The death of Queen Elizabeth II has sparked many discussions around the world about colonialism.
Should we mourn the Queen or not?
South Africans have been particularly conscious of our relationship with both the Queen and her country.
In February 1952, Princess Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, were on a tour of Africa on behalf of her father, King George VI, who was ill at the time. While she was in Kenya, she received the news of her father’s death and her resulting title as Queen.
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“Everywhere I have travelled in these lovely lands of South Africa and Rhodesia, my parents, my sister, and I have been taken to the heart of their people and made to feel that we are just as much at home here as if we had lived among them all our lives,” she added.
The following year, the apartheid regime began, and Queen Elizabeth’s father publicly supported it.
For many, the Queen’s death has sparked generations’ worth of complex and painful emotions. The monarchy is a constant reminder of the devastating destruction colonialism had on African countries, and life.
The topic of racism remains rife when discussing the Royal Family.
Last year, documents revealed that “coloured immigrants or foreigners” were banned from serving in administrative roles in the Royal Household until the late 1960s.
In 1979, Queen Elizabeth attended the 5th Commonwealth Heads of Government Summit in Zambia where the apartheid government was unanimously condemned.
She also visited South Africa in 1995, a year after Nelson Mandela was elected as president, and formed what she described as a “close friendship” with him.
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The EFF, an actively anti-imperialist party, says the Queen was the head of “an institution built up, sustained, and living off a brutal legacy of dehumanisation of millions of people across the world”.
The party noted that the colonisation of Zimbabwe and Zambia had the blessing of the Royal family, and that the suppression of resistance forces in Kenya happened under her rule.
Most prevalent in conversations about South Africa and the Queen, at the moment, is the matter of the jewels.
The crown worn by the Queen, or whoever is the current reigning monarch, features the Cullinan Diamond – the largest diamond ever found. It was discovered near Pretoria on 26 January 1905.
Many South Africans feel that Britain came into possession of the diamond illegitimately, and are rallying to bring it back to the country.
For some, what the Queen stood for and represented was problematic. For others, she was the innocent face that the real evil hid behind. And now, in her death, people have noted that she, at the very least, has not spoken out against racism.
Mourning a death can easily blur the lines of the person’s life, and in a death as global and symbolic as this one, you will find people reacting on all ends of the spectrum. But, for most, Queen Elizabeth II’s death represents far more than an elderly woman in a far-away country passing away.
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Picture: Queen Elizabeth, The Japan Times