Queen Elizabeth II will forever be linked to our fair city. In 1947, it was in Cape Town that the then Princess addressed via live radio the Commonwealth on the occasion of her 21st birthday. She pledged her ‘whole life’ to service.
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Five years later, that young woman became Queen of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth after her father, the King, fell gravely ill and died.
She served for exactly 70 years before passing away last week, with very few personal scandals of her own. Her family members were far more prone to scandals and there seemed to be one around every corner. But not Queen Elizabeth II. She was by all accounts a lovely gran and matriarch.
But perhaps her biggest scandal was that she was too good at her job. She rarely flinched from her role of keeping a stiff upper lip and holding the line. This, in the face of her government in the name of The Crown having exacted untold horrors in the world it ruled.
Over seven decades she became perhaps the most powerful monarch in the history of the empire – working with 15 prime ministers, including Churchill and Thatcher. In a changing world that demanded a humane approach, she had the chance to make amends for centuries of colonial rule.
But she was too good at her job. It is the reason why historians, if they are to be true to their calling, can only but write a chequered story about the queen. It is the reason why people all over the Commonwealth are not entirely mourning her death. It is for this reason I take umbrage at the symbolic lighting of the City Hall in Cape Town in the Union Jack’s colours at the weekend.
Cape Town is meant to be a city for all who live in it and call it home. It is not an exaggeration to consider that the majority of those who live here have mixed feelings about Queen Elizabeth II.
It is not an exaggeration either that those who have mixed feelings about the queen were the recipients of the sharp end of colonialism, slavery and apartheid.
It is not an exaggeration that the queen’s forebears and descendants either spearheaded or endorsed this unholy trinity.
That the lights went on to drape the City Hall in the blue, white and red on Friday night, just as thousands of Capetonians were hit by another round of blackouts, added further insult to the gesture. The City of Cape Town just wasn’t reading the room.
In a few days’ time, we celebrate Heritage Day. I implore the mayor and his administration to begin remembering in a meaningful way all who shaped our city – warts and all. By all means, remember the 21-year-old princess who later visited as queen. But please tell us the full story.
Let’s finally hear the full story of Jan van Riebeeck with public installations and not the sanitised version we learnt in our history textbooks of the 1980s.
Let’s finally celebrate as a city our heroes as well. Our children need to know about Krotoa, Autshumao, Robert Sobukwe and Ashley Kriel.
History is an important part of our lives so that we don’t repeat the horrors of our past. We can only move forward if we understand where we’ve been.
The lighting of the City Hall in the colours of the Union Jack only tells part of the story of the people of this city and the queen.
Is it not this same City Hall where the children of slaves walked past to mock their masters for more than a hundred years now in the minstrel carnival? Is it not this same City Hall from where his iconic statue lives in the exact spot where Tata Madiba first addressed South Africans upon his release from prison? Is it not this same City Hall where we bid a sad farewell to one of our most important citizens in Archbishop Desmond Tutu?
We can bathe our City Hall in a million colours. But it will never be able to airbrush out the ugly parts of our history. Hollow gestures must never be at the cost of the people of our beautiful city knowing its full story.
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Picture: City of Cape Town