Oti Mabuse: The Globe-Trotting Glitter Diplomat Teaching the World to Waltz Before It Implodes

Oti Mabuse and the Global Glitter Bomb: How a Pretoria-Born Dancer Became the UN’s Most Unlikely Soft-Power Weapon
By A. Correspondent, filing from a hotel bar where the Wi-Fi costs more than the whisky

There are, broadly speaking, two ways a country can project power in 2024. Option A: park a carrier group off someone else’s coastline and watch the price of crude twitch. Option B: send Oti Mabuse to prime-time television in 46 territories and watch the entire planet attempt a cha-cha-cha. The second method is cheaper, more merciful, and—crucially—comes with better costumes.

Born in Pretoria under the mild-mannered sign of Leo, Mabuse has spent the last decade converting the world’s couch potatoes into armchair adjudicators of footwork. Strictly Come Dancing (U.K.)? She won it twice—once for herself, once just to remind the others. The German adaptation, Let’s Dance? Same deal. South Africa’s Dancing with the Stars? She collected that trophy like an errant parcel. If passports had loyalty stamps, hers would look like a cocaine smuggler’s suitcase.

Yet the international significance of her ubiquity goes far beyond shiny floor shows. In an era when globalisation is retreating faster than a Russian oligarch from a London mansion, Mabuse has quietly become the most successful export no customs officer knows how to tax. She is soft power in Swarovski: a one-woman sanctions workaround who can make even Brexit Britain forget its trade deficit for ninety seconds of paso doble.

Consider the soft-diplomacy arithmetic. Every time Mabuse teaches a British MP to waltz without stepping on his own ego, Anglo-South African relations warm by 0.7 degrees. Each German celebrity she twirls is worth roughly one cancelled arms deal in public goodwill. The Japanese spin-off is still in development, but insiders say the producers are praying she can do for Sino-Japanese tension what ABBA once did for divorce rates.

Of course, the darker side of the glitter cannon is impossible to ignore. The planet burns, democracies wobble, and yet here we are—three continents simultaneously arguing about whether a jive should finish on count six or count eight. It’s Bread and Circuses 2.0, except the bread is gluten-free and the circuses are sponsored by a mobile-phone conglomerate that definitely doesn’t mine cobalt in questionable circumstances. Mabuse herself appears aware of the contradiction; she keeps a charitable foundation ticking over in Johannesburg, as if to apologise for every sequin that ends up in landfill.

Still, the numbers don’t lie. When she signed on as a judge for Australia’s Dancing with the Stars last year, Qantas reported a 12 % spike in UK-Australia ticket searches. Tourism boards from Cape Town to Cologne now angle for a cameo like Cold War ministers jostling for a seat at the nuclear table. Her Instagram following—3.4 million and climbing—outranks the population of Uruguay, though Uruguay remains stubbornly unverified.

The real plot twist is geopolitical. In a landscape where culture wars are fought with memes and trade wars with tariffs, Mabuse has weaponised rhythm. She is the living rebuttal to every think-piece claiming nations are destined to fracture along ethnic lines; after all, nothing dissolves tribal animosity quite like forcing rival diplomats to foxtrot together at a charity gala. NATO should consider adding compulsory salsa to Article 5.

Naturally, critics will sniff that none of this matters—that when the ice caps finish melting, an impeccably executed Argentine tango won’t keep anyone afloat. Perhaps. But until then, there is something grimly comforting about watching the human race elect, of its own free will, to obsess over foot placement instead of drone placement. If civilisation must collapse, at least it will do so in 4/4 time, soundtracked by a brass section that’s slightly out of tune but trying its best.

In the end, Oti Mabuse isn’t merely a dancer; she’s a geopolitical anomaly wrapped in fringe and false eyelashes. She proves, with every carefully counted step, that the fastest route between two nations is sometimes a rumba line. And if that line ends at the edge of a cliff—well, at least we’ll fall in perfect unison.