the twain

And never the twain shall meet

Despite a century of living together, Fiji’s two main racial groups still lead separate lives with no indication their ways are going to meet in the near future. As our Special Correspondent points out, the differences are more ingrained than any law could have created.

It was on a bright sunny day walking down Deuba beach ata Pacific Harbour when the obvious facts of life in Fiji came to light. The previous day Adi Kuini Speed, widow of deposed Labour Prime Minister Timoci Bavadra, had announced the disbanding of Fiji’s last remaining multi-racial party ironically called the ANC (All Nationals Congress). The Labour

Party still lamely professes to be

multiracial but is now simply an alternative voice of the Indian cane farmers. It was the Fijians (soon to be called Taukef) playing rugby in their isolated group on the beach next to the Indians (soon to be

finally called Fijians) playing soc

cer in their equally isolated group that made it dawn on me finally.

It reminded one of the South

Africa of 20 years ago - the South Africa of Grand Apartheid where races never mixed. It was like walking down similar beaches in Natal province but there the sepa ration of the races was done by the force of laws and policemen’s trun cheons. In Fiji it became obvious at that* moment that we have suc ceeded in creating a far grander apartheid of the mind and spirit an apartheid so strong that it could never be created or dismantled by law-makers. This is a voluntary apartheid created by two groups that have been thrown together by what both generally view as the unfortunate circumstances of their

history.

At no point is there the faintest inkling that these two groups have the slightest bit in common. By and

large Fijians and Indians may occu py the same country but not the same space.

When the Indian soccer ball land ed in the middle of the Fijian rugby field it was politely returned with and English thank you. These are two groups that largely do not speak each other’s languages, do not play the same games, do not have the same interests and by and large do not appear to like each other very much.

The two groups do not even cross at the level of love and mar riage. After 100 years of Indian presence in Fiji it is rare, very rare, to see a mixed race Indian-Fijian, but not rare to see a mixed race European-Fijian or Indo-European.

How is it that after a century of living together the main impact of

one group on the other appears to have been Fijians developing a taste for curry and Indians devel oping a taste for yaqona? It is diffi cult to imagine two cultures more different - one culture communal ist and the other individualistic and entrepreneurial - but nothing really adequately describes the profound gap between the two communities.

All this would be of no interest or importance if it were in Sydney or Los Angeles. There communities with nothing in common live in relative peace not communicating with their neighbours. This is after all the way of immigrant communi ties the world over. However, Fiji is not the western suburbs nor, unfor tunately, is it L.A.. Indo-Fijians and Taukei are the two dominant com munities almost equally divided numerically. When this matter is raised with both Indians and Fijians they cannot see it - it only seemed natural, it is Fiji after all.

If the danger of a complete sepa ration of two dominant communi ties is not obvious then the coups of 1987 should have made it very clear indeed. The change in the ethnic balance of power that was created by the results of the 1987 election was what triggered the coups. The change in the ethnic balance that followed the Fijian reaction to the 1987 elections namely the 1992 constitution was as unacceptable to the Indians

as the result of the 1987 elections was to the large sections of the Fijian elite.

Each imbalance in Fiji’s post independence power structure has had damaging effects. Now we have what many, inside and outside Fiji, call an apartheid system - a system of separation of the races.

Of course we have nothing that even begins to rival what white South Africa managed to construct and yet Fiji’s separateness will be ever more difficult to dismantle.To the outsider the most open mani festations of our system of separa tion are political - only Fijians and “others” in government and Indians in opposition. This system can be changed in the way that great men change bad laws - the same way Mandela and de Klerk deservedly got their Nobel Prizes.

As President Mandela is now dis covering, economic apartheid can not be so easily eliminated and its removal will only be the product of a long transition. The political system of racial separation that we have managed to create in Fiji has its analogue in our business com munity which is almost as devoid of Fijians as the government’s front bench is of Indians. Therein of course lies much of the nation’s problem - as former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew said of Fiji, it is a country trying to resolve its economic problems by

political means.

This cannot be done. A situation has been created a situation where by the Indian community, which still largely dominates commercial activities, quite rightly perceives that it is “second class” and no amount of name changing and banal jingles on the national televi sion station about Fiji being “one great family” will convince them otherwise. Feeling second class and threatened, they do not invest.

The Fijians feel they have no access to business and in response have traditionally resorted to their domination of political institutions to resolve the problem. It is only in the last year or two, however, that there have been the early rum blings of a legalised system of busi ness preference for Taukei - much as exists in Malaysia. But rather than resolve the problem, their total domination of political power and forced entry into the business community only weakens the econ omy because it further serves to alienate the Indians and decrease their interest in any long-term investment.

Only in a real dialogue will the two dominant races in Fiji come to an accommodation. But the apartheid that we have created here cannot be erased by two men - it will take the Nelson Mandela and de Klerk inside all of us to talk to each other with mutual respect. ■