British monarchy has blinded many to brutality of the empire

The newly married Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, leaving Windsor Castle after their wedding to attend an evening reception at Frogmore House, hosted by the Prince of Wales Windsor, Britain, May 19, 2018. [REUTERS]

I didn’t want to waste any ink on the royal wedding between Harry and Meghan (their first names suffice given the miles of print devoted to them) but I need to speak up. I am not a monarchist, or an Anglophile.

I write not to drool over the wedding, or comment on Meghan’s dress, or even the pageantry. No – I write to critique and dissent. Let’s be clear – the couple is entitled to marry like everyone else.

What I found odious was the fawning – and wall to wall coverage – of not only the nuptials but of the couple in the months leading to the main event. It was not – pun intended – climactic for many in the Commonwealth.

Let me unburden myself. I am still trying to come to terms with the sappy ceremony that millions watched endlessly around the globe. What’s this fascination with the British monarchy?

I couldn’t get over that one. By definition, a monarchy is an anti-democratic institution. The royalty is the anti-thesis of meritocracy.

Royals – and the British ones are no exception – don’t put in an honest day’s work. They live off the sweat of others. No one elects them.

All it suffices to be a royal is for one to be born – or marry into – the House of Windsor. Imagine that – I could be a couch potato, as many of them are, and be a royal. How can that ever be right?

Secondly, in a democratic society, which Britain is, why is a monarchy necessary?

Aren’t the executive led by the prime minister, the legislature, and the judiciary sufficient to safeguard the interests of Britain and Britons?

Why retain this archaic, feudal, and anachronistic institution which is parasitic to the core? Anti-monarchists and democrats make this point.

That the British royalty adds nothing, except being a drain on taxpayers, to the British. They want it abolished pronto.

I agree. But monarchists argue – disingenuously – that the monarchy is essential to the core character and identity of Britain.

They say it’s a constitutional and ceremonial monarchy unlike, say, Saudi Arabia’s which is despotic. But that’s not exactly the whole bloody story.

The monarchy is the symbol of the supposed superiority of the British over the rest of the globe. It was at the heart of the British Empire – when the monarchy was executive – on which the sun never set. So vast was the empire that America was part of it.

Not to mention that most of the so-called Third World lay under the boot of the Empire. That’s why English is spoken in more countries than any other language. It’s virtually the lingua franca of the world. Imagine if Kikamba, Kikuyu, or Dholuo were the lingua franca of the world. That would give us bragging rights. A language is imperial because it makes you think in its native culture.

While language dominance by itself is problematic, the colonial project is the core of my beef with the British.

The cruelties and barbarities visited on peoples of all races in the name of Empire can never be forgotten or forgiven. Colonialism itself was a crime against humanity.

The gross abuses that were part of the colonial project are chilling.

In Kenya, we know what they did to us, including the atrocities they committed against the Mau Mau and other freedom fighters.

You will recall that in 2015, the British “expressed regret” for those atrocities and offered compensation after a suit brought by the Kenya Human Rights Commission and the Mau Mau Veterans Association under the leadership Mzee Gitu Kahengeri.

Institutions that represent and celebrate the legacy of such a barbaric state shouldn’t be valorised.

This includes the Commonwealth which sanctifies the legacy of British colonialism. I always wonder why the victims of colonialism – the member states of the Commonwealth – willingly submit themselves to that imperial relic.

Imagine African-Africans being part of an institution created to celebrate and continue the legacy of Confederacy or the Confederate States of America whose core identity and demand was the preservation of the enslavement of black people.

That’s akin to the intellectual submission – and acceptance – by blacks of the morality of slavery and the superiority of whites over blacks. Make no mistake – the Commonwealth isn’t any different. It ratifies the colonial project.

I end where I started. Let Meghan and Harry marry and have a blissful life thereafter.

But it was an abomination to see teary-eyed blacks – either direct or indirect victims of the British imperial project – getting all choked up. The British monarchy is the biggest propaganda hoax ever invented.

It has created amnesia in most of its victims. It has blinded many to the legacy of the brutality of the Empire. The British monarchy is Kool-Aid on steroids. People like me shouldn’t celebrate it.

- The writer is SUNY Distinguished Professor at SUNY Buffalo Law School and Chair of KHRC.  @makaumutua