Rwanda

Zebra57 · 654731. Thu Jan 07, 2010 8:14 pm

QI is the possibility of this former Belgian colony becoming the second country to join the Commonwealth never to have been ruled by Britain.

In case you are wondering the other is Mozambique.

Some may question Cameroon but when the colony of Kamerun was confiscated from Germany following the Treaty of Versailles it was divided between a French and British administration.

thedrew · 654735. Thu Jan 07, 2010 8:42 pm

Would they accept the Queen as head of state?

suze · 654925. Fri Jan 08, 2010 7:37 am

They wouldn't have to.

It's not the case that the Queen is Head of State of every nation within the Commonwealth - India and South Africa are both republics (as indeed is Mozambique), Swaziland and Tonga have their own royals, and so on.

Those nations of which the Queen is indeed Head of State form a subset of the Commonwealth, and are sometimes referred to as the "Commonwealth Realms". They are the United Kingdom, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu.

She is also Queen of Fiji without being Head of State there - Fiji is a republic, but for some ceremonial purposes the Queen outranks President Nailatikau. (And since Fiji is currently suspended from the Commonwealth, one could argue that her titles extend beyond it.)

Rwanda would need to accept the Queen as Head of the Commonwealth, but the Head of the Commonwealth doesn't really do anything.

Nowhere in the rules does it actually say that the Head of Commonwealth must be the same person as the Monarch of the United Kingdom. As things stand it always has been, but if the Queen happened to die tomorrow and if he were twenty years younger, I could imagine Nelson Mandela being offered the position.

Zebra57 · 750919. Sun Oct 10, 2010 6:08 pm

Rwanada is now a member of the Commonwealth and has sent a small team to the Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

As a consequence of its Commonwealth membership English appears to be starting to replace French in the country.