This week, I will have to be very careful not to turn my weekly writing into colonial political commentary. You see, last week one of those big world events happened. Whether it affects you personally or not, we all felt the ripple effects of when Queen Elizabeth II died. A big tree fell in the forest.

As a person who dedicated her life to the service of her country, one could only admire her. Some commentator last night said that in her lifetime, she never created personal scandal. She was just an ordinary looking person with no great beauty, yet she is remembered for being such an ordinarily beautiful person. Always her smile is mentioned. What a different take on our current world of photoshopped perfection. However, in this case, with her being such a high-profile world figure, one cannot always separate the person from the history created in or before their lifetime. Specially so, when the history of the establishment this grand lady represented, interlinks so closely to the history of the country I live in.

The very next morning, I found this bit of poem. It was written by a chap called Busani Ngcaweni. It is titled “(Step)children of the empire, this grief is not yours.” I found it so profound. Admittedly, Mr Ngcaweni would have a different view to mine. His experience of being black in a country that was once a British colony, would be so different to mine, yet in a convivial moment, I am sure that we would conclude that our sentiments share common ground. I did not grow up in the “native” system. But I did grow up knowing about the Boer Wars against the English (our school system and anecdotes from our grandparents made sure of that,) and still, I cannot mention the topic without some emotion stirring. My granny was born in a Concentration Camp. Yup. The Empire had concentration camps long before their cousins in Lederhosen. This brought on the long reaching effect of Afrikaner Nationalism. Hell, yes. It gave us that dinosaurian old system that is better left forgotten. Yet, I am a product of that system that shaped my young attitudes long before I had time to explore them for myself.

I then listened to a talk done by Jordan Peterson. Now this is quite a controversial figure himself. Take from him what works for you and leave the rest behind. He spoke around the Commonwealth, and how the Queen’s death would impact English communities around the world. In conclusion he said: “We stumbled plenty, but we still walked up hill. All eternities have their fair share of atrocities of history”. He was referring to British Imperial history, and how they journeyed from helping to create to abolishing the system of slavery.

And as always, when an event happens that touches all of us – even when this grief is not ours, we all become instantly knowledgeable dupes. A bit like back in 1985 when Kevin Curren played in the Wimbledon final. Even I took up tennis – even if it was for just one afternoon. But, in that afternoon, I played in an imaginary Grand Slam tournament. Of course, Kevin Curren was so impressed with my tennis skills that he fell in love with me…and… I do regret that one afternoon, especially since I have a tennis elbow now in my later life, and since I only tried tennis once, it must be an injury from that afternoon.

It has been quite an amusing week, watching the most unlikely people glued to their TVs, scared to miss an unceremoniously erroneous step by a Yeoman Warder of Her Majesty’s Royal Palace. I can just imagine how many copies of the “You” or “Hello” magazine will sell next week when they feature the funeral. And since we have all watched The Crown on Netflix, we are all experts now of the dear woman’s very public life, and we all have an anecdote to share, like we were there…which of course we were, because we watched The Crown…and we had Lady Di scrap books…and because William is so handsome and any parent can identify with having a Harry,  and just the mention of Camilla, and you are doomed to another hour of our learned friends sharing their opinions. Poor Camilla. She did kiss the wrong frog.

I want to return to Jordan Peterson. In the same interview he also referred to what characterizes a fair bit of self-image and shame – every country has things to be ashamed of, also things to be proud of, and there will always be unwarranted accusations of guilt and those that benefit from it all. This brings me to our current situation in our beautiful South Africa. Our new, young democracy is unfortunately crippled by corruption. The man with the most difficult job in South Africa, that of keeping the lights on, recently said that corruption in Eskom is so deep that it has become “normalised”, and that corruption is still very much part of Eskom. I do snigger when I read about a politician saying that the “full might of the law will be applied.” Yeah, right. This has become a country where the law is as mighty as a jelly fish washed out on a beach in pieces, and there is just no respect for a person in uniform. We all know that it is not restricted to Eskom only. Our young democracy and its dubious leadership will have so much to be ashamed of when history tells their story.

By now, you all know about our curve-balls and obstacles to making our development happen in Betty’s Bay. I mentioned to a friend this week, that we (Colin and I) find it very difficult to be ordinary people in having to deal with such a corrupt system. You never seem to stop paying one registration fee after the other. (I could also use the drivers’ license card system here as a well exploited source of government income.) The latest fee we had to pay was to register the building project with yet another controlling body. We had some uncertainty as to whether to register as a residential house, or as a guest house. In the meantime, we were sent the value of the fee we had to pay. Emails asking for clarity on what to register (residential home or guest house) has gone completely unanswered, but emails to the same person asking on how to go about paying gets replied to same day. Sometimes it is easier to just pay, so that you can move on. We are at a stage where we ask ourselves: If we do not pay this yet another fee, how much will we lose in the time it takes to query the purpose of the payment. There are dark days when I believe that corruption has so become part of our fibre, that we have forgotten just how wrong it is. A bit like that old regime I referred to earlier. Or body odour. One gets so used to it that you notice nothing wrong with it. The same can be said about slavery, stripping colonies of their resource or venerating a person purely because they have had the good fortune of being able to trace their family tree back a few centuries. It becomes the norm, and we accept it.

Future generations will learn in history books about Queen Elizabeth II. Not about the person she was, but about the system she represented. I hope that when that time comes, I will be alive, to tell my own anecdotes, of how such an ordinary looking person was able to have such a great presence. The grief is not mine to feel as a (step)child of the empire, but even the forest notices when a big tree falls.