A monarch of contradictions, but above all an impressive woman
The late Queen Elizabeth II.
Two attention-catching book titles from my FEMRITE sisters are currently on my mind. One, with which I was peripherally involved, is This Bridge Called Woman. The other, a poetry collection by my lineage relative, Zenah Nakanwagi, is I Am a Woman, I Am Love. I will not review these texts in detail here, as this is not my docket, and I need not spell out their subject matter, which is, obviously, woman.
The woman who brought these titles to my mind is Elizabeth II, the recently departed British Queen. Since her passing away on September 8, many of you have been asking me to say something about her. This is fair, as I lived through all her reign, I boast of a British education and I even admit to British family connections.
Not all this, however, makes it any easier for me, than for other people, to comment satisfactorily on this remarkable woman. Note that her age spanned nearly a century and her heritage is longer than a millennium. Most challenging is the sheer multi-faceted complexity of her personality. From what I have read so far in the past ten days, responses to Queen Elizabeth since her demise fall into three categories.
At one end is the huge number of fanatical admirers, in Britain and elsewhere in the world, of the fallen monarch and matriarch. In the middle is an equally large number, especially among the millennials and most post-independence adults, who wonder what all the fuss is about. “After all,” as one of the characters in Marjorie Macgoye’s characters in Coming to Birth says, “people are always dying, on the radio and in the newspapers.”
African Diaspora
At the other end, especially in the African Diaspora and in the former colonies of the “British Empire”, of which Kenya was a part, we have those who feel that there is nothing to admire about Queen Elizabeth. They see her as an inheritor and representative of an imperial system that subjected many populations all over the world to slavery and repressive and brutal forms of colonisation. These are serious and deep-seated sentiments over which we should not gloss.
I, however, will direct the main beam of our chat towards those of us in the middle group who need some insight into the significance of Elizabeth to her country, to the world and to humanity.
The unquestioning admirers need no assistance, and I will not appoint myself apologist to those who regard British international influence as an unmitigated disaster. By way of launching into our assessment of the person of Elizabeth, however, we may use the colonial or imperial case as an illustration of her deeply complex and even contradictory role in history.
When, in 1952, the Princess Elizabeth Mary Alexandra became Queen of Britain, famously at the Treetops Hotel in Kenya, she, unlike her predecessors, did not inherit the title of “Empress of India”. The vast territories there had gained their independence in 1947. In 1957, five years into her reign, Ghana also became free, leading most other African countries into freedom from British rule over the next two decades. Thus, although Elizabeth “inherited” the Empire, she also “supervised” its dismantlement within the first few decades of her reign.
I put “inherited” and “supervised” between quote marks above because Elizabeth, as a person, actually had very little to do with these processes. This is because, in the constitutional monarchy setup of the British state, the monarch, King or Queen, is not allowed to express his or her opinion on any matter of public policy or governance in the realm, let alone take any action related thereto. The most powerful personality in the land, in whose name every public action is undertaken (“on His or Her Majesty’s Service”) is utterly powerless.
“Her” government, led by a Prime Minister, who is actually the Head of “Her Majesty’s Government”, dictates even her statements to the country and to the world. So it would not be too difficult, even for those with genuine and sore grievances against the injustices of British colonialism and imperialism, to discern a difference between Elizabeth as a person and Elizabeth as a symbol of the system. A British monarch does not campaign for her post. It is forced upon her or him by the circumstances of her or his birth.
Constitutional demands
In the case of Elizabeth II, she had not even expected to be Queen, but once there, she acted to the best of her abilities, adhering punctiliously to the constitutional demands of her office. Talking about constitutions, another curiosity of British politics is that it has no written constitution, such as we have in our countries. The British depend for their constitutional order on time-hallowed practices, accumulated legislative and judicial precedents and simple common sense.
It takes a lot of intelligence, self-discipline and personal integrity to grasp such nebulous expectations and live them “to the letter”, as Elizabeth II seems to have done throughout her 70-year reign. These, I think, are the qualities that have endeared this woman to her subjects and to many leaders and ordinary people around the world.
To these I would add the way she came across to our image-conscious age as a confident, articulate, warm and sympathetic woman. Women’s emancipation and empowerment was not a very hot issue when Elizabeth ascended the throne in 1952, but within a decade of her accession, it had become one of the defining international struggles of the twentieth century.
It is not easy to estimate how much Elizabeth’s reign contributed to the empowerment of women in the Britain and elsewhere in the world. But the presence of this exceptionally impressive woman at the helm of one of the leading world powers for the better part of a century must have been incontrovertible testimony to the leadership capability of women.
On her final working day, Elizabeth appointed Liz Truss the third female Prime Minister of her reign. This, I think, was an apt symbol of her own inspiring career.
Prof Bukenya is a leading East African scholar of English and [email protected]
