Column: Bushara On The King’s Visit
[Column written by Yusef Bushara]
On October 10, 1970, Prince Charles, on his mother’s behalf, handed over the Instruments of Independence to Fiji’s first Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara. A mere ten days later, the 22-year-old found himself stepping afoot to a different [sub]-tropical destination for a Royal visit, without notions of independence.
A communal suspension of disbelief: that in a world freshly swept up by liberation across the British Empire, there we existed as this fantastical and contented colony – a seeming reality that would soon reach its logical conclusion. The coming decade would be one of tremulous change – of desegregation and landmark political appointment. It would be a decade of resultantly tremendous scholarship, but also one of deep and lingering strife: civilian executions, political assassinations, and calamitous riots that would come to define some of our radical, most recent days.
It is natural, if not expected, to welcome a guest and to make small any impulse of inconvenience. That is our way, to be supremely hospitable, an instinct I hope we don’t betray during King Charles’ stay. But I equally urge us to interrogate our relationship with the kind of old-world power the Crown represents.
We must remember, too, that it is our benevolence that gives the Crown continuity and assent. We renew the lease, set the rent, and ultimately reserve the right to evict. This is true of ourselves and the other thirteen remaining British colonies.
In the Throne Speech made on the occasion of his first visit, the Prince was “concerned about the need to reserve housing, land, and job opportunities for future generations of Bermudians.” We have no reason but to assume that we are living in the future of the Prince’s imagination from all that time ago. That his words demonstrate a strange prescience and timeliness today begs many questions, chief of which return to the notion of power, our steadfast fidelity to it, and the efficacy of a parliamentary democracy empowered and inhibited by the rhetoric of a monarchy.
Ultimately, I encourage all of us to be lucid about the breadth of our history and bold about our future, for that’s how we engender the Bermuda that the King will glimpse in these coming days, the same one that resides in our collective imagination. I take time to write these thoughts not as any kind of forceful indictment, but to play my part in the magnitude of this occasion, and to fend off the tropes that have beguiled the Crown for more than 400 years. It isn’t every day that a King pops by to say hello.
- Yusef Bushara
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