and actress, Vanessa Lachey.

Ally Brooke from Fifth Harmony musical group thrilled the audience with her wonderful performances.

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Beautiful Tunzi was crowned by departing Miss Universe 2018, Catriona Gray as pageantry tradition demands. Tunzi is now the third South African to have been crowned Miss Universe. Others were Margaret Gardiner and Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters who were crowned in 1978 and 2017 respectively.

Her crowning also launched the brand-new “Power of Unity” crown which is said to be worth about R73 million. 

The newly-crowned queen has come out to thank South Africans for the support they gave her during the pageantry. While speaking after her victory, the 26-year who hails from Tsolo, Sidwadweni in East Cape said:

“Ah, I’m so ecstatic. I think everyone is still waking up by the way. They are going to wake up to a storm of news. I don’t think I have ever had as much support as I did coming into the Miss South Africa crown and so I think this will be something extra and very special for everyone back at home.”

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South Africans are awake and have reacted brilliantly to the news of Zozibini Tunzi being crowned Miss Universe 2019 on Twitter. See what some have said:

While one Twitter user who goes by the handle @Loisabels18 refers to the fact that Zozibini Tunzi was crowned by the immediate past Miss Universe from the Philippines who received her own crown from a former South African Miss Universe, another user tweeted “…Nothing could ever beat natural African beauty.”

African delegates will seek to push for changes at the 2019 annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP25, which officially kicked off on Monday, December 3, in Madrid, Spain.

About 29,000 visitors are expected at the conference that holds from 2 to 13 December 2019, including 50 heads of state. The U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres underscored the meeting’s urgency, saying that the climate crisis could soon reach the “point of no return.”

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At COP25, delegates from 197 countries are expected to nail down some details left open by the 2015 Paris climate accord, including how carbon-trading systems and compensation for poor countries with rising sea levels will work.

Being signatories to the Paris Agreement, nearly all African countries have shown commitments to enhance climate actions by putting practical measures and building resilience in order to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

READ: How climate change is draining Lake Malawi and local fishing economy

Like the previous COP summits, the African Development Bank (AfDB) is present in Madrid to support regional member countries through its support to the African group of negotiators and through advocacy to make Africa’s voice heard in the global stage.

The highpoint of the COP25 for Africa is the “Africa Day”, which is slated for December 10, and will focus on concerted global action on climate change to attain a new Africa.

The conference was originally scheduled to be held in Brazil and then Chile, but the election of President Jair Bolsonaro and the protests in Santiago changed those plans. Spain agreed to host last month.

READ: Uganda’s teenage environmental activist calls for urgent climate change action

South Africa’s minister of Public enterprise, Pravin Ghordan, has declared the government’s resolve to “rescue” national carrier, South African Airways.

The move comes after a week of speculation on the airline’s future, which is loss-making and has been unable to raise funding to continue operations.

It is proposed that the government will give the airline an extra $137 million with a second tranche of the same amount to come from existing lenders.

The failing airline which has not made a profit since 2011, has lost more than $2 billion over the past 13 years and experience some internal turbulence last month, when staff went on strike over plans to cut a fifth of its workforce.

“It must be clear that this is not a bailout. This is the provision of financial assistance in order to facilitate a radical restructure of the airline,” Pravin Gordhan says.

SAA, which has not made a profit since 2011 and has depended on government bailouts, suffered an employee strike last month, forcing it to cancel hundreds of flights and pushing it to the brink of collapse. 

Outlining what is expected from the process – described as the “optimal mechanism” to restore confidence in SAA as it seeks a future equity investor, Gordhan says the 2 billion rand provided by existing lenders will be guaranteed by the government and repayable in future budgets. 

The government, via the national treasury, will provide another 2 billion rand in a “fiscally neutral manner” with the full recovery of capital and interest on existing debt not impacted by the rescue proceedings. 

In a business rescue process, a specialist administrator takes control of a company with the aim of rehabilitating it to improve its chance of survival, or securing a better return for creditors than they would receive from liquidation. 

“This initiative demonstrates that the government will undertake the necessary bold steps in order to reposition its assets in such a way that they do not continue to depend on the fiscus and thereby burden taxpayers” , Gordhan adds.