Queen Elizabeth II: Has history begun judgment?

Sopuruchi Onwuka

Sparking controversy with just a screen touch of a smart communication device from the comfort, convenience, privacy and freedom of home has made it effortless for daring and confident intellectuals like Prof Uju Anya to preempt undeserved rain of acclamation for dying Queen Elizabeth II of Britain.

With a simple tweet just minutes before the controversial queen died, the language professor at Carnegie Mellon University Department of Modern Languages flipped open the malevolent chapter on the longest serving British monarch whose empire, according to history, grew by pillaging, exploiting and looting crude and peaceful continents.

From Africa to America and Asia, Prof Anya’s pain wish for the late queen has resonated, triggering a parallel and plausible counter-narrative that have punctured well choreographed and highly mobilized political and diplomatic accolades that awaited the moment as the queen defied medical science and shuttered down.

Like a guard with a loaded gun, Professor Uju only had to pull the trigger and let off the bang to announce that a crook is under chase.

From jewels in the British crown and scepter to massive wealth of the royal family and British aristocrats that plundered colonial territories, the death of Queen Elizabeth II culled up resentments that dent the royal eminence with notoriety.

Right from the moment it became clear that the queen was shutting down, anger was already up in the air about her role in colonialism and slave trade. More anger draws from her crafty management of decolonization which succeeded to maintain a leash on local stooges installed to manage imperial interests in the former colonies.

More resentment draws from Her Majesty’s support for political maladministration that stoked genocidal and atrocious civil wars that targeted opponents of colonialism. History holds that most of the former British colonies plunged into civil war shortly after independence due to seeds of hegemony installed to nourish neo-colonialism.

Those that fall the enduring victims of imperial conquest and their modern sympathizers that are convinced with the facts and verdicts of history blame the late Queen Elizabeth II for promoting and supporting colonial enterprises that earned enormous wealth by trading on human beings and plundering the mineral resources of local tribesmen. Worse still, victims of slavery and colonization were local people who showed hospitality to deceptive colonial raiders.

From South Africa to Asia and the Americas where Britain held colonial territories and slave islands, anger boils deep over decades of exploitation of people and their resources by an empire presided over by the departed queen. And whereas the queen was savvy in assembling former colonial governments into a face saving commonwealth community that continues to flow resources to the kingdom; the masses of the people whose ancestors passed down agonizing tales of repressive colonial regimes that evoke demand for justice and accountability on the monarchy. Children heard stories of brutal hunting and enslavement of their kinsmen.

In Nigeria, like in many African countries, exploits of colonial forces and slave traders in native communities, and the people’s frail resistance to the brutal humiliation dominate the creative narratives of the African Writers Series, including the Chinua Achebe trilogy of Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, and Man of the People. There are other indelible accounts of colonial brutality penned by authors of Weep not Child; Cry, the Beloved Country; and Mission to Kala.

On the folk side, local country people all have different sad story about the government of the late queen. From looted Benin bronze artifacts through petroleum mining rights in the Niger Delta to repressive indirect rule and taxation that sparked the Aba women riots and export of free cocoa and rubber from the southwest, the scars of colonialism remain fresh.

In other countries, rare gems were exclusively mined for the British firms awarded royal rights for the commodities. Recent commentaries relating to the death of the queen strongly contend that the rare stones and precious metals that adorn ornate instruments of the British crown and scepter were in fact, in today’s terms, stolen!

Therefore the highly hyped global sphere of colonial political and diplomatic influence of Britain also inadvertently maps the spread of potential anger and resentment at the crown from colonial subjects most of whose ancestors suffered slavery.

In most countries of the so called commonwealth union which links the former British colonies, interpretation of the relationship with Britain using modern templates evokes audacious demand for penal sanctions against the current British establishment.

According to the National Library of Jamaica, more than 10 million Africans were shackled into the Atlantic slave trade by European nations between the 15th and 19th centuries. Those who survived the brutal voyage were forced to labor on plantations in the Caribbean and the Americas.

