Litnet

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When Britain first, at Heaven’s command
Arose from out the azure main;
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sang this strain:
"Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:
"Britons never will be slaves."
(From Thomas Arne’s Alfred, 1740)

Colonialism has led to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and ... Africans and people of Asian descent and indigenous peoples were victims of colonialism and continue to be victims of its consequences.

(Durban Declaration of the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, 2001)

"We are, above all, British citizens of the Great British Empire, fighting as the British are ... in a righteous cause for the good and glory of human dignity and civilisation. Our duty is clear ... to fight (against Germany) with our life and property ...."

(Mahatma Gandhi, supporting the First World War call-up by Britain across the empire, as quoted in Empire by Niall Ferguson)

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Well, well. Who would have thought it? Great Britain, mother of parliaments, now has its first “non-white” prime minister – or “person of colour”, as the papers are calling him. He is also a Hindu, elected by his Conservative Party peers on the day of Diwali, 24 October, which will no doubt please his family and the Indian community at large in Britain.

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Well, well. Who would have thought it? Great Britain, mother of parliaments, now has its first “non-white” prime minister – or “person of colour”, as the papers are calling him. He is also a Hindu, elected by his Conservative Party peers on the day of Diwali, 24 October, which will no doubt please his family and the Indian community at large in Britain.

All this race terminology must seem strangely passé to South African readers, but it is difficult to overstate the importance of Rishi Sunak’s rise to the highest political office. The wheel of history has come full circle and could result in drawing a line under decades of bad press for Britain’s colonial legacy. Sunak is the son of African-born Hindu parents of Punjabi Indian descent. He married into a billionaire Indian family whose main part lives in India, once the jewel in the crown of the British Raj. The optical symbolism of this earthquake will not be lost in India and across the Commonwealth. It is the ultimate “reparation” in many ways for all those children of the empire that one of their own is now the actual prime minister of Great Britain.

The timing of Rishi Sunak’s appointment is also fortuitous for King Charles.

In what seems the blink of an eye after the meticulously choreographed funeral of Queen Elizabeth, watched by millions around the globe, the Union Jack is once again being taken out of wraps, and Horse Guards Parade echoes to the tramp of drilling red coats, as the full panoply of pomp and circumstance is prepared for a visiting dignitary.

President Ramaphosa is coming to town.

The international language of diplomacy has evolved over many centuries into specific tropes, designed to lubricate channels of communication between countries with diverging interests, who might even be at war with one another. No matter how much you may detest or love the target of your correspondence, the ambassador to a country will always begin his letter with the neutral injunction that the "government of the Republic of X presents compliments and has the honour, etc, etc", perhaps before complaining about some unfairly imprisoned subject or a border dispute.

In this spirit, the announcement of Cyril’s visit adhered to established deadpan protocol, viz:

The President of the Republic of South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa, accompanied by Dr Tshepo Motsepe, has accepted an invitation from His Majesty The King to pay a State Visit to the United Kingdom from Tuesday 22nd November to Thursday 24th November 2022. The King and The Queen Consort will host the State Visit at Buckingham Palace.

Neutral the language may be, but this invite by King Charles is massive for Pretoria, an enormous honour, on the face of it, for President Ramaphosa – the first state visit hosted by the new King Charles, following the death of Queen Elizabeth. King Charles could have selected other more important countries to play host to – Washington, perhaps, or Paris. But, no, Pretoria it is.

Obviously the mandarins in Whitehall have not simply plucked just any country out of the hat. Such high-level diplomacy as a state visit comes with loads of baggage and concealed intentions. Is it designed to boost Ramaphosa’s re-election prospects at the ANC’s December indaba? Perhaps to win him over to the side of the West in Ukraine’s fight for freedom and democracy in the face of the dictatorial threat from Russia? Or reinforce British military support for the South African Army protecting crucial Western gas interests in northern Mozambique? Or show that King Charles wants to conciliate with the developing world? To make it up with Britain’s former colonies?

