August 2000

THE TROUBLE WITH FIJI

The recent political crisis reportedly pitching indigenous Fijians against Indo-Fijians, was attributed to rising nationalism by the mainstream media. But the problem is more complex than that.

By Teresia Teaiwa

There are Fijian provinces, and traditional Fijian confederacies, but the two military coups of 1987 and the recent hostage crisis illustrate with disturbing insistence the erosion of the indigenous Fijian social order.

The problem with prevailing analyses of the political situation in Fiji is the notion that the conflict is between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians.

The ‘race’ card is misleading and mischievous, and unfortunately, Mahendra Chaudhry, Fiji’s first Indo-Fijian Prime Minister, played right into it with his abrasive style of leadership.

But Chaudhry is not the problem. Through the fortunes and misfortunes of the country’s three indigenous Prime Ministers - Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, Dr Timoci Bavadra, and Sitiveni Rabuka - we see the increasingly problematic configuration of indigenous leadership in the country.

Ratu Mara’s leadership draws on his own chiefly title, Tui Nayau; his wife’s, the Roko Tui Dreketi, from the confederacy of Burebasaga, is the highest chiefly title in the islands; and his close association with a tight elite cohort of European, part-European and Indo-Fijian business interests.

Ratu Mara’s leadership, however, alienated rival chiefs, proletarian and nationalist groups within his domain of eastern Fiji, and generated resentment in the western provinces.

The late Dr Timoci Bavadra, Prime Minister in the predominantly Indo-Fijian Labour/National Federation Party coalition government, was consistently described in the media as a ‘commoner’ even though he came from a noble Fijian background.

The problem with Dr Bavadra’s political genealogy in 1987 was not because of his Labour ideology or his ‘commoner’ status; it was because powerful sectors of indigenous Fijian society - in the east - were not ready for a Prime Minister from a western province.

Being both a ‘commoner’ and national leader was not a problem for Sitiveni Rabuka. In fact, a large part of Rabuka’s popularity with indigenous Fijians is linked to his ‘commoner’ status.

For indigenous Fijians, Rabuka’s inter-weaving of his traditional ‘bati’ or warrior genealogy (in the eastern province of Cakaudrove), his career in the modern armed forces, his identification with and deployment of Christian/Methodist discourse, his staging of the two coups d’etat in 1987, and the support he has consistently received from the Great Council of Chiefs, qualified him for leadership.

Rabuka even gained political mileage out of his ‘human frailties’: sexual and financial indiscretion, as well as flip-flopping policy decisions.

Many indigenous Fijians identify with Rabuka much more easily than with the aristocratic Ratu Mara. In opposition to the elder statesman of Fiji, Rabuka developed his own ethos of populism and ‘can-do’ capitalism - exemplified by the National Bank of Fiji debacle.

During his time as Prime Minister, a brash nouveau riche elite of ‘indigenous’ Fijians developed and thrived. George Speight is a good representative of this group, but an even better example is his mentor and benefactor Jim Ah Koy: both illustrate a new opportunism with regards to identity politics in Fiji.

A ‘general elector’ MP in the 1970s, Chinese/Fijian Ah Koy was sent into political convent by Ratu Mara for insubordination. Concentrating his energies in business during the 1980s, Ah Koy’s phenomenal success became worthy of a Horatio Alger story.

In the first post-coup election of 1992, however, Ah Koy re-emerged as a political candidate, this time on the indigenous Fijian electoral roll, and has represented his maternal constituency of Kadavu in Parliament ever since.

Like Ah Koy, George Speight’s father, a ‘part-European’ and former general elector named Sam Speight, became a ‘born-again Fijian’ in the post-coup era.

Sam Speight legally changed his name to Savenaca Tokainavo, winning an indigenous Fijian electoral seat in Parliament in the 1992 and subsequent elections.

In Fiji’s disconcertingly racialised electoral system (comprising three electoral rolls - Fijian, Indian and General), general voters have historically aligned themselves with indigenous Fijian chiefly interests.

The category of general voters covers Fiji’s multitude of ethnic minority communities: Banabans, Chinese, Europeans, Gilbertese, ‘part-Europeans’, Samoans, Solomon Islanders, Tongans, and Tuvaluans.

‘Part-Europeans’ form the largest and most influential group of general voters. In the post-coup era, they have shifted away from their historical identification with colonial European privilege to reclaim their ‘part-Fijian’ or vasu-i-taukei roots.

This shift in ‘part-European’ identification reflects a recognition of the contemporary realities of political power in Fiji: indigenous Fijians’ rule.

George Speight claims to represent indigenous Fijian interests. Sporting his European name, speaking exclusively in English, drawing on his Australian and American degrees and wearing his designer clothes, Speight does indeed represent indigenous Fijian interests.

But Speight’s indigenous Fijian interests are neither those of Ratu Mara nor of the late Dr Bavadra’s. Speight’s version of indigenous Fijian interests coincides in many areas with Rabuka’s version.

But the men Speight has surrounded himself with also represent a changing of the guard from Rabuka’s.

And what of Speight’s relationship with the marching/looting masses, who were inspired by the illegal actions in the House of Parliament on Friday, 19 May 2000? It is a relationship of convenience.

Speight has about as much respect for the 1997 constitution he once praised, as he does for the indigenous marama in Sulu and Jaba helping herself to bales of cloth through the shattered window of a store.

The march was organised by church and Taukei Movement leaders, and though the looting may not have been planned, they certainly enabled it.

Looting has become an ominous feature of recent indigenous Fijian responses to crisis: during the floods of 1998, at the tragic crash site of Flight PC 121 in 1999, and now in the streets of Suva - ‘the millennium city’.

The chiefs and church ministers stir their people but they do not control them: a group of alert and ambitious businessmen has used this feature of Fijian leadership to its advantage.

The impoverishment and disaffection of indigenous Fijians is not a result of 12 months of leadership by an Indo-Fijian. It is the result of 30 years of modern indigenous Fijian leadership that has sacrificed the economic and cultural well-being of a people for the advancement of a few. - Third World Network Features

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About the writer: Teresia Teaiwa is a lecturer in Pacific Studies, Victoria University of Wellington.

The above article first appeared in African Agenda (Vol. 3 No. 3, 2000).

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