Fight for FREEDOM
How EMELI SANDÉ’S grandfathers saw action in the last days of the British Empire
My Grandparents’ War: Emeli Sandé
Thursday, 8pm, C4
SINGER-SONGWRITER EMELI SANDÉ
learns some shocking truths about both her grandfathers when she retraces their footsteps in the third episode of C4’s history series My Grandparents’ War.
During World War Two, her maternal grandfather, Bob, fought in Egypt. After victory was declared, he signed up for 12 more years of Army service.
In 1953, he was posted to Kenya with his family, tasked with quashing the Mau Mau uprising, an attempt by Kenyan freedom fighters to win back land seized by British settlers.
As they sought to crush the rebellion, the British Army’s response was violent and extreme, and included the use of torture. An estimated 80,000 Kenyan men, women and children were forced into detention camps, while over 11,000 Mau Mau were killed before the conflict ended in 1960.
‘Bob and his family were living on a base in Mau Mau territory. He was instructed to shoot his own wife and children if the Mau Mau got into the compound and was told it was far better than being captured. It must have been terrifying,’ says Sandé, 35.
SELF-RULE
Meanwhile, the musician also retraces her paternal grandfather’s story to the British colony of Northern Rhodesia.
She discovers that Saka Sandé worked in copper mines but later became part of the colony’s fight against British rule, with the country finally declaring independence and renaming itself Zambia in 1964.
‘Both my grandfathers were involved in violent struggles in Africa – one tasked with upholding the British Empire, the other overthrowing it,’ says Sandé. ‘I now understand how colonialism divided us, and the racism it generated still exists. But as my family has shown, there’s a way to move forward together.’