It is probably all of these things, although the official line gives little away and merely notes that the state visit follows visits at this level by Presidents Mbeki and Zuma, and follows previous visits by King Charles and the Queen Consort to South Africa on two occasions since the advent of democracy in 1994.

South Africa and the UK, the official statements say, “are strategic partners with a broad and vibrant relationship, led by a commitment to liberal values, democracy and the rule of law. The two countries share a wide array of mutual interests and continue to deepen collaboration to resolve global challenges”.

So far, so bland, but there is little doubt that great events are at stake in this meeting of heads of state.

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South Africa and the UK, the official statements say, “are strategic partners with a broad and vibrant relationship, led by a commitment to liberal values, democracy and the rule of law. The two countries share a wide array of mutual interests and continue to deepen collaboration to resolve global challenges”.

So far, so bland, but there is little doubt that great events are at stake in this meeting of heads of state.

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As he sizes up President Ramaphosa, King Charles, head of the first country in the world to abolish slavery formally (in 1807 – the USA, by comparison, did so only in 1865) as well as the first country to legally codify a formal amnesty process after the civil war of 1660 (the UK’s "Act of Oblivion"), will be doing so through the lens of history. He will be wanting to build on the olive branch which he has been extending to former British colonies, and the Commonwealth generally, in the past few years, and overcome the bad press the former British Empire still inspires in much of the developing world. 

In front of him, he will see a man bearing the scars of many a political ordeal. There are several standout moments in Ramaphosa’s career. His early life as an ANC activist and trade union organiser on the mines, his switch to becoming a shareholder and director with some of those very mines, his effective participation in the Kempton Park constitutional talks, his tenure as secretary general of the ANC, his support for the Mandela TRC amnesty process, his still unclear role in the Marikana mine massacre, his election as president of South Africa, and finally his implication in millions of undeclared dollars discovered stuffed into sofa cushions on his farm – his weaknesses, perhaps outweighing his achievements, making him vulnerable.

But King Charles will also see a big, confident man with a reputation for great charm – although, a man who also hails from a minority tribe in the dominant world of Zulus and Xhosas, which has made it difficult for him to resolve the enormous tensions surrounding the former Zulu president, Jacob Zuma, charged and sentenced for various misdemeanours, which triggered riots and mayhem a year ago.

How to prop up such a leader is the question? Ramaphosa will need to return home from his Royal encounter with something to show for it, and so reinforce his position in the upcoming ANC re-election campaign in December, where his assured continuation in office is by no means certain. 

The unwelcome choice he faces was recently outlined by Professor Saths Cooper, a much respected veteran struggle stalwart and president of the Pan-African psychology movement:

What would our president say to Charles III, who is heir to the most rapacious, self-aggrandising system of colonialism, slavery, exploitation and decapitation of numerous parts of the world? Would he succumb to the imperial panoply of well-honed subjugation and awe, or would he, in his own way, seek a stop to the Anglo-American wealth extraction machinery entrenched in our land, and seek just compensation and the return of all our stolen artefacts and heritage? (1)

Cooper pulls no punches. Ramaphosa must follow the example of the Caribbean and other colonially impacted nations and seek redress and reparations from King Charles for what is an ongoing crime against humanity. No ifs or buts.

If he doesn’t do this, then adds Cooper:

Ramaphosa will go down in history as having lost this singular glorious opportunity to right one of the all-pervasive and manifest injustices in our fractured and deeply cleaved world, and help restore the moral ethic on which our democracy was forged and in which the then-ANC Secretary-General Ramaphosa bruited the quest for justice, dignity and restoration of our common humanity.

Strong words, and one can see the way this plays out. If Ramaphosa fails to obtain something along these lines from King Charles, perhaps even an apology of sorts for the injustices of the colonial era, then those candidates challenging him for the presidency this coming December could always argue that Ramaphosa has failed to follow the injunction of former ANC president Oliver Tambo to be "revolutionary in every aspect", and that he slavishly bent the knee to his British hosts.

