NAIROBI, Kenya — Though Queen Elizabeth II was revered by many in Africa, her death also reignited a different sort of conversation — one that touched on the legacy of the British Empire and the brutality the monarchy meted out to people in its former colonies. In a younger generation of Africans growing up in a post-colonial world, some lamented that the queen never faced up to the grim aftermath of colonialism and empire, or issued an official apology. They said they wanted to use the moment t
Queen Elizabeth prepares to address the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York on July 6, 2010.
“You can look at the monarchy from the point of view of high tea and nice outfits and charity,” said Alice Mugo, 34, a lawyer in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. “But there’s also the ugly side, and for you to ignore the ugly side is dishonest.”Mugo said she recently found her grandmother’s “movement pass,” issued when the British colonial government in Kenya declared a state of emergency to help suppress the anti-colonial Mau Mau rebellion. The passes restricted the free movement of Kenyans.
Similar sentiments were echoed by a South African political party, Economic Freedom Fighters, which said in a statement that it would not mourn the queen, “because to us her death is a reminder of a very tragic period in this country and Africa’s history.”The queen, they wrote, was the “head of an institution built up, sustained and living off a brutal legacy of dehumanization of millions of people across the world.
“I grew to admire her over the years, just watching how she carried herself, and her commitment to what she committed to at 25,” said Yemi Adamolekun, executive director of Enough is Enough Nigeria, a network of organizations promoting good governance. “She just kept at it and I think there’s a lot to be admired in that regard.”
William Ruto, Kenya’s president-elect, called the queen’s leadership of the Commonwealth “admirable.” The association, which was born out of the embers of the British Empire but has lost much of its earlier glory, has still attracted new members like Rwanda, Gabon and Togo, which have had no colonial connections to Britain.
The stone was a gift from the Afrikaner government to King Edward VII after the South African War, also known as the Anglo-Boer War. But Black South Africans have questioned a minority government’s right to bestow as a gift a gem uncovered during a time of brutal exploitation of Black people. On her 21st birthday in 1947, the queen made a speech from a still-segregated Cape Town, pledging her service to the Commonwealth.
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