World News | 'A Servant Queen': South Africa Pays Tribute to Queen Elizabeth II
Get latest articles and stories on World at LatestLY. In South Africa and across the globe, the death of Queen Elizabeth II has prompted reflections on the historic sweep of her reign and how she succeeded in presiding over the end of Britain's colonial empire and embracing the independence of her former dominions.
Cape Town, Sep 9 (AP) In South Africa and across the globe, the death of Queen Elizabeth II has prompted reflections on the historic sweep of her reign and how she succeeded in presiding over the end of Britain's colonial empire and embracing the independence of her former dominions.
It was in Cape Town, marking her 21st birthday in 1947, that the then Princess Elizabeth pledged that her "whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong”.
The British empire soon crumbled, but Elizabeth managed to maintain a regal — if ceremonial — position as the head of the Commonwealth, the 54 nations of mostly previous British colonies.
“The Queen lived a long and consequential life, fulfilling her pledge to serve until her very last breath at the age of 96,” Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, said in a statement Friday. “She was an exemplary leader of the kind seldom seen in the modern era.”
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As queen, Elizabeth was seen as endorsing the birth of democracies in Africa where previously Blacks had been denied basic rights, including the vote. When in glittering tiaras she danced with new African leaders in the 1960s and visited their capital cities, she bestowed a legitimacy on their governments.
When white-minority rule finally fell in South Africa in 1994, Elizabeth welcomed Nelson Mandela as a world leader. Her openly warm friendship with Mandela was enjoyed by him, and it gave her a new relevance.
“In the years after his release from prison, (Mandela) cultivated a close relationship with the queen. He hosted her in South Africa and visited her in England, taking particular delight in exploring Buckingham Palace. They also talked on the phone frequently, using their first names with each other as a sign of mutual respect as well as affection,” the Nelson Mandela Foundation said in a statement Friday.
“For Madiba (Mandela's clan name) it was important that the former colonial power in southern Africa should be drawn into cordial and productive relations with the newly democratic republic of South Africa. For the same reason, South Africa becoming a full member of the Commonwealth again after its long apartheid-era absence had a special significance,” it said.
Fellow radical anti-apartheid fighter, Anglican archbishop of Cape Town Desmond Tutu, also enjoyed good relations with the queen, and his foundation paid tribute to her.
“Although ensconced in the pomp, ceremony and lifestyle of royalty and empire, in a world of profound inequality, she was a servant queen,” Tutu's foundation and trust said Friday.
In contrast, a scathing view of the queen's rule was issued by South Africa's populist party, the Economic Freedom Fighters. The queen was “head of an institution built up, sustained, and living off a brutal legacy of dehumanisation of millions of people across the world,” said the statement.
“We do not mourn the death of Elizabeth, because to us her death is a reminder of a very tragic period in this country and Africa's history," said the party. “During her 70-year reign as queen, she never once acknowledged the atrocities that her family inflicted on native people that Britain invaded across the world. She willingly benefited from the wealth that was attained from the exploitation and murder of millions of people across the world.”
The queen's death came as a growing number of British territories in the Caribbean are seeking to replace the monarch with their own heads of state amid demands that Britain apologise for its colonial-era abuses and award its former colonies slavery reparations.
Still, Caribbean leaders mourned her.
Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness said that for many years Elizabeth visited the island every decade.
“Undoubtedly, she formed a special bond with the people of Jamaica,” he said. “We are saddened that we will not see her light again, but we will remember her historic reign.”
Bermuda Premier David Burt noted that her reign “has spanned decades of such immense change for the United Kingdom and the world.” (AP)
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)