Goodbye Old Days, Hello New Days
On the 8th of September 2022, Queen Elizabeth of England passed on and out of this life. While I do feel it for her family, because losing a mother or grandmother at whatever age is a difficult transition… To a limited extent I recognize the moment for the UK as well, however, as an African whose identity is a scrambled African identity thanks to the colonial rule that was in her name; It’s hard not to recognise, with hope, the fall of the last pillar in an institution that has kept its claws firmly on our wealth and heritage even years after the dawn of independence.
How does one separate the brokenness of the men in our society from the generational effects of the world wars, fights for freedom and the continued interference of the crown in our economic affairs? How does one separate our endemic posture of servitude at the cost of our identities and at the cost of Ubuntu from the implied social structure that the years of colonial masters have broken our people into? It’s hard. So as much as she was a strong and impressive woman in her own right. To me and I dare say to many Africans, she was a living symbol of the systematic physical, emotional and economic abuse that is entrenched in the collective histories of the post-colonial Africa. I cannot speak of other territories because I am African.
In her transition I see the chance for me and many in my generation to claim a true freedom that would have our grandmothers who suffered abuses that they couldn’t dare speak of, that traumatized them into silence and submission, our grandfathers who went to wars no one prepared them for and came back broken, violent and barbaric. Our grandparents who went to the forest, forgetting the delights of the sun to fight for their land so that their children can have an inheritance, and yet they died poor, outcast and with no land to their names. Brokenness.
It is said that the colonialist took our land and gave us the bible. Although I have since found this quite inaccurate, they gave us a tool in their language that has the power to overturn and undo the effects of colonialism and restore all that was stolen seven-fold and then some. All we have to do is to connect the dots from the mzungu perspective of church to the original understanding, linguistic or culturally of the gospel of Jesus, the way, which had penetrated this land long before the missionaries docked their ships.
I really hope that one day I will have the focus and presence of mind to share coherently what I have learnt about the gospel in Africa. But for now, it is farewell Queen Elizabeth II along with the institution that has muted us all through your lifetime. I pray that with the dawn of a new age, a new British cabinet and a new African leadership, we can finally yank ourselves free from the economic and political interference of the crown and associated institutions.
