Prince Philip was a racist, to ignore this after his death is to distort truth
Many years ago, a criminal was shot and killed in my neighbourhood in Soweto.
Upon hearing the news, I remarked to my grandmother that his death was nothing to mourn since his life had been nothing to celebrate.
My grandmother gave me a stern look and said: “Ha re bue hampe ka bafu” (We do not speak ill of the dead).
I told her then what I have repeated to many people: the dead deserve to be spoken about truthfully.
Those who do not wish to have ill things spoken of them at death must live their lives in accordance with their wishes.
The living should never have to rewrite history, and the stories we tell about the dead must reflect the truth about their lives.
I am raising this in response to the death of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and husband of longest-reigning British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.
Over the past few days there has been an outpouring of grief not just in Britain, but in SA too, with scores of people paying tribute to the man they want to claim was a hero.
I was stunned by just how many articles were published online, including on SA’s largest news website.
The common thread with many was the narrative they tried to paint of Prince Philip as a loyal member of the British royal family and a philanthropist who has given back to the developing world through his involvement in numerous charities.
What few of them spoke about is his legacy of racism and his role in maintaining an imperial institution that has, for centuries, benefited from the oppression of the world’s poor, particularly in Africa and Asia.
Prince Philip had no regard for black people and other people of colour across the world.
In the late 1980s, while visiting China, he made racist remarks about the physical features of Chinese people, the cuisine of Cantonese people and even the geography of Beijing, which he called “ghastly” only because it did not reflect the British colonial architecture he deemed superior and civilised.
More recently, in the early and mid-2000s, he again directed racist comments at indigenous peoples of Australia, who have suffered immeasurable persecution, about how they were uncivilised, asking whether they still lived what he deemed an archaic life.
He has also made remarks about the phenotypic character of black sportswomen, at some point asking a Kenyan athlete whether she was in fact a woman.
Speaking to a Scottish driving instructor, Prince Philip asked how he kept natives off alcohol long enough to pass the test, implying that natives are incorrigible drunkards, a perception that was also held by colonial and apartheid administrations here in SA.
So unfiltered was his racist attitude that not even heads of state were sparred.
The Prince, making a mockery of traditional Nigerian attire, remarked to former Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, that he looked like he was ready for bed — likening the president’s attire to pyjamas.
But it was not only that he was so brazen in his racist sentiments, but it was also that for decades, he stood by the royal family as it contributed to the decimation of its colonies — at all times defending these actions as being in the best interest of the British Empire.
He was part of this diabolical system that continues to this day to be sustained by institutionalised and systematic racism.
The man who died last week was no hero.
He was an incorrigible racist whose death means absolutely nothing to those like me who suffer racism because men like him made it possible.