ANAHEIM : South Africa Beauty Is an Emissary

Growing up in the South African black township of Soweto, Jacqui Mofokeng believed strongly that she would play a part in abolishing apartheid in her native land.

But the part she envisioned for herself was as a young businesswoman, not as the first black Miss South Africa.

Mofokeng, who is spending 10 days in the United States promoting South African business and tourism, wound up a five-day tour of Southern California on Thursday by visiting Disneyland. Earlier in the week she appeared on the “Arsenio Hall Show,” dined with actress Diahann Carroll and the producers of the television show “A Different World,” and visited a job training center.

It’s a big change since a year ago, when she entered a local South African qualifying pageant on a lark. Today, after beating out 2,000 women, she is trying to represent what she calls “a new South Africa.”

“I want to tell about the other side of South Africa,” said Mofokeng, a 21-year-old business major who plans to be a stockbroker. Wearing her sash, she was walking through Disneyland’s Toon Town with a small army of photographers in tow. Curious tourists stopped and stared, and a few asked for autographs and snapped photographs.

“Yes, there are a lot of problems in South Africa and there is violence,” she said. “But there are also a lot of successes and we are bringing blacks and whites together. We need U.S. investment and we need Americans to come visit our country. We have so much unemployment.”

She said that despite some highly publicized killings, such as Newport Beach resident Amy Biehl, who was murdered by a mob while driving through a black township last month, traveling in South Africa is no more dangerous than traveling in Southern California.

“The people who killed Amy Biehl committed a criminal act,” Mofokeng said. “But there is violence in Los Angeles. There is violence in other places in this country. But there are places, such as Disneyland, where you are perfectly safe. In South Africa, it is the same.”

Back home, Mofokeng said the reaction to her selection as Miss South Africa has been mostly positive. Blacks outnumber whites 5 to 1 in South Africa, but no black woman had won the pageant in its 40 years.

“There have been some white people who have said some very vicious things about me,” she said. “Some people have said, ‘How can you think you are beautiful--you are black. You have ugly teeth.’ Some spread rumors that I had a baby when I was 15 or that I’m pregnant now. But others have gone out of their way to say, ‘Jacqui, we love you, we support you and thank you for doing a good job.’ ”