Over the years and much to the disgust of many of my fellow Jamaicans, I have never hidden my distaste for my country holding on to a member of the British monarchy as our head of state, despite our decades of so-called independence.
Many of my listeners and readers would take umbrage, asking stupidly; “So what she do yu soh” or “How it a go mek di price a bread go dung if wi get rid har?”
I have never had a personal problem with The Queen herself, as she was simply doing very well, the job she was trained to do. My repugnance has always been with the institution which she unapologetically represented for over 70 years.
For it is that institution which cruelly murdered, tortured and exploited our ancestors for centuries, thus becoming an extremely wealthy nation on the backs of black people.
How many times have you seen The Queen being featured in Forbes magazine as among the wealthiest women in the world? Where did her wealth come from? A statement from the Economic Freedom Fighters of South Africa, partially reminds us. “… we do not mourn the death of the Queen, because her death is a reminder of a very tragic period in South Africa and Africa’s history.”
Neither is it only Africa that suffered greatly at the hands of the British monarchy but basically most of the black world.
Also, I used to often wonder aloud if those Jamaicans who support the continuation of the British monarchy assumed that the “nice lady” would live forever? Have they really been looking forward to Charles being their head of state? That man who took an innocent young lady into the terrible institution that the British monarchy is, an institution in which the treatment to which she was subjected played a role in her untimely death?
In my book, the very thought of Charles being our head of state along with Camellia has always made me cringe.
Well, here it is now.
In reality, heads of state ought to be, at the very least, role models. For successive Jamaican governments to have twiddled their thumbs and caused that lot to become our reality, is totally unforgivable. Not to mention the millions of dollars we, a struggling nation, now have to find to finance the changes, especially in the court system and Parliament, to accommodate the new king. And if Marlene Malahoo-Forte, the minister of constitutional affairs, is to be believed, we will become a republic before the next election, so that means we will soon have to waste more money all over again, to accommodate that transition. Such unnecessary nonsense caused by this inexplicable love of our oppressors. The Stockholm syndrome, no less, I guess.
While it is really none of my business, the last British prime minister to have been sworn in by The Queen, Liz Truss, did in 1994 call for the abolition of the monarchy! Maybe having someone like Charles as her king and Camellia as their queen, will speed up that process.
Only time will tell what Charles III’s fate will be, but in the meantime, we in Jamaica certainly do not need such people as our heads of state and assumed role model
- Joan Williams, is a retired talk show host. She can be contacted at; [email protected] or followed at; Joan my-views.blogspot.com
