Fiji and South Africa

[Philip Ferguson <plf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lou P wrote:
>It's useful to consider Fiji in relationship to South Africa, where Gandhi
>led a struggle for equal rights. The legacy of the fight to defend equal
>rights for Indians in that country has also found itself in a complex and
>difficult relationship to another indigenous people:


This was followed by an article from the Houston Chronicle suggesting that
Indians felt under fire from blacks in post-apartheid South Africa.


There are actually a number of rather important differences involved here.
For instance, in South Africa the apartheid regime, in its last days, tried
to incorporate Indians (and 'coloureds'), by granting them certain rights
from which blacks remained excluded.

In Fiji, it was the other way around.  The white colonial regime in Fiji
incorporated the Melanesian-Fijian chieftains and deemed Melanesian-Fijians
the only Fijians, completely excluding Indians.

In South Africa the response of the movement against apartheid was not in
any way to make claims on the basis of blacks there being 'another
indigenous people'.  The ANC was a *nationalist* movement, not an
*indigenist* movement.  The ANC position was that *everyone* in South
Africa - whether black, coloured, Asian or white - was part of an
historically-formed South African nation with the same rights and
responsibilities as everyone else.  It was NOT to claim a priori special
rights for blacks on the basis of indigeneity.  Indeed the ANC
*specifically rejected* such politics.  In other words, they acted as a
genuine radical national liberation movement.

In contrast, Lou, you will have to look long and hard and you still won't
find a Melanesian-Fijian equivalent of the ANC (or any other national
liberation movement).  Instead you will find communalist politics which
lend themselves to, indeed require, ethnic exclusivism and anti-democratic
politics.

And you will find the same thing in other parts of the Pacific where
genuine nationalist movements have had to confront and deal with
reactionary 'indigenist' political forces, usually tied to western capital.
The classic case in recent years, apart from Fiji, is probably the
'indigenists' who, in cahoots with a few big US companies, tried to break
Santos island away from Vanuatu when it achieved independence in the late
70s.

Cheers,
Phil