NAIROBI – When the children of Kenya’s most famous freedom fighter learned of the death of Queen Elizabeth II, they mourned for England and the Queen’s family. The death of a parent is never easy, the Kimathi children know that. “It’s a lot for their country,” said Elizabeth Kimathi, 66. “We feel sorry for them and the royal family.”
But the Kimathis pondered a darker part of the queen’s legacy.
They reflected on how shortly after Elizabeth Windsor ascended the throne, Britain waged a year-long war to put down the rebellion, which was led in part by her father Dedan Kimathi – a man branded a terrorist then and in Kenya today considered a hero. They remembered how thousands of militants were killed and more than 100,000 civilians were forced into detention camps.
How British soldiers tortured their mother. How her father was eventually hanged despite repeated appeals to the British government. Like many letters, her mother wrote to the Queen asking for her help in locating the burial site so that she could give her husband a proper burial.
“She was a woman and a mother and a wife,” said Evelyn Kimathi, 51, of Queen Elizabeth. “She could have shown mercy to a fellow wife and wife.”
Since the Queen’s death last week, many in the West have heaped praise on the woman who has served for 70 years as a beacon of stability and duty, a constant leader in a time of radical change. But in England’s former colonies, some of which engaged in violent struggles to secure their independence during Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the response was decidedly more complicated.
When their leaders paid homage to the Queen – with the Presidents of Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria Among those offering tributes and praising England’s current partnerships with their countries, residents of former colonies spoke openly of the devastation the Empire had wrought. There has been heated debate online and in private about Queen Elizabeth’s responsibilities, whose duties have been largely ceremonial, and how to balance respect for the dead with reckoning on past mistakes.
“What I think western people really need to try to take in and realize is that colonialism in the west is history,” said Sipho Hlongwane, a Johannesburg-based writer. “That’s a thing of the past in the West. But in our countries is colonialism now.”
Queen Elizabeth II and the end of the British Empire
In South Africa, many apartheid-era practices were adopted by the British. Poverty today is largely broken down along racial lines. The British and their descendants still control the vast majority of the country’s lucrative mines.
“The choices she made could have been made differently,” Hlongwane said of Queen Elizabeth. “You can be born into that level of privilege and make different choices and then face the consequences. Are we seriously not allowed to point this out?”
The Queen’s death has also escalated calls from people in Africa and South Asia for the royal family to return riches taken from their country – including the Kohinoor Diamond and the Great Star of Africa, “gifted” by India and South Africa, respectively. The story of the Great Star of Africa, which was mined in a white-owned mine in 1905 and then given to the royal family, is the story of many artifacts in the British Museum, Hlongwane said.
“It could have happened over tea and a handshake,” he said. “But no sane person would think that was a fair transaction.”
Shailja Patel, a Kenyan author and activist, said she knew that if Elizabeth died, the “myth machine” would spring into action immediately. As she watched the media coverage begin, Patel took to Twitter. in one widespread threadShe remarked that the fabled Treetops Hotel in Aberdare National Park – where Elizabeth, then just 25, learned she would become Queen after the sudden death of her father – would become the place from which British soldiers would watch freedom fighters as at a ” wild shooting” shot down.”
“What the British did in Kenya,” Patel said in an interview, “they did all over the world. … We are just beginning to delve into the history, lies and myth-making of the Empire.”
Britain apologized in 2013 for the torture of Kenyan rebels and agreed to pay the living survivors a settlement of about US$20 million, about US$4,000 per person.
Britain faces questions and uncertainty after Queen Elizabeth’s death
For Sadaf Khan, a 22-year-old Bangladeshi American whose grandparents grew up in Dhaka, the capital of present-day Bangladesh, during British rule, the Queen’s death was a source of family tension.
Khan said his grandparents – who experienced violence and had to search for food during the Partition when British India was divided into India and Pakistan in 1947 – joined his parents in “strange sadness at the Queen’s death”. He attributed her feelings to the Queen’s portrayal in South Asia as “a beacon of prosperity”. (Bangladesh subsequently seceded from Pakistan in 1971 to form an independent country).
Khan said he countered by addressing the “horrors the British Empire wrought upon South Asia,” including the white supremacy and colorism still evident in South Asian culture.
Anuj Chandra, an Indian-born doctor whose uncle disappeared during Partition, described a longing for a “British sense of style and class” coupled with a growing appreciation of India’s legacy of British colonialism – and the role of Queen Elizabeth II .in enabling its continuation.
“She acted with amazing grace and dignity,” said Chandra, who now lives in Tennessee, “and at the same time, I think it’s time to question her role, and also the story and what’s against… could do the damage that colonialism has left in the third world.”
Nigerian-born professor Uju Anya sparked an outcry when she wished the queen – who she described as “a thieving, raping genocidal empire” – “excruciating” pain when dying. Anya’s tweet was taken down by Twitter for violating its policies and was condemned by Carnegie Mellon University, where Anya works.
But Anya, whose ancestors were killed during Nigeria’s devastating civil war, insisted she would not comment “anything but contempt for the monarch who oversaw a government that encouraged the genocide that massacred and displaced half my family.”
Watching the criticism mount on Twitter, Nigerian journalist David Hundeyin said he was struck by how “pervasive the ignorance is about what the issues are…about what the British monarchy is and what it represents.”
The country of Nigeria was formed when British rulers decided to amalgamate the very different north and south into one nation. They gave political power to the rulers in the north, and when civil war broke out in 1967, Britain supported the federal government by providing funds and arms. Historians estimate that more than 1 million Igbo civilians died in southeastern Nigeria, many from starvation.
People whose families were directly affected by such a tragedy should be able to express their frustration at the regime whose policies contributed to such a tragedy, Hundeyin said.
“I’m not sure anyone can say to you, ‘Oh, how dare you? They show no decency. It’s not the right time,'” he said. “When is the right time? Who decides when the right time is? In the hierarchy of human life, who gets to decide whose life is superior to others?”
Chason reported from Dakar and Venkataramanan from Washington.