Some 600,000 Africans were taken to Jamaica alone between 1533 and 1807: and when the Abolition Bill passed in the British House of Lords, reparations were paid out only to slave owners to compensate them for lost “property.”

Associate Professor of Caribbean Studies at Ryerson University, Camille Hernandez-Ramdwar, declared in a report that the 200 years of free labour that Britain received during slavery powered development of many nations in Europe African sweat.

“There were two industrial revolutions,” Hernandez-Ramdwar said, adding that “people of African descent, enslaved Africans and their descendants have continued to suffer the consequences of underdevelopment, of unemployment, of trauma” during and after the slave era.

“The fact that those 200 years of free labour that Britain received during slavery, meant that not only Britain, but many nations in Europe were able to develop. There were two industrial revolutions,” Hernandez-Ramdwar said.

“And meanwhile, people of African descent, enslaved Africans and their descendants have continued to suffer the consequences of underdevelopment, of unemployment, of trauma.”

Again, during the world wars of 1930s and 1940s, hundreds of thousands of men from British colonies were forcefully conscripted into service to help Britain contend with the fire power of German forces.

Thus, the background of cruel exploitation and ongoing manipulation of commonwealth governments by Britain gave context to the outpour of contempt at dying Queen Elizabeth who got a harsh wish for ‘excruciating pain’ in her final few hours to death.

Prof Uju Anya whose tweet went viral insisted that the queen deserved excruciating passing for the pain and anguish which her reign wreaked on Africa. Prof Anya was born in Nigeria to a Nigerian father and mother from Trinidad and Tobago. Both countries were colonized by the British.

Similar voices from different parts of the world where the late queen exercised imperial powers have since drowned the voices of Prof Anya’s critics including Billionaire Jeff Bezos whose Blue Origin space shuttle enterprise casts in the mold of climate destroyer.

The Amazon founder quickly came under fire from critics pointing to his vast wealth, influence and controversial business practices.

Bezos has also come under significant criticism over the years as Amazon faced accusations of exploiting everything from data to workers.

“You should probably stay quiet when it comes to critiques of empire + its overlords,” tweeted one user, @corintxt.

Prof Anya did not ignore Bezos either.

“Otoro gba gbue gi! May everyone you and your merciless greed have harmed in this world remember you as fondly as I remember my colonizers,” she fired back. And other Twitter users took it from ther until Bezos was heard no more.

But the fire of justice raged against the late queen and her imperial empire. Videos of matches posted on Twitter same day carried a jubilant news bar in the middle of the images. “Lizzy in the box!” The video was posted from a UK stadium where a match was ongoing. After that, further match fixtures were suspended “in honor of the queen.”

But across the Atlantic, sporting events tried disastrously to honor the queen. Fans at the UFC 279 at Las Vegas, weekend, booed at the image of Queen Elizabeth II as the publicists of the crown struggled to push back the surge in global disapproval of her influence in the world she left behind.

The image of Queen Elizabeth II was met with a loud chorus of boos just two days after she died at the age of 96.

Prior to the start of the main card of UFC 279 – which was headline by Nate Diaz’s win over Tony Ferguson – the tribute to the Queen appeared on the big screen titled-‘In memory Queen Elizabeth II 1926-2022’.

An 19,000 capacity crowd at the T-Mobile arena in Vegas began booing the tribute put on by the organisation, before chanting ‘USA’ from sections of the crowd.

A number of attendees could also be heard laughing at the reaction of some portion of the onlookers in the Las Vegas venue.

In a New York Times article authored by the trio of Abdi Latif Dahir, Lynsey Chutel and Elian Peltier on September 10, they noted that the expected global rain of tributes for Queen Elizabeth II has been doused with anger over “Britain’s Bloody Colonial Past.”

The article pointed at “the legacy of the British Empire and the brutality the monarchy meted out to people in its former colonies,” noting that the anger of colonial subjects are exacerbated by reality that the late queen “never faced up to the grim aftermath of colonialism and empire, or issued an official apology.”

The article also pointed at “the oppression and horrors” African ancestors endured in the name of the Crown, “and to urge for the return of crown jewels — rare massive diamonds — taken from continents.”