For his part, King Charles knows Britain’s entire imperial saga is still unfinished business in the Commonwealth. It haunts writers and film-makers to this day. TV dramas like The jewel in the crown attracted audiences of millions. There have been books by the score. Jan Morris’s trilogy on the British Empire was a fabulously popular introduction, conjuring up the British Empire as a "vast, ramshackle thing of infinite nuance and many self-delusions, feeling itself ... to be unassailable". (2)

The king also knows that the empire was responsible for the "white plague" (3) of 20 million British people who followed the trail of the empire and settled abroad in the countries of people who didn’t necessarily want them. Since the 1950s, a process of "reverse colonisation" has taken place, with some one million indigenous people of the former colonies seeking to migrate to Britain. That they have not been made welcome, with strict controls limiting numbers accepted, is today’s running sore – not only in Britain, but in the rest of Europe as well. Italy, France, Spain – they all have problems with migrants. Empire has strictly been a one-way street as far as Europe is concerned.

A measure of the ongoing legacy of the British Empire can still be detected in bitter press coverage after the queen’s death in countries around Africa, including South Africa. It makes for sobering reading and shows what a steep hill King Charles has to climb if he wants to turn this story around, notwithstanding his mother’s obvious affinity with the Commonwealth. On the other hand, the king now has Rishi Sunak as a demonstration of Britain’s racial tolerance, and this could establish a new tone in the debate.

But there is no doubting that hard feelings lie just under the surface of countries that were once colonies. In South Africa, the response of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) was unequivocal. "We do not mourn the death of Elizabeth, because to us her death is a reminder of a very tragic period in this country and Africa’s history," the EFF said in a statement. "Our interaction with Britain has been one of pain, ... death and dispossession, and of the dehumanisation of the African people," it added.

One can safely speculate that EFF leader Julius Malema will be watching any suspicion of a toenadering between King Charles and Ramaphosa with hawk eyes.

Africa’s memory of the queen also cannot be separated from that colonial past, Professor Farooq Kperogi at Kennesaw State University told American broadcaster CNN.

"The Queen’s legacy started in colonialism and is still wrapped in it. It used to be said that the sun did not set over the British empire. No amount of compassion or sympathy that her death has generated can wipe that away," he said.

The Commonwealth emerged as colonialism gave way to the independence of the former colonies. The queen single-mindedly worked to keep the body strong, but she wasn’t able to resist the growing demands for accountability for what is still seen today as Britain’s past crimes, such as slavery.

Last year, Barbados removed the queen as its head of state, 55 years after independence, and when Prince William visited Jamaica in March this year, he was confronted with demands for reparations and a formal apology for the Royal family’s links to slavery.

"During her 70 years on the throne, your grandmother has done nothing to redress and atone for the suffering of our ancestors that took place during her reign and/or during the entire period of British trafficking of Africans, enslavement, indentureship and colonization," according to members of a protest group, addressing Prince William directly and reported by CNN.

Poor Prince William. Suffices not that Britain abolished slavery more than two centuries ago. Cuts no ice. King Charles would recognise Rudyard Kipling’s doleful message in “Recessional”, written on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee in 1897, as relevant to this day.

Far-called our navies melt away;

On Dune and headland sinks the fire;

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,

Lest we forget – lest we forget!

Of course, here and there, Britain has apologised for various specific colonial misdeeds in the past – for example, not all that long ago in Kenya, where veterans of the Mau Mau were compensated to the tune of some nine million pounds for bad treatment they claimed they’d been subjected to in British camps. But a blanket apology as such for colonialism and slavery is not easy to find.

