Honolulu
December 1, 1970
Fiji has become the Pacific’s newest nation in a manner so smooth that it mutes, and even hopefully has a positive effect upon, the deeper political, racial, and economic questions about its future.
It was done in fine British style and subdued Fijian celebration with the Queen represented by her son, the young Prince of Wales.
Instead of the dramatic midnight break, Fiji’s ceremonies were spread over two days. At sunset, October 9, the British flag was lowered for the last time as Fiji’s military band played the hymn, “The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Is Ended.” Next morning in brilliant sunshine, Fiji’s sky blue flag was raised, and the Queen’s message welcomed a new Dominion to the Commonwealth.
The new flag
It was moving but simple. The mood was not wild celebration, and there were no demonstrations. Rather it was happiness shadowed by many mixed emotions by many people.
For the British, Fiji independence means another step back from an empire that long ago proved economically and politically unprofitable; they are eager to go.
Still Fiji has been something special for 96 years, a colony by invitation, not conquest, where the native people looked to the crown as their special protector. More loyal subjects are hard to find.
“What struck me,” said one Pacific islander who attended, “was how the Prince was the center of things. They made more of him, it seemed, than of their own prime minister — or even independence itself.”
For Fiji’s small but powerful European minority this is also a new day. They have, as the cricket saying goes, “had some very good innings.” Now they must learn to play a less-dominant role in a land where brown and black will be ruling colors.
There were some European fears about this, especially among those expatriates due to lose jobs or among a few older settlers. But mostly there was calm acceptance of the politically inevitable, and even much optimism about the economic future.
For the Indians, who make up almost exactly half Fiji’s 530,000 population, there was more satisfaction than emotion. With less affection for the British and more ambition, they have long pushed for independence while the Fijians held back amid British paternalism and fear of being dominated in their own land.
Yet behind many other Indian attitudes is an understanding that the big questions about harmony in Fiji have been more postponed and eased aside than settled — that when the independence honeymoon ends next year, there could be trouble.
The Fijians
For many of the Fijians, who make up 42 per cent of the population, there were tears when the Union Jack came down for the last time.
Late last century, their king begged several nations (including the U.S.) to take over and save Fiji from what was a gruesome mixture of renegade European intrigue and native warfare marked by some of the Pacific’s worst excesses in cannibalism.
When Queen Victoria finally agreed to the cession offer in 1874, the grateful Fijians soon switched dramatically from cannibalism to Methodism and, gastronomically and otherwise, have hardly looked back.
“If the British had a major flaw, it was being too much on the benevolent side,” said Fiji’s Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, in a pre-independence interview. “There was no Fijian agitation for improvements. For years, we didn’t even want independence.”
A blunter view was expressed before the ceremonies by an Indian politician, R.D. Fatel, who said; “Yes, the British did establish law and order but at the same time the British also separated the two major races. If anything wrong has*been done by the British, it has been done to the Fijians. They segregated them in koros, (villages) in their subsistence economy. They taught them to pray and to play and to spend but never taught them how to earn or how to save for a rainy day.”
Mara and most Fijians wanted independence now, however. When asked earlier this year what they had to gain, he said bluntly, “Our self-respect.”
With a living culture, they are free again in their own nation today, holding most of the land and much political control, thanks to special concessions and a weighted voting system.
It is in sharp contrast to the Hawaiians in Hawaii. Yet like the Hawaiians in their multi-racial situation, the Fijians find themselves at the bottom of the economic ladder — in this case with Europeans at the top and Indians on most of the middle rungs.
Europeans gather at old-line Defense Club
Fijian vendors and tourist
So Fiji is much more than just 500 lush islands floating in the center of the sunny South Pacific.
There is beauty and charm, to be sure. It is caught in the image of blue lagoons, palms bending over golden beaches, thatch villages, fuzzy-haired islanders who are as friendly as they are fierce-looking on first encounter, and flowing Indian saris in the towns or out in the pale-green cane country.
But there are more important things: Fiji is a hub where Polynesia and Melanesia join, a small South Sea Chicago of rising trade and industry, Pacific tourism’s next big frontier, possibly a future regional political center. Fiji is also the first Pacific island nation in the United Nations. As such it will be looked to as a spokesman for the area, although that is a role it must play carefully to avoid raising suspicions among other emerging island areas,
Much of this has come with a rush that has been more accepted than assimilated by Fiji’s people.
Ratu Mara Fiji’s prime minister
S.M. Koya Fiji opposition leader
The Politics
Britain began grooming the crown colony in 1965 in a process of increased self-rule towards eventual independence, then thought to be a decade or more away.
There have been racial tensions and some incidents over the years. In fact, in an eve-of-independence broadcast reference was made to a late 1968 election when Fijian wrath boiled close to mass violence over Indian bloc voting: “We were admittedly somewhat thrown off course in those bye-elections, and we all came close enough to the rocks to have to have a good look at the dangers,” said Ratu Mara.
But the death 13 months ago of the brilliant-but-difficult Indian leader, A.D. Patel, helped bring a major change. He was succeeded as head of the opposition Federation Party by S.M. Koya.
Koya is a burly, sometimes blustering man, but one more attuned to Ratu Mara, leader of the ruling Alliance Party, a coalition of Fijians, Europeans, and other races, including part-Europeans.
