settlers Jump?

New Caledonia: Which way will the French settlers Jump?

In a comment on a December 1981 PIM article by a fellow French academic, Professor JEAN GUI ART of the Musee de I’Homme, Paris, highlights certain psychological factors influencing the response of French settlers in New Caledonia to the present situation in the territory.

The article by Professor Jean Chesneaux (PIM Dec ’Bl p 24) underlines the problem of the capacity for survival of New Caledonia’s European settler population in a new political environment; in the conditions of the probable independence of New Caledonia, with Melanesians in the ascendancy, after more than a century of political dependence . . .

The core of the problem in my view is the white man’s guilt complex, and his imagination.

The white man in Noumea or the inland who has in recent years, and more particularly in recent months, been thinking that the only way of halting the Melanesian march to indepen dence which to Melanesians minds simply means not being bullied or pushed around by Europeans any more, anywhere, or under any circumstances is to threaten them with death, to shoot at them from far or near in order to frighten them, frightens himself each time he or his son thinks in this way.

He has not killed, but he has threatened to do so. He im agines then that he has actually killed, and that the Melanesians’ revenge is nigh.

The result is that people who live from delivering one threat to the next, always against the black man, are the most fright ened people on the island. Some lose their nerve completely, being carefully manipulated in certain groups, in certain bars, by certain people, and then they really shoot to kill, at any Melanesian around.

We have had two murders of quite innocent and non-politic ally-minded Melanesians, near Noumea, in January ’79, and in Gomen in June ’Bl. In both cases the European murderers belonged to an extreme rightist group.

But they would be incapable of saying who carefully fed them the idea that shooting was the only solution. Others are naive enough to speak of the need for wholesale murder, but they are careful not to shoot and not to identify their possible victims. Although very precise things are said in closed groups, statements remain threatening, but carefully blurred, in the presence of officials.

The rightwing European pol itical elite is not averse to the idea of murders of indepen dence leaders. But it would prefer not to do the job itself. So it has been looking for men to hire for such work. The result is that over the last ten years a score or more of very curious individuals have come to Noumea, former or would-be mercenaries, mythomaniacs and police informers, whose loose talk tends to create a cover for a small, very small, number of professional hit men, who are carefully hidden in plum jobs by the high-level politicians who first brought them in.

One of this type was certainly responsible for the killing of a gendarme in Gomen. If Dominique Canon is not in fact the culprit, it is possible that the same person could also be the murderer of Pierre Declercq. In the course of a campaign to get local opinion to believe the police had arrested an innocent person, extraordinary state ments by various individuals have been published by the rightwing weekly Corail, show ing how murky and full of potential violence the atmo sphere has been among the imported group of activists dreaming of ‘normalizing’

Melanesian political activities through recourse to physical terror.

All that Melanesian inform

ants have been saying in recent months about their knowledge of the potential dangers of the doings of these activists, of armed exercises by small groups, of threats to the lives of the independence leaders, of the capacity of the rightists to dream up stupid actions on the basis of illegal imports of arms, has been validated by what the rightwing press itself has re cently been publishing.

It is to be hoped that in the depressed economic situation, and with the psychological pres sure they feel to export their capital, the local commercial or mining interests who finance these activities will stop spend ing their money to no purpose, and in a manner so dangerous for everybody, above all them selves.

Unused to the idea that Melanesians count in any way, European leaders have still to accept what is an undeniable fact that the Melanesians are now political actors in their own right.

The murder of Pierre Declercq has made the Melanesians ultra-sensitive to dangers they previously tended to discount. They believe that new political murders could be in the making, and have de cided that all those who might be a party to such plots must leave the country.

This is a new development.

Up to now, Melanesians acted with care, organising continu ous psychological pressure so as to encourage a continuous drain on the European population, which has steadily declined in recent years through emi gration. Most of those who have left were metropolitan French going back to France because the local economy could not

support them any more. But there has also been emigration of Europeans of long standing in the territory going to settle in Australia or in France.

If things go on in this way, with the same growing pres sures on the local white man’s psyche, the problem would be of numbers. If instead of the negative balance of emigration being stabilised at around a 200 annual figure, it went up to 500, the Melanesians would have reason to be satisfied. But can such a development be con trolled?

Some Wallisians have lost their jobs and gone back home, and others may follow suit.

Tahitians are starting to think in terms of taking a neutral stand, so as not to be caught any longer between the two warring factions, and politicians in Papeete are recognising the need to support some of their people, and wean the others away from the influence of the European rightwing.

Actions of ethnic groups in the future will be determined by their overall analysis of where the future balance of power will lie. The white man’s power is evidently on the wane. But how many Europeans will realise this in time, and start building on what goodwill remains?

The answer lies in Noumea, in the minds of people who know they are losing their battles in the interior of the island, after having lost those they fought by proxy in Vanuatu.

Will they panic, and start leaving in greater numbers? Or will they become irrational, pushed by the local rightwing, which is trying its best to organise them to resist imagin ary dangers (imaginary because Noumea is a city loved by Melanesians, in the same way as all Pacific Islanders love cities and port town)? Or will they bow to the inevitable, the com ing to the fore of the Melanesians claiming the end of injustices and of European privileges? The three hypoth eses are possible.

The French Government is bet ting on the third. It may be wrong. It may be right.

Jean Guiart