Ancestral rights in Fiji
Sir: May I seek to throw some light on current events in Fiji and particularly in defence of Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka, who seems widely to have been traduced in the media at large?
These events are an almost classic case of a landed aristocracy and gentry main- taining hegemony over an industrious mer- cantile class which in number now exceeds
LETTERS
them. Colonel Rabuka seeks only to up- hold the ancestral rights of his people whose lineage in these islands extends at the least to 5,000 years.
One-man-one-vote! Yes, says the Melanesian, but also one-ancestor-one- vote! Why should a thousand generations count less than four or five of the relatively recently arrived?
For the rest of the world to seek to impose economic (or any other) sanctions seems great foolishness not only because such may bear most hardly on the mercan- tile class, but fundamentally because no Melanesian willingly will surrender his ancestral home to both the economic and political control of others.
It is true that once they did — to Queen Victoria — in an allegiance to which steadfastly they have remained 'loyal, but in which there was no understanding that Her Majesty had either the desire or the intention ultimately to surrender Fiji to those over whom subsequently she became Empress.
Those of Fiji's neighbours today who legalistically seek to impose upon Fiji an unmediated one-man-one-vote also will it can be forecast with the same certainty as in regard to South Africa — find them- selves up against those immemorial in- tangibles versed by Kipling:
Dear-bought and clear, five thousand year Our father's title runs, Make we likewise their sacrifice, Defrauding not our sons.. . .
Lest catastrophe is to befall Fiji it is desirable that those in the outside world concerned with the problem — and not least those steeped in the wisdom of India — should heed the guidance of HM repre- sentative in Fiji, the Governor-General, Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau.
D. W. Tudor-Pole
(Former Chief Information Officer, Western Pacific High Commission) 14B Liverpool Road, Kingston Hill, Surrey
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