Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week, I spoke to Natricia Duncan, our Caribbean correspondent, on the latest moves on behalf of Commonwealth countries to decolonise their national identity. But first, the weekly roundup.
Weekly roundup
Nigerian museum’s preservation hopes | The Nanna Living History Museum in Koko, Niger delta, commemorates the exiled merchant prince Nanna Olomu, who escaped Nigeria when the British launched a punitive expedition in Ebrohimi in 1894. However, it is struggling with a termite infestation and poor electricity, and staff are hoping for federal government assistance.
Goma suffers after M23 takeover | People living in Goma, on the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s eastern border with Rwanda, have described their hunger and anxiety after M23’s insurgency last week. The takeover by the rebel group has severed trade and agricultural supply routes, restricting access to food.
Windrush scandal deepens | A man who has been living in the UK for almost 50 years has shared his fears of deportation and homelessness. Samuel Jarrett-Coker, 61, says the Home Office did not respond to requests dating to the 1980s to resolve his immigration status.
Sustainable style shines in Kenya | Discarded textile waste continues to create problematic landfills in African countries. But eco-conscious fashion labels have been sourcing such materials to create bold, sustainable designs, many of which took centre stage at Nairobi fashion week this month.
Afro-Brazilians look to west Africa | Benin is offering citizenship to descendants of enslaved people snatched from the continent, sparking interest from Black Brazilians who feel a strong connection between the two countries. “More than 1 million Beninese came to Bahia in north-eastern Brazil during the days of slavery,” says Marcelo Sacramento, Benin’s honorary consul in Salvador.
In depth: The push for colonial freedom
In December, Jamaica tabled a bill to become a republic and oust King Charles III as head of state. Weeks later, Belize removed Queen Elizabeth II’s images from banknotes. These moves are only the latest in a growing trend: Barbados became a republic in 2022, and several other countries are signalling their intentions to follow suit. As Natricia says, these countries are seeking to “shrug off the vestiges of colonialism and establish their own identity as a nation – in terms of culture and history, while addressing the colonial overlays that remain in society”. The footprint of colonialism is evident in the region – including in “our money, the names of roads and some of the laws incorporated from the British legal system at the time”.
Belize not only removed images of the late monarch from its paper currency but it replaced them with pictures of national icons, specifically those who played a role in decolonisation. “Belizeans thought it was important in celebrating their history,” Natricia says. “The heroes they chose led independence from British rule.” There are broader cultural and linguistic shifts, too. Trinidad and Tobago announced a plan to remove a depiction of three ships used by Christopher Columbus from its coat of arms. And there is a push in Jamaica to make patois its official language instead of English, while St Lucia and Dominica have started to integrate Indigenous languages by adding them to the school curriculum.
‘We want to be seen as equals, not ex-colonies’
Fourteen Commonwealth countries, eight of them members of the Caribbean Community (Caricom), still have the British monarch as the ceremonial head of state. The removal of the British sovereign in that role is the most symbolic act of independence. For some countries, having their own head of state says something about who they are and their autonomy, Natricia says. “But I don’t think they want to sever ties with the UK. They still very much value those political and economic ties but they want to be seen as equals, not ex-colonies.”
I wondered if the diminished diplomatic role and death of Queen Elizabeth, a grand and unifying figure, had played a part in accelerating republicanism. King Charles is less popular than his mother at home and abroad, and the new generation of royals who began taking on duties from the queen in her advanced years was not fully embraced. A tour of the Caribbean by the then Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Catherine and William, in 2022 produced some shockingly misjudged optics, and was met with protests and a storm of demands for apologies and reparations for Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade. At last year’s biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, a debate loomed over a fractious summit about whether it was time, with the passing of the crown to Charles, to remove the British monarch as head of state.
The decolonisation drive predates the death of the queen, Natricia says. The first wave of independence in the region dates as far back as the 1960s, with the first successful overthrow of colonial rule 150 years earlier via the Haitian revolution against French colonial rule. “I think about my country, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and the feeling is that the British did not leave much behind when SVG became fully independent in 1979. The education and health systems, the infrastructure and institutions required to build a strong economy and ensure a fledgling democracy could get on its feet, were not there, and that made it really difficult.”
The continued economic reliance on Britain after independence has been calamitous. For example, Britain agreed a quota of tariff-free bananas to be imported from the country, creating an industry that at one time employed approximately 70% of the country’s workforce and became the pillar of the economy. “When those protected market arrangements for former colonies began to fall through, it was disastrous. Over time, I think a view has developed that tethering ourselves to that identity of being a former colony – alongside the narratives and economic architecture that come with that identity – was doing more bad than good,” Natricia says. Distant royal figures then start to seem like not only an irrelevance but an insulting anachronism.
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Global call for repair and restoration
After the Windrush scandal broke in 2018, in which members of the British-Caribbean Windrush generation were detained, deported and denied their legal rights to citizenship, some Caribbean people concluded that maintaining Commonwealth ties with Britain was no longer worthwhile. “That particular scandal did not help the situation,” Natricia says. “Immigration is always an issue. People feel that if King Charles is our head and we have this connection through the Commonwealth, there should be some sort of free movement. They think: ‘I can’t even get a visa to go there.’ I don’t know to what extent the scandal caused a change in perspective for the average person in the Caribbean. But it did have an impact on public perception.”
And there is, Natricia says, the reparations movement – the global call for repair from former enslaving countries to the descendants of those they victimised. That discourse triggered a realisation among some Caribbean states that “one of the reasons why they are struggling is because of their colonial past, and there should be some redress for that. That opened a conversation about our identity and where we should be today. Reparations are about repair and restoration for the damage that was done during enslavement.” People are becoming aware that some of the inequities and challenges they are experiencing are the result of the fact that they are descended from enslaved people who “lost everything, their homes, their language, their cultural identity”.
Reclaiming cultural identities
It’s hard to gauge how much of a groundswell there is in favour of this reassertion of identity. “At the governmental level, it’s very strong and, in most cases, across parties,” Natricia says. There are Indigenous groups, such as the Garifuna people, and others, such as Rastafarians, who are passionate about the cause. “There are cross-sections of the population, especially those who are marginalised, who really connect with this idea of reclaiming our cultural identity, correcting narratives and falsehoods in our history.”
Otherwise, she says, the picture is mixed. “In the Caribbean, there have been referendums in which people have voted ‘no’ to the question of removing the monarch as head of state. More recently, a poll in Jamaica showed that only 56% of participants were in favour of republicanism. So, I think decolonisation is important but still some way down on the list of priorities for Caribbean populations.” But aspects of decolonisation that have a material impact, such as removing the UK’s privy council as the highest court, “are things people appear to be more passionate about because they have an impact on justice. There is a lot of concern about the fact that we have the Caribbean court of justice, but for a lot of countries, they go to the privy council for the final decision.”
I say to Natricia that what she is describing sounds essentially like the birth of a Caribbean-wide consciousness. “Absolutely. Yes,” she says. The next step, she says, is to raise awareness among populations struggling with the cost of living and other more immediate and tangible concerns.
“What I have observed is that there needs to be a strong and well thought through education programme that tells people about our past. There are moves to do this now by integrating information into the curriculum,” Natricia says. “There is an international debating competition, created by the Centre for Reparation Research, to which schools in the Caribbean and UK have been invited.” With Britain experiencing its own growing pains in coming to terms with its colonial past and role in enslavement, a process the Guardian has initiated regarding its own history, that momentum behind this movement in the Caribbean could spread to its former coloniser. The key lies in helping people to understand their past, Natricia says. “In doing so, people in the UK and the Caribbean can take that journey to understanding why we are where we are.”
