‘I cannot mourn’: former British colonies conflicted over the queen

Elizabeth’s reign saw the hard-won independence of African countries and Caribbean islands, but cloud of colonialism hangs over her legacy

Some called for apologies for past abuses like slavery, while others expressed some sympathy for Elizabeth and the circumstances she was thrust into

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A vendor reads a newspaper showing coverage of the death of Queen Elizabeth, in downtown Nairobi, Kenya on Friday. Photo: AP

Published: 6:02pm, 11 Sep 2022Updated: 6:03pm, 11 Sep 2022

Upon taking the throne in 1952, Queen Elizabeth inherited millions of subjects around the world, many of them unwilling. Today, in the British Empire’s former colonies, her death brings complicated feelings, including anger.

Beyond official condolences praising the queen’s longevity and service, there is some bitterness about the past in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and elsewhere. Talk has turned to the legacies of colonialism, from slavery to corporal punishment in African schools to looted artefacts held in British institutions. For many, the queen came to represent all of that during her seven decades on the throne.

In Kenya, where decades ago a young Elizabeth learned of her father’s death and her enormous new role as queen, a lawyer named Alice Mugo shared online a photograph of a fading document from 1956. It was issued four years into the queen’s reign, and well into Britain’s harsh response to the Mau Mau rebellion against colonial rule.

Kenyan newspapers on the death of Queen Elizabeth for sale in Nairobi on Friday. Photo: EPA-EFE

“Movement permit,” the document says. While more than 100,000 Kenyans were rounded up in camps under grim conditions, others, like Mugo’s grandmother, were forced to request British permission to go from place to place.

“Most of our grandparents were oppressed,” Mugo tweeted in the hours after the queen’s death on Thursday. “I cannot mourn.”

But Kenya’s outgoing president, Uhuru Kenyatta, whose father, Jomo Kenyatta, was imprisoned during the queen’s rule before becoming the country’s first president in 1964, overlooked past troubles, as did other African heads of state.

“The most iconic figure of the 20th and 21st centuries,” Uhuru Kenyatta called her.