Caption: Young and barefoot boy declines to give the Queen flowers at Pumwani during a visit to Kenya
“In Kenya, Britain built concentration camps and suppressed with such inhumane brutality the Mau Mau rebellion, killing Dedan Kimathi on the 18th of February 1957, while Elizabeth was already Queen,” EFT statement reads in part.
Freedom fighters across the African continent who bore the brutality of the British colonisers have said they cannot mourn Queen Elizabeth II who died aged 96 on Thursday saying to them she remained a tragic symbol of the atrocities committed in her name.
From South Africa to Kenya surviving freedom fighters, their successors and human rights activists used the occasion of her death to remember the horrors they underwent as they fought for freedom from the brutal colonisers.
They said United Kingdom was built using stollen riches obtained using forced ‘slave’ labour and that the African continent continues to suffer the tragic consequences of wanton exploitation to date.
Many of these freedom fighters took to the social media where they expressed anger and deep-seated resentment of the “Crown” as the Queen was described then blaming her for all the evils committed during colonialism and the struggle for freedom.
A statement from the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFT) from South Africa and signed by their spokesperson Sinawo Thambo said during her 70-year-old reign Queen Elizabeth never acknowledged the atrocities that her family inflicted on the native people that Britain invaded across the world.
The EFT summed up the feelings of many freedom fighters when they said that Queen Elizabeth was the head of an institution built up, sustained, and living off a brutal legacy of dehumanization of millions of people across the world.
They said they cannot mourn Queen Elizabeth because her death is a reminder of a very tragic period in their country and Africa’s history.
“She willingly benefitted from the wealth that was attained from exploitation and murder of millions of people 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 accumulation,” says the statement.
In Kenya, her death reminded freedom fighters of the torture and murders of thousands of freedom fighter fighting under the Mau Mau uprising including Operation Anvil in 1954 where all Gikuyu, Embu and Meru males aged above 16 years were rounded up and put into detention where they were tortured and used for forced labour. Many died in the concentration camps and detention and their bodies buried secretly never to be seen.
The family of the famous freedom fighter Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi who were hanged and his body buried in a secret grave said they still desire to know where the freedom hero was buried so that they can exhume the remains and bury him again as the hero and liberator that he was.
Many younger Kenyans also remembered how their grandparents met cruel deaths as they fought the British invaders under the Mau Mau uprising saying they cannot mourn the woman under whose name the crimes against humanity were committed.
However, there were some Kenyans who mourned her death, especially those who have benefitted from one thing or the other from the British government mainly education scholarships.
