How Hendrik Verwoerd must be laughing in his grave. How Nelson Mandela must feel vindicated that he and, whatever its other faults, the ANC campaigned against the abolition of the monarchy in South Africa. This week, South Africans have the chance to see what they have been missing for fifty years, and to contrast it most starkly with what and whom they have today.
Africans countries never in the British Empire are now in the Commonwealth. But the restoration of the monarchy, indeed of the same monarch as in 1960?
If it happened in Zimbabwe, where it cannot possibly happen to soon and where it was Ian Smith who purportedly deposed the Queen, then it could and would happen in South Africa, where it was in fact the non-racial, non-violent, anti-Communist, pro-Commonwealth movement against apartheid that delivered that system's end.
Speaking of Zimbabwe, today is the thirtieth anniversary of Robert Mugabe's coming to power. The British Government had held out for the Soviet-backed Joshua Nkomo, as if he would have been any better than the Chinese-backed Mugabe, and had therefore refused to recognise the government of Bishop Abel Muzorewa. The rest is history. Can you name the British Prime Minister in 1980?
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The few Africans from former British colonies that I have met had nothing but good things to say about the British Monarchy. Not sure how scientific my anecdotal stories are, but I think it is at least interesting. I have also noticed the same pro-Monarchy sentiments from West Indians as well.
ReplyDeleteMrs Queen the African Queen - I like that.
ReplyDeleteHer royal warrant would have given the golden seal when that bad man Gerald Dube was hanged as a Christmas present at Gabarone. He should have been hanged at HMP Prison Gabarone, not Garbarone Central Prison.
Practically every African country in the Commonwealth still has the gallows or the firing squad reflecting the greater African social-conservative value that bad people must die.
I hear that for such a small place St Helena has a big prison and its full. I heard one poor woman moved their from the Mother Country and was burgled three times in a week.
Mrs Queen needs to do some hanging amongst your criminal relatives Mr Lindsay.
God Save Mrs Queen!
Mr. Piccolo, I'm afraid I have to say it: America forced us to decolonise after the War, just as she wants us out of the Falkland Islands now, and did in 1982. There was little or no greater public enthusiasm for the, usually Soviet-backed or at least pro-Soviet, leaders in waiting then than is for Argentina among Falkland Islanders today. But the defeat of the old enemy, the British Empire, trumped everything else, even the struggle against the Soviet Union.
ReplyDeletePat from the Yard, you hear wrong. Saint Helena is practically crime-free, and its tiny prison contains hardly anyone at any given time. On one famous occasion, the prisoners, who show leaving visitors to the door, broke out, robbed a shop, and then took their loot back into prison because they had nowhere else to go.
David is right about the near zero crime on St. H but too reticent about his own family, respectable even by those standards. How many MBEs is it now?
ReplyDeleteWasn't the only ever St Helenian murderer imprisoned over here?
ReplyDeleteUnless I am very much mistaken, he is still in prison over here, although my father used to go and see him, and my father has been dead for 19 years.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing remotely suitable for dealing with a murderer on Saint Helena. It has its problems, but think on that fact. And on the fact that, with very close ties indeed to Cape Town, Saint Helena is one of the very few jurisdictions on earth never to have recorded a case of HIV infection. Among other such facts, of which there are numerous.
Mr. Lindsay,
ReplyDeleteTrue, I think we Americans have a strange relationship with Great Britain. Many Americans love Britain for weird reasons. They love her because she went along with our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially Iraq, as that was the more unpopular venture in terms of world opinion.
Many Americans hate the French for the opposite reason, that is, they follow their national interests and don't always go along with our adventures.
For me, I would not have had a problem if Britain had not joined in our wars. Although I consider myself a patriotic American, I don't expect other countries to do whatever we want them to do. That is also why I don't hate France, although most of my conservative family members and friends do.