They quoted Kenyan activists as noting that denial of the ugly sides of the late queen was dishonest.

“You can look at the monarchy from the point of view of high tea and nice outfits and charity, but there’s also the ugly side, and for you to ignore the ugly side is dishonest,” the report quoted a 34 year old lawyer in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi,  Alice Mugo.

The report polled comments that listed atrocities of Queen Elizabeth’s imperial government in colonies to include suppression civil liberty, restriction of free movement, establishment of detention camps, and “the torture, rape, castration and killing of tens of thousands of people.”

African commentators acknowledge that the mourners of the queen’s death are not aware of how her government robbed millions of basic freedoms.

Kenyan writer Patrick Gathara who writes for Insider Magazine described the British monarchy, and thus the late Queen’s reign, as “built on a systematic and sustained effort to erase the truth of colonial subjugation and plunder,” adding that “The UK withdrawal from its colonial dominions was accompanied by the destruction, theft, and concealment of huge stacks of embarrassing documents, including details of the horrific, systemic abuse and murder of detainees during the 1950s emergency in Kenya.”

Similar sentiments were echoed by a South African political party, Economic Freedom Fighters, which said in a statement that it would not mourn the queen, “because to us her death is a reminder of a very tragic period in this country and Africa’s history,” according to the report by NYT collated by The Oracle Today.

The queen, they wrote, was the “head of an institution built up, sustained and living off a brutal legacy of dehumanization of millions of people across the world.”

In the wake of the queen’s death, a legion of young South Africans demands the return of the diamonds that form part of the crown jewels.

“Cut from the Cullinan, which was discovered in South Africa in 1905 and considered the largest diamond ever found, the rare gemstones sit atop the Imperial State Crown and the Sovereign Scepter, which are both used during the coronation of the British monarch,” The NYT reported of the coveted diamond.

A CNN international correspondent Larry Madowo had also declared in a live report that Kenyan’s do not love the late queen either. Kenya is a prominent member of the Commonwealth.

“Across the African continent, there have been people who are saying, ‘We will not mourn for Queen Elizabeth because my ancestors suffered great atrocities under her people,’” Madowo said. “And she never fully acknowledged that.”

He posted a report saying that the queen’s death is a reminder of a very tragic period in Africa’s history, quoting statement that declared: “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. The British royal family stands on the shoulders of millions of slaves who were shipped away from the continent to serve the interests of racist white capital accumulation.”

 “If there is really life and justice after death, may Elizabeth and her ancestors get what they deserve,” the statement from a South African group read in part.

The queen’s death also comes as a growing number of British territories in the Caribbean have replaced, or are seeking to replace, the monarch with their own heads of state, calling for reparations and demanding that Britain apologize for its abuses during the colonial era, the NYT also reported.

Of the 14 countries beyond the United Kingdom that retain Queen Elizabeth II as head of state, at least six in the Caribbean want out, reported Mary Yang, a former intern at Foreign Policy. Belize, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, and St. Kitts and Nevis s which were colonized by the British have how indicated they plan to remove the queen as their head of state.

General Secretary of the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration, David Denny, declared that “Whoever will take over the position should be asked to allow the royal family to pay African people reparations.”

Jamaica’s government last year announced plans to ask Britain for compensation for forcibly transporting an estimated 600,000 Africans to work on sugar cane and banana plantations that created fortunes for British slave holders.

Activists in Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas had in March demanded reparation payments and apology for slavery from visiting Prince William and his wife, Kate.

The reparation demand spearheaded by the Caribbean Community or CARICOM aims to compensate not only people of African descent who were displaced as a result of the slave trade but indigenous populations.

Insider reported separately that Prime Minister Gaston Browne of Antigua and Barbuda will hold a referendum in the next three years on making the country a republic and removing King Charles III as the head of state.

“This is not an act of hostility or any difference between Antigua and Barbuda and the monarchy, but it is the final step to complete that circle of independence, to ensure that we are truly a sovereign nation,” the Prime Minister is quoted as saying.

In November 2021, Barbados became one of 17 countries that removed Queen Elizabeth as their head of state and became republics during her reign.

