There are many famous African queens. I learned about Cleopatra of Egypt first because her pictures were in children’s pictorial publications. At the same time, my path was crossed by Muhumuuza of Rwanda who, incidentally, travelled across the border from her Belgian-ruled enclave into Kigezi, my district in SW Uganda, which was then part of the British sphere of influence, to start a war against British rule, probably believing it to have the same attributes as Belgian rule. She was wrong. The people of Kigezi made their choice and embraced British rule, which had transformed kingdoms and states to our north and east.
Can there be a more fitting African queen than Elizabeth II, who climbed an African tree one evening and came down a queen the following day? I don’t believe these things are coincidences. Somebody up there enjoys the trivial sports that show up our minds as shallow. So, for example, some people in the West often cry, “I am not an African!” And then the world learns that all of us, African or not, have their DNA inheritance from the vast valleys of East Africa and that all our mitochondrial DNA is gifted to us by one mother! Thus, there cannot be a story of a princess more worthy of the rewards of Cinderella than that of Elizabeth II, an African queen not only because she happened to be visiting Kenya when she became Queen but because she owes her very roots to an African heritage!
Kenya’s beginnings as a country also include the attributes of a Cinderella story. Began largely as a massive expanse of African land coveted by determined and ruthless colonists who were even more brazen than their government, Kenya was to become the fireplace where political embers burned as the MAU MAU fought against the British establishment, enforced by such unenlightened and unedifying men as Corporal Idi Amin of Uganda. Yet nobody knew then that an American president’s father had been born and was growing up in an African society in western Kenya.
Of all the countries in the then British Commonwealth, it was to Kenya that Elizabeth Alexandra Mary travelled and returned to her country’s throne as Queen Elizabeth II, after climbing a tree! She has since been praised by all for silence, etiquette, grace and wisdom but, in my view, Elizabeth’s greatest contribution to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the conciliatory grace and demeanour that allows former colonies to forgive the excesses of the British Empire. Round the Commonwealth, including Hong Kong, now returned to China as a Special Administrative Region, Great Britain enjoys the praise of the Queen’s former subjects for the contribution of a missionary education even in such countries as India and Pakistan!
There is a firm bundle of “connective tissue” between Britain and Uganda too. I remember being deeply impressed when, at age nine, my family visited the hallowed grounds of Kasubi Tombs in Kampala. The Tombs did not exist until Kabaka Mutesa I of Buganda asked a British missionary, Alexander Mackay, how they buried their kings and queens in Britain. Mackay, an accomplished Scottish engineer who had turned down a partnership in Germany to become a missionary in Uganda following the appearance of an invitation by the forward-looking Kabaka Mutesa I, described Westminster Abbey to Mutesa.
The Baganda, deeply impressed with this story and Mackay’s description of Westminster Abbey, decided to build their own palace of respect. Since then — at least until a recent fire — Buganda has had Kasubi Tombs as its own Westminster Abbey! That was during the reign of Victoria.
When we visited the Tombs in my childhood, there was a chair there that had been sent to Mutesa by Queen Victoria. (I wonder what has happened to it since given that it does not appear in modern photographs of the collection of gifts Mutesa received.) The exchange between Mutesa I and Queen Victoria, whose length of reign Elizabeth II supersedes today at 5.30 pm GMT, established the platform for sustained goodwill by missionaries who were inspired by the work of Dr David Livingstone in southern Africa.
Some of the goodwill engendered by Britain came via the hearts of such men as Sir William Mackinnon, the Bill Gates of his time and whose extraordinary business acumen led to the formation of a modern shipping empire, the British India Steam Navigation company. Mackinnon’s support of Dr Livingstone’s aims to substitute true trade for slave trade in East Africa led to the formation of the Imperial British East Africa Company and its work in Uganda, which eventually led to the government’s annexation of Uganda. Today, of course, we berate British enterprise for “King and Country” but the benefits gained by Africa during colonial rule far outstrip those of independent governance.
East Africa is an interesting arena. Uganda is far from the successful protectorate it was once but the inspiration that forged and formed it has not waned at all. To this day, it is still fighting to be seen as the democracy it struggled to become as the British left in 1962.
Today, Elizabeth II, the African, British, German and Japanese Queen celebrates another day of her special favour. May the world have more years of her wisdom and grace.
