Native Copra Industry In

Fiji

Letter to the Editor WITH the sales talk of gaining higher prices by selling through the Fiji Government, the powers-that-be are endeavouring to gain complete control of the native copra industry, not to the advantage of the native— as a hundred proofs can show—but to swell the purse of officialdom for further wanton squandering. Rather than compete with private enterprise by fair means they have reported to the usual official subterfuge of law-making to force a monopoly.

Even Governments have to justify their law-making. The Co-operative Society Act, passed last year, could easily be justified by any Government official —in fact, is a step in the right direction. But. as applied to Fijians, the Act is simply logical.

Each member must be willingly signed up, and restricted to selling his produce ) or through the Society to which he be ings, and anyone inducing him to sell outside is liable to a fine of £25. The member can also resign, if he so wishes.’

All very above-board —but absolutely farcical when applied to Fijians.

When first I read the Act, I realised it was just another betrayal of the Fijians by the powers that claim to be their sponsors.

In the first place, the Fijians do not, as race, think individually, but wait for someone to argue them into something with sweet words of flattery, or the authoritative mouthpiece of the Government rendered sweet with ceremonial kava—in which case they suddenly decide it was just what they wanted.

Strangely enough, the Co-operative Society Act has not yet been enforced. I say enforced, because that is the correct

way to describe the Government methods in such matters. To date, the natives have been told that they are compelled by law to sell through the Government, so they only grumble now that they know the abuses of the system and the poverty they have suffered for months past.

Of course if the powers-that-be really wished to make use of the Act, word would be sent to all the district headmen

who, in turn, would instruct all the village headmen to sign up all the producers in their respective villages, just as the Fijians were recruited —or rather, im pressed—in the late war under the volun tary system. There would be no argu ment, merely mild wonder or grumbles by those who had experience of these new systems. There would be no refusals and (Continued Next Page)

there would certainly be no subsequent resignations—no one would have the nerve and, if they did, their resignation would not be accepted.

This is why I call such a move a fur ther betrayal of our trust to a still primi tive race who have no conception of what democratic government means.

Their own system was dictatorship by the high chiefs and, in their hearts, that is all they can visualise. Under the new native policy, socialistically inspired, they are again thrown into the arena of chiefly control to be at the beck and call of the new line of Government chiefs, with their illogical whims and fancies.

With the hereditary chiefs of old the dictatorship carried at least a moral res ponsibility towards the people. But the new regime has only a disinterested Government to which to give account, I am, etc.,

Fiji.

Voice In Wilderness.