Calls for reparations re also chorused from India to Kenya where groups and activists demand that the British government must pay reparations for looting local resources to England.

Apart from the diamonds from South Africa, Indians are also calling for rare gems taken from the country to build part of the jewels in the British royal crown and scepter to be returned.

Just hours after her death, Indian social media lit up with renewed calls for the return of the famous Koh-i-Noor, the 106-carat diamond discovered in India that is part of the British crown jewels. It was once the world’s largest known diamond, is worth a reported £100 million and is currently part of Britain’s crown jewels.

The diamond was in the crown worn by the Queen Mother at the coronation of her husband King George VI in 1937 and again at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953.

According to legend, the Koh-i-Noor gem can only be worn by God or women, and whoever wears the jewel will become extremely powerful; but if a man wears it, he will meet an unfortunate end. This explains why it has remained only in the queen’s crown.

The jewel was also in the crowns of Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary. It remains in the Queen Mother’s crown, which sat atop her coffin at her funeral in 2002.

But now, prominent Indians with social visibility want the signature gem to be returned to the native country, and they are pushing legal buttons in England to compel repatriation of the jewel.

Led by Bollywood stars and businessmen, Indian groups united to instruct lawyers to begin legal proceedings in London’s High Court to return the Koh-i-Noor diamond.

The stone is “one of the many artifacts taken from India under dubious circumstances”, according to David de Souza from the Indian leisure group Tito’s.

Souza claims the British colonization of India had stolen wealth and “destroyed the country’s psyche.”

The jewel was given to the reigning Queen of the time by the last ruler of the Sikhs, Duleep Singh, after the British annex of the Punjab.

A history professor with a focus on the history of 19th century Britain and empire at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Danielle Kinsey, told NBC News that the Kohinoor diamond “has a history of being part of war booty or trophies taken as the result of war in South Asia. So in a lot of ways, it is a symbol of plunder and represents the long history of plunder imperialism.”

“I think people are outraged by how the Kohinoor continues to function as a trophy of empire as long as it remains in the crown’s possession,” she said.

According to history, Maharaja Duleep Singh, the 11 years old son and successor of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, held on to the diamond until the British annexed Punjab in 1849 and made him to sign the Treaty of Lahore pledging the diamond to the queen of England.

Ever since gaining independence, India has dismantled symbols of British rule, including figures of British officials and royalty, like King George V, from public view.

Under the rule of the current Prime Minister, the Modi government continues to scrub away colonial-era street names, some laws and even flag symbols.

India’s disentanglement from the British is being hastened by the raging dispute over the Kohinoor diamond which a Twitter user said “was stolen” by the British, who “created wealth” from “death,” “famine” and “looting.”

For many Indians, the royal family remains a hallmark of a deeply painful history. Colonial rule is still remembered for the extraordinary violence and suffering it spawned, from numerous famines and economic exploitation to ultimately an unprecedented level of bloodshed in the partition of India and Pakistan.

The queen’s last visit to India in 1997 verified her empires brutal footprint in the country when she traveled to a memorial dedicated to hundreds of unarmed Indians who were killed by British colonial forces in 1919, amid calls for an apology over the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

In Nigeria, the government is slow to condemn the British government for any wrong doing, but tribal leaders and regional activists are aggressive in demanding that commodities shipped from the country to Europe under the colonial administration be compensated for.

Already, non consumable valuables including sculpted artworks looted from the Benin Kingdom of the contemporary Edo State of the country are in the process of repatriation from different parts of Europe where they were sold by British merchants who confiscated them during colonial rule.

The British government recently facilitated the return of the Benin Bronzes including 72 artifacts looted by British soldiers in the 19th century to the Nigerian government.

More valuable than commodities and absolutely irrecoverable are millions of local Nigerian tribesmen, women and children who were either Killed or carried away as slaves during pre-colonial and colonial occupation of the country by the British. The slaves who survived the rough and abusive voyages to unknown destinations form part of the roving population of black people in north American countries. Whereas their descendants have no links to their roots, the local communities still keep sad memories of them. And their stories still run in family folklores.

