History will complicate King Charles’s visit to Kenya

The late Queen Elizabeth could count on a warm reception when she visited Africa. Wherever she went, crowds sang and danced. Though the union flag had long since been lowered from official buildings, hordes of cheering children still waved it. Such scenes were replicated across most of the 20 African states she visited in her 70-year reign.But the queen was popular in a way that Britain, as the former colonial power, often was not. The British ruled in the name of the crown yet many Africans did not seem to resent its embodiment. Indeed, she was a valuable British asset in Africa, dazzling some of its most truculent leaders. Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe admired her despite their socialism. “Whatever else is blown into the limbo of history, the personal regard and affection which we have for your majesty will remain unaffected,” Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, told her when she visited his country in 1961.