However, King Charles, when he was still Prince Charles, did at least share his "sorrow" for the suffering caused by slavery – but stopped short of an apology for his family’s historical involvement. The senior royal told Commonwealth leaders (4) that the potential of the family of the nations for good could not be realised until "we all acknowledge the wrongs which have shaped our past".

So, instead of the apologies and reparations that Cooper and the EFF want, what one will probably see, instead, is Ramaphosa and the UK recommitting to a model of “fruitful collaboration” between Britain and African countries, which these days means British foreign aid in the billions. In London, organisations like the Business Council for Africa have well-attended meetings, and there is never any reference – none that I have seen, in any event – to Britain’s imperial past, either negative or positive.

And if Ramaphosa were to ask for some sort of reparations and an apology for the colonial misdeeds of the past, he would run the risk that King Charles may push back, in the light of Britain’s obvious road to becoming a true non-racial society, including financial largesse to former colonial countries in general.

The formal events with King Charles, accompanied by side discussions with senior officials, including PM Rishi Sunak, can be expected to focus on practical events on the ground. Ramaphosa and perhaps even King Charles and the new prime minister will be attending COP 27 in Egypt just before the London state visit. On the table is the trailed offer of some eight billion dollars to wean South Africa from her coal-fired energy system and onto something less damaging to the environment. The offer is conditional on the South African government presenting a detailed plan on how the money will actually be spent, and it would be a feather in Ramaphosa’s cap if he could meet this condition before the COP 27 gathering.

No doubt there will also be a discussion about the extent of British military support for the South African Defence Force, to complement the United States’ offer to Pretoria this week of a dozen C-130 Hercules transport planes to help carry SADF soldiers to northern Mozambique. Will we see British army boots on the ground in South Africa in a training capacity soon? These are the questions being asked.

Then there is the additional problem of Pretoria’s “neutrality” in the Russia-Ukraine saga. Will Ramaphosa permit South African ports to be used as havens for Russian superyachts? This would be a clear breach of the sanctions imposed on Moscow by the West. Both London and Washington are denying that they are putting pressure on Pretoria to come off the fence, but it would be naive to think Ramaphosa doesn’t know the score.

The UK and the United States are also in lockstep when it comes to providing targeted foreign aid to Africa to counter Chinese chequebook influence. The US International Development Finance Corporation, relaunched two years ago, is increasing its activity in Africa, alongside the new streamlined UK Dfid aid agency. Other European aid agencies have also beefed up their presence in Africa, and Ramaphosa will want to plug into all this without being distracted by the confusing static of apologies and the like being demanded by his opponents.

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The bottom line of Ramaphosa’s state visit to King Charles and new prime minister Rishi Sunak is that adroit footwork is now required by all parties to mitigate the effects of the global polycrisis, defined by historian Adam Tooze as a situation consisting of multiple crises, the whole being more dangerous than the sum of the parts. The danger is the deep global recession now taking shape, and it’s all hands to the pump time. The odds are, therefore, that Ramaphosa will return to South Africa with lots of goodies in his party bag – probably enough to enable him to ride out the re-election storm. He has reason to be cautiously optimistic.

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The bottom line of Ramaphosa’s state visit to King Charles and new prime minister Rishi Sunak is that adroit footwork is now required by all parties to mitigate the effects of the global polycrisis, defined by historian Adam Tooze as a situation consisting of multiple crises, the whole being more dangerous than the sum of the parts. The danger is the deep global recession now taking shape, and it’s all hands to the pump time. The odds are, therefore, that Ramaphosa will return to South Africa with lots of goodies in his party bag – probably enough to enable him to ride out the re-election storm. He has reason to be cautiously optimistic.

1) Professor Saths Cooper, president of the Pan-African psychology movement, 9 October 2022, IOL.

2) Jan Morris, Fisher’s face, Faber, page 4, while Empire: How Britain made the modern world by Niall Ferguson (Penguin) also set a very high bar indeed for historians.

3) Fergusson, ibid, page 54.

4) Independent, 20 June 2022.