Freedom, sweet and soured
p. 27 · Read in the full issue
HOW sweet the taste of victory!
How delicious the smell of free dom! The more so after decades of oppression and unfulfilled dreams.
And how unique a leader is Nelson Mandela, who after such a bitter personal struggle against the inhu manity of apartheid, talks not of the triumph of his own political party and a black majority but of a “time for the healing of wounds”, a time for building a unified, non-racial and non-sexist South Africa.
A masterly strategy designed to appease a defeated white supremacist establishment? Essential rhetoric to preempt a fresh outbreak of violence by stubborn defenders of the apartheid ‘faith’?
Whatever his strategic astuteness, Mandela’s historic inauguration as the first black president of a ‘decolonised’
South Africa will surely be remembered as an inspiring occasion when the world heard no giveaways of recrimination,
no gloating noises of victory or vindication. Instead, what filled the airwaves (apart from both the National Party and ANC national anthems!) was a heartfelt pledge to build a “society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity a rainbow nation of peace with itself and the world”.
It may be in the nature of politics that the seemingly impossible becomes possible, or tbat the realisation of dreams and visions is grounded in something approaching scientific predictability. In any event, it is reassuring for people (including myself incidentally) to think this way, and it can be a powerful motor for action, thereby giving destiny a helping hand. Which is, I suppose, the point of it all. “The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement. Let freedom reign,” rejoiced Mandela. Yes, let freedom reign.
But can we really be sure that the sun will never set?
It was this faith in the immortality of South Africa’s new found political emancipation that set me thinking somewhat dispiritedly about how the sun has indeed set in parts of our own region. (And of course, how it has yet to rise at all in the French, US and Indonesian controlled territories). In a ‘rainbow’ nation like Fiji, once regarded as a showpiece of multi-ethnic democracy, the military coups of 1987 and the 1990 apartheid constitution have ironically sent it scurrying down the very road from which South Africa has now
triumphantly departed.
The freedom stakes have also turned against thousands of Bougainvilleans who have been mercilessly pounded by civil war and a genocidal blockade over the past five years.
Coincidentally, both Fiji and PNG have taken a fancy to the freedom-felling delights of internal security legislation along with other encroachments upon constitutional freedoms (media freedom and trade union rights for example).
But the limits to regional freedom also stem from the fact that the transfer of political control on independence has typically left structures of the old colonial orders in tact.
Independence has rarely, if ever, heralded economic
autonomy, an equitable distribution of wealth, environmentally sustainable
development, or participatory democ
racy (where democracy means more than just a vote at election time, or for that matter even a vote of equal value witness Western Samoa, Tonga and
Fiji)-
In fact, for many Pacific Islanders who eke out a precarious existence on
the fringes of nominally independent
states, the twin notions of freedom and independence mean very little.
Which brings me to share with you a few more things that writer/activist Susan George had to say in Suva about the ‘development’ policies of the World
Bank. George produces a graphic
analogy, likening the pace at which the
bank’s free market/economic growth
‘wisdom’ has advanced during the last 15 years to “a stone rolling down a hill
and crushing everything in its path”.
We are faced with a hegemonic system, she says, that is very difficult to stop or change, and it is supported by an ‘approval culture’ which basically means maintaining at breakneck speed a constant treadmill of huge projects, huge budgets and huge loans in order to sustain in you guessed it huge proportions, the bank’s political power, global prestige and status. Environmental provisions are seen as liabilities because they slow things down, cost money, and act as a trade barrier (by making our
goods more expensive).
So the lesson then is that we need to be a little circumspect about the bank’s professed environmental sensitivity (note the environmental assessments and safely clauses in its agreements). Look out for the wolves that sniff around our shores because they often sneek up dressed as sheep, bleating a well-rehearsed, politically ‘correct’ repertoire of ‘sustainable’ and ‘human’ development and even the co opted language of freedom (‘free’ market, ‘free’ trade etc).
All told, the bank’s environment agenda reflects more a concern about its image and the need to placate its critics, including NGOs in the lending (not the debtor!) countries, than a change of heart. Its policies, George says, continue to represent “an enormous threat to the environment”.
So why, we might ask, are we hurtling down a highway of destruction in the Pacific? Why are we allowing a global financial giant with its non-indigenous market ideology to determine our development direction, undermine our independence, and eat away at the foundations of our previously sustainable societies? If democracy is such a foreign flower, as one of Fiji’s women senators once quipped in defence of the military coups, then why such a generous welcome for a dubious neo-colonial development model?
Is it really a case of David versus Goliath (and remember David won) or is it that there simply isn’t the political will to put up a fight because enough goodies are falling off the back of the development truck to keep the ‘right’ people
happy?
Where to begin the search for answers? Sussing out what’s going on in our own backyards might be a good place to start.