Therefore, those who poured anger and rage at dying Queen Elizabeth II fall into the suspended history of disconnected family lines, with no homes and kindred community anywhere in the world!

Prof Uju Anya’s mother who is a Caribbean falls into the category of uprooted African descendants who lack kindred community. And with a husband who is reconnecting her to her roots, the language professor who understands the channel to cultural transmission is in full evaluation of her loss. She is in position to know the fate of millions of Africa and Caribbean people who have lost kinship due to slave trade and colonization. She therefore is absolutely in position of rage!

This partly explains why her university community also provided her full support during pressure on her university to apply disciplinary actions.

Students, faculty and other academics have signed petitions to the university to declare a stand with Professor Uju Anya in the wake of the university condemning her tweets.

The Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Friday that it had sent a letter to Carnegie Mellon President Farnam Jahanian urging the university not to sanction the professor.

On Monday, students, faculty and other members of academia penned a letter with a corresponding petition to the university in support of Dr Anya.

“We recognize her immensely impactful role on campus and believe firmly in her right to free speech and safety,” the letter reads.

“CMU’s public condemnation of her tweet provides no institutional protection from violence and places her in a precarious position, ignoring a long history of institutional racism and colonialism. Rejecting calls for ‘civility’ that are frequently leveraged against the marginalized to silence dissent, we express our solidarity with Dr Anya and reject the tone-policing of those with legitimate grievances.”

The letter also takes aim at the university’s hasty response to the professor’s tweets last week.

“We have seen the brief statement distancing the school from Dr. Anya’s tweets, claiming she does not represent the school’s values,” the petition continues. “We agree. Dr Anya certainly does not represent the values of Carnegie Mellon University. A university with unceded First Nations land and only nine Black tenured professors out of 477 cannot possibly share the same values as an African-Caribbean Black woman who is also an intersectional feminist, can it?

“Given CMU’s statement, one has to wonder, is the silencing of people of African and Caribbean descent in line with CMU values? Is the right to the full expression of emotions and speech reserved for Americans of a specific hue?”

Like most of the comments that enriched discussions in her tweets, whereas it is undeniable that colonial governments exploited African communities and imposed modernization and religions on them what have African elites done for their people since the end of the colonial era?

India and other British colonies have since overtaken their colonized past and overtaken Britain in the global economic power ranking. The Caribbean nations are eagerly and boldly working to detach from Britain, seek reparation and determine their own growth pace. But African members of the Commonwealth still relish their relationship with the colonial master.

Nigeria particularly has continued to willingly submit to re-colonization by adopting Britain as its capital. The federal government, some state governments, federal institutions and parastatals as well as elite businessmen own houses in UK. They seek medical treatment in UK, and their children school in Uk. They also bank in UK.

So, despite nominal independence of 1960, Nigeria continues to rely on UK for everything.

For instance, since his election into office in 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari has never taken any level of medical treatment in the country, including ear infection! He has always flown to the UK. So also do his cabinet members, governors and all classes of political leaders.

The overdependence on UK means continued flow of Nigerian resources to the British banks. This is a clear deviation from other countries like Israel, Japan and China that suffered daunting setbacks but quickly steered into paths of rapid growth.

Japan overcame Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs and advanced to become a global industrial superpower, competing and pushing back adversaries with commercial prowess. India is powering forward despite the colonial setbacks. China is also challenging the gloom of the past with the opportunities of the present. And despite limited land, sea and human resources, Israel has not just remains economically stable but proved strong in the midst of distracting enemies.

But Africa, especially Nigeria, has remained where colonial masters left it: locked in atrocious hegemonies that that sustain endless rounds of power tussle, civil war, hunger, diseases, repressive governments, corruption and poverty. The continent has been kept in poverty by its own governments, definitely no longer the British or European masters.

Therefore while we allow God to subject Queen Elizabeth II to appraisal and accountability for imperial colonial exploits and associated irreparable pains caused by enterprises of the British Empire, the contemporary leaders of Africa must demonstrate that the continent is now free!