Queen Elizabeth II: The OG decoloniser, before decolonising was even a thing

What do the following countries have in common?

Sudan, Ghana, Malaysia, Cyprus, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Kuwait, Jamaica, Uganda, Kenya, Malta, Malawi, Gambia, the Maldives, Botswana, Lesotho, Mauritius, Tonga, Fiji, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Seychelles, Grenada, Zimbabwe, Brunei, and a bunch of others.

Yup! They all gained independence from the Crown under Queen Elizabeth ll. That’s before we consider the likes of de facto political independence of former dominions like Australia, New Zealand, Canada and even South Africa.

That’s a track record our most staunch decolonising campaigners would be envious of.

Sure, there’s more to decolonisation than political independence.

Truth be told, political independence is merely the start, and then it’s up to those jettisoned colonies and as time goes on, their track record speaks more towards their desires to let go than that of the Crown.

From a familial perspective, some of those countries fell under the Crown in the reign of her grandfather, King George V. You know how awkward Sunday lunches can already be, but imagine the awkwardness of being a little girl, listening to your grandfather’s conquering ways, only to undo it all later in life.

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Of course, undoing all the influence of colonialism is an order too tall to consider. I understand speaking English isn’t everybody’s cup of tea and to those that it is, they may tend to prefer Rooibos over Earl Grey.

No problem.

The point is that if you’re looking for a legacy that got the decolonisation programme off the ground, Queen Elizabeth shines among the brightest. Beyond that, her manner of reforming within Britain was also exceptional and against her immediate interests, such as paying tax and restraining her powers.

This Queen knew what needed to be done to make improvements both locally and globally.

And, sure, there are those among our fold who will be pining over the Cullinan Diamond and believe that that is cause enough to shun the late monarch. Maybe that’s a dispute for another day.

It certainly would not have been anything of the sort had the Queen insisted that South Africa must remain British and sent the troops in, Falklands Style.

That’s the reality many aren’t willing to grapple with. Here’s a lady who inherited a system we might not like.

Included in her swag bag were a bunch of countries. We may not like the system, what it created, and the results of it, but what cannot be disputed is that Queen Elizabeth II did many a thing to undo the things we might not have liked.

If it’s not enough, answer this: what more would you have liked her to do and how much of what she accomplished could she still have accomplished going with your plan?

The first lesson of being an effective monarch is maintaining the buy-in of your subjects by using your hard and, more often than not, soft powers to lead to evident progress.

If you have no value, you can’t exactly do much. Playing that game for some 70 years is surely exhausting and I’m willing to wager that many defectors would hardly survive a day of playing chess.

Exhausting as it may be, the legacy will never be truly known, as we’ve gotten used to the independence, she had a role in playing.

What we’ve done with that independence and how we’ve gotten on relative to other countries is a matter for us to reflect on, and perhaps you can blame her ancestors for causing a mess but you’ll find it difficult to blame her.

If there’s a single lesson I’d like to take from Queen Elizabeth II, it’s probably that you can do what is deemed to be right even when it goes against the expectations of those who built your world around you.

You just cannot complain and you cannot explain.

Rock on Liz! Thanks for the lessons in wielding power with restraint.

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