South African granny pageant celebrates and honours senior beauties: Video

Fifty-five years later, she was back on the catwalk, silver curls gleaming and brown clogs clicking, in a pageant for grandmothers only.

The event in the Tokoza township outside of Johannesburg featured prayers, speeches and a performance against domestic violence, a national scourge. But the main attraction was on the red carpet stretching down the community hall where grandmothers paraded with pride in a competition that is rare among the host of others for younger women.

"This takes me way back, brings my youth back," Malinda, a great-grandmother of five, told AFP, breaking into a joyful jig to "Happy Mama" by legendary jazz musician Hugh Masekela.

In this version of a beauty contest there were no swimsuit or evening wear categories. Instead, women paraded in their Sunday best, from sleeveless summer frocks to bold orange headwraps, strings of pearls to traditional wear.

Floral fabrics and well-loved kitten heels hinted at celebrations past. Supporters mostly women from the Sukuma Mbokodo Support Group that organised the show clapped, ululated and fiddled with their phones to record the spectacle.

"At our old age, we thought that maybe because our husbands are gone, everything is gone, it's the end of the world," she said. But the event "picked our spirits up...taught us we are still alive and life still goes on, we better make ourselves the right grannies," she said, her brown eyes sparkling.