Queen’s death prompts renewed African calls for apologies

At a community radio station in Johannesburg’s bustling Hillbrow neighbourhood, MJ Mojalefa is hosting a phone-in following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

The 22-year-old DJ wants his large youth audience to share their thoughts on the legacy of the British empire, which once included South Africa.

“We were colonised by the British and [the Queen] never changed the nature of that relationship,” one caller says. “People have moved on, and the past is in the past,” says another.

As for MJ Mojafela, he wants an apology from the new King Charles III: “Most people are saying the Queen didn’t apologise – and that is what they wanted from her.”

South Africa became a republic in 1961. By then the enforced racial segregation of apartheid had been law for 13 years, nine of them with Queen Elizabeth II as monarch.