Princess Anne has called for “historical wrongs” to be righted as she unveiled a new memorial honouring previously overlooked black African servicemen who died fighting for Britain.
The Princess Royal spoke at a ceremony in Cape Town commemorating 1,700 South African military labourers who died during the First World War.
Speaking as president of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, she acknowledged these servicemen had gone “unacknowledged for too long”.
The Cape Town memorial is the first in a series planned across Africa, with similar monuments to be erected in Sierra Leone and Kenya later this year.
Princess Anne has called for “historical wrongs” to be righted as she unveiled a new memorial honouring previously overlooked black African servicemen who died fighting for Britain
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The princess said: “This memorial is a reminder of a shared, but sometimes difficult past,” emphasising that through “honesty, openness and working together, we can make a difference.”
Officials estimate that colonial administrators and the then Imperial War Graves Commission failed to properly honour at least 100,000 African and Indian war dead.
Many received no commemoration at all, with bereaved families left without information about their loved ones’ fate.
The new Cape Town Labour Corps Memorial stands in the city’s Company’s Garden, beneath Table Mountain.
Princess Anne arrived in South Africa without her husband, Timothy LaurencePAWooden posts mark the fallen from various units including the Cape Coloured Labour Regiment, Cape Auxiliary Horse Transport, Military Labour Bureau, and Military Labour Corps of South Africa.
Claire Horton, director general of the commission, described it as “a poignant tribute to the predominantly black South Africans who fought in Africa during the First World War and who were not commemorated at the time”.
The commission has worked with local historians to trace living descendants of the commemorated servicemen.
Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis highlighted the significant gap in war records, noting that while memorials for white servicemen are common across South Africa, black servicemen had been overlooked until now.
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Princess Anne arrived in South Africa on TuesdayPAHe said: “These men have no known graves and there is no memorial wall, or monument where you may read their names. Their stories have not been correctly recorded in our history.”
Among those attending the ceremony was Zweletu Hlakula, a bank manager from Port St Johns, whose great-grandfather Job Hlakula died serving with the Labour Corps.
Hlakula said: “We are very proud of him. We even rejoice when we talk about Job, it’s a pride that we’ve got in our name, for him to be remembered, for him to be in the history of our South Africa, that makes us very humble.”
The speech was delivered part of the Princess Royal’s South Africa trip, which she attended alone after her husband suffered a suspected torn ligament, forcing him to pull out of the visit.