Mara and Koya soon reached a compromise: The Alliance Fijians agreed to early independence as a British Commonwealth dominion like Australia. Indians gave up their idea for a republic; they also temporarily put aside their traditional demand for a common roll voting under which all races use the same ballot to vote for the same candidates.
The British made the deal official at a formal constitutional conference in London in April, and Fiji sailed relatively untroubled into independence under its present political system.
In fact, so close were Mara and Koya before independence that there was talk of a coalition government to run Fiji in the early period after independence — but sources said other leaders of both parties have been against the idea.
This still leaves Fiji with two political confrontations ahead, each with touchy potential. One is an election sometime next year. It will be under a complex new system geared to giving Fijians and Indians equal representation in a 52-member House of Representatives, with Europeans and other races having the swing vote. As a further check, there will also be a 22-member Senate where Fijians will predominate.
Fijian leaders see that system as lasting for some time, but Indians point out that the London agreement called for a Royal Commission to be appointed after the 1971 election to recommend the “most appropriate” future representation system.
Ratu Mara and others say the common role is a long-term goal but not suitable until the races become closer and Fijians are better able to compete in the modern world.
The Economics
Economically, Fiji is in a sunny boom with some trouble clouds that may come over the horizon.
Sugar is still Fiji’s basic industry and by far its major economic contributor. But it faces both internal and external difficulties.
The big Australian firm that operates Fiji’s one milling company and all marketing has said it will leave by early 1973 — an embittered response to a leading British judge’s arbitration award earlier this year which gave more benefits to the small Indian and Fijian farmers who grow the cane on independent farms.
The company’s impending departure is not fatal, but it does pose the challenge of Fiji finding new mill financing and market arrangements. “They could muck it up,” says one diplomat.
The other problem is posed by Britain’s likely entry into the European Common Market. Fiji has a valuable Commonwealth sugar quota at a premium price, and the hope is Britain will negotiate protection for that when and if it enters the Common Market.
Timber, minerals, and industry exports may help in the future, but for now Fiji’s big growth industry is tourism.
By Hawaii standards it’s still small — about 105,000 overnight visitors this year and another 100,000 on cruise ships. But the growth rate is over 30 per cent, and the potential has dollar signs dancing in developers’ eyes, including some from Hawaii.
Indian women
Some in government have what amounts to conflicts of interest on tourism. But fortunately most Fiji leaders are not yet over-dazzled by tourism. They appreciate what it can mean both economically and in potential problems.
Land and Race
One touchy aspect of Fiji’s tourist boom, however, has been a rush to get hold of leases on choice land held by Fijians (who can’t sell by law) and strategic bits of beachside or small-island freehold owned by others.
It is sometimes painfully reminiscent of Hawaii, right down to the speculation and inflated values that contribute little to the people. There are legitimate developers doing some worthy things in Fiji, but the story is also told of an American firm that bought a small island for $60,000 and without any development was trying to sell it for $700,000 in Seattle, or $900,000 in Hawaii -a comment on our inoculation with way-out values.
Land is a special question in Fiji. It is significant to say that some 83 per cent is held in no-sale status by Fijian groups, that another 10 per cent is crown or government land, that another 5 per cent is owned by the Australian sugar company, and 1 per cent by other Europeans including various resort developers.
That doesn’t leave much freehold for Indians, who often struggle on unsatisfactory leases.
But much of the Fijian land is mountainous and non-productive. Furthermore, the lease system is so paternalistic and bureaucratic that is often yields only pitiful sums for the Fijian “owners.”
There is potential for trouble in this land situation.
But Ratu Mara had more in mind when he reminded Fijians that, although the new constitution guarantees their land ownership, “The best and strongest safeguard we can have in our land is a happy and harmonious society…It will be from the goodwill of the other races that the Fijian people will derive their most lasting guarantees.”
In this he was recognizing that Fiji’s basic problem is racial, for in some ways groups there remain more apart than they did in Hawaii a half-century ago — or still do in parts of the Mainland U.S.
Indian students express fear their people might be treated like the Indians in Africa. Other Indians look forward to the day “when we dark-skinned people will be dominant over you whites…I hope we treat you better.”
A very prominent European scoffed at those of his race who feared independence. But later he added: “This honeymoon is not going to last. The Indians — and I mean the Indian politicians, not the ordinary people who get along well enough — are too ambitious and don’t like Europeans.”
Fijian leaders sound confident, but stress special concessions must continue until their people “are ready.”
Looking at the situation, one Pacific scholar in Suva recently said: “I think that after a while there will be incidents and tensions that will lead the government to become more restrictive, to tighten up a notch at a time on personal freedom, including expression.
“Remember the Fijians got a great and potentially militant village organization, plus control of the army and police. You wouldn’t need a military takeover here because you already have one, in a way.”
The Hope
The more hopeful view is that time, skill, and patience — plus the current economic boom which is important in preventing unrest — will ease Fiji into a new era of harmony.
Those with memories can recall the days 20 years ago when visiting writers and other “experts” were predicting that Hawaii faced disaster because of communism, racial tensions, and economic stagnation — or all three.
Fiji is bound to have its crises, but more important is the hope for a happy and important new nation in a new day of Pacific development.
Downtown Suva
Received in New York on January 20, 1971.
Mr. John Griffin was an Alicia Patterson Fund award winner on leave from the Honolulu Advertiser, Hawaii. This article may be published with credit to Mr. Griffin the Honolulu Advertiser, and the Alicia Patterson Fund.
