Published first on Grocott’s Mail
By ROD AMNER
On page 8, you can read a short piece, ‘When Lilibet came to town‘, about the British royal family’s visit to Alicedale and Grahamstown in 1947.
The article centres on a 2014 letter sent to the late Queen Elizabeth II by John Bateson, an Alicedale resident, a British citizen and a hard-working member of the Makana Residents Association (MRA). In the same envelope, Bateson sent a photo of the 20-year-old princess Elizabeth enthusiastically blowing the whistle on the royal ‘White Train’ on the way to Alicedale station.
When the piece went up on Facebook, it elicited several comments. Some were delighted and intrigued, and others added their anecdotes of the royal visit to the story. But, several readers were unimpressed, some angry:
“We’re not interested.”“Can the UK give us the queen’s crown to build schools in places like Alicedale? Or say nothing about her here in SA – because they take it all.”“What of the 126 South African concentration camps – 38,000 women and children died. And we lost a chunk of mineral resources then too.”
This simple story about our town’s quaint historical connection to Britain’s longest-reigned monarch exposed the faultlines that undergird our fractious heritage.
Should Queen Elizabeth II have been held personally responsible for the historical sins of British imperialism, colonialism and capitalist exploitation? After all, her political power was strictly ceremonial, and her agency was limited. She didn’t ask to be born Defender of the Faith or sovereign to millions of ‘subjects’ in a collapsing empire.
Monarchs, and the rest of us, are all entangled in historical systems and ossified institutions of one sort or another.
Yet, we all have some agency.
I am a white, male, middle-class, English-speaking, 56-something South African. Do I, as an individual, have any personal responsibility to own up for my privilege? Um, definitely.
And, if yes, surely Elizabeth bore a similar responsibility? Are we permitted to judge Elizabeth for failing to do enough to critically assess or deconstruct her rather ostentatious privilege?
As a constitutional monarch, Elizabeth had considerable social capital because she was part of a class of wealthy and influential people. Did she always cash in those chips to maximise social justice?
She had considerable cultural capital expressed through her ceremonial power. (She was, by definition, the world’s foremost exponent of the ‘Queen’s English’). And as one of the world’s wealthiest women, she had considerable economic capital, most of it based on hereditary privilege and the fruits of colonial expansion and plunder and presided over a country that continues to benefit from unequal terms of trade in a capitalist system built in tandem with imperial power.
Was she prepared to give any of that up? Did she offer reparations? Did she use her symbolic power to question her family’s inheritance of hereditary privilege or apologise for slavery, colonial dispossession, predatory capitalism and an unequal neoliberal capitalist world order? Not so much.
Many exalted her as a dutiful woman of ‘good character’ – and there is undoubtedly some truth to this, as many who met her will attest. Some may even pity her for having been born into her anachronous role and its onerous responsibilities.
Perhaps it is unrealistic to have expected her to renounce or question her role. But, by performing her ceremonial power so consummately, did she not help to obscure and legitimise the terrible global systems that created and sustained her position?
In 2007, Sudanese billionaire Mo Ibrahim created a US$5 million prize to reward African leaders who respected democratic norms and left office peacefully. If we gave all the royals five million pounds each to walk away from the damaging ideological work they do, perhaps the British and the rest of us might be freer to focus on uniting behind new symbols of human solidarity, heritage and connection that reach for social and environmental justice rather than an attachment to hereditary hierarchies and dubious ‘traditions’.
Like Elizabeth, I think of myself as a person of ‘good character’. But, do I own up to how I personally benefit from the largely ‘invisible’ symbolic and cultural systems partly legitimated by British monarchical power? This includes how I speak English (in the ‘standard English’ my English-heritage parents were eager for me to speak) and many other markers of white privilege in this and other historically unequal societies.
Queen Elizabeth II failed to grapple publicly with her privilege before her 96 years were up. As the white co-editor of a South African newspaper, I play a very minor public role in this city, but I may be guilty of the same failing. Some of my students and colleagues have said as much. And this is, in part, why I am writing this.
But, I am also writing this as a question to Makhanda during Heritage Month. Our city boasts a rich non-racial civic life, exemplified by initiatives like the Circle of Unity. Nevertheless, our public and political life can be fractious, and questions of heritage continue to be confusing and fraught.
On one side of town, we have an impressive monument to the 1820 settlers that hosts prestigious (and inclusive) national events – on the other, Egazini, a poignant but sadly dilapidated and largely unvisited memorial to those who fell to the guns of the British Empire in the 1819 Battle of Grahamstown.
Where is a memorial in our town that honestly expresses the regrets of the ‘conquerors’ or properly honours and acknowledges the experiences of the historically dispossessed and oppressed? Where is a joint monument to all our ancestors – our multicultural heritage? And where are the public symbols of our shared commitment to our future together?
A dog scrounges in the litter at the Egazini memorial. Photo: Roddy Fox
The 1820 Settlers National Monument. Photo: The Heritage Portal
