As I wrote some time back, there was never a scintilla of a possibility that all of the stolen guns would be returned willingly. The particular villains who a couple of days back killed an Indian policeman and a Fijian soldier (see report) were using a military-style automatic weapon, though whether it was one stolen from the military by the original conspirators is probably doubtful. Others have been stolen from the police and military in a series of incidents.

What I didn't envisage, and clearly the Speight gang didn't either, was that this fact might provide the grounds for rescinding their amnesty, and possibly laying charges of sedition and treason - the latter potentially punishable by hanging in Fiji. There is some irony in the fact that it may be the civil disobedience and violent lawlessness that has flared up around the country, that may finally result in their being brought to book for their treason. Because, as I have maintained all along, most of that lawlessness has been completely opportunistic, not ideological in any sense, and not even directly supportive of the coup instigators, however much Speight's name may have been invoked.

There have undoubtedly been many decent but ill-informed and gullible people who have flocked to the Speight banner because they believed the "indigenous rights" story the Parliament House kidnappers cooked up. But the theft and violence has been perpetratrated by individuals and groups who were before the Coup, and will be there long after it, the bad apples in the Fijian barrel. They have merely exploited the chaos to go on a spree of the sort of lawlessness that is their natural inclination.

There are, of course, ample simmering discontents which quickly come to the boil when this sort of heat is applied, and these have provided the "legitimation" for these actions. Talked over night after night around the kava bowl, they are never forgotten and are easily raised to fever pitch when conflated with other pet hates. In this latest incident, the disaffection used as a pretext for the rampage appears to be that although the Monasavu Dam provides the hydro-electric power for much of the island of Vitilevu, and in particular Suva, many of the catchment and flooded area's traditional landowners' villages don't have power on, and still use hurricane lanterns for light, and bush-timber in open hearths for cooking. I have sat in some of their houses, so can testify to this, and it is hard to feel that they don't have a very legitimate grievance. They are also, of course, like most of the landowners who have been using recent events to air their longstanding grievances, quite convinced that they have been duped in the purchases or leases relating to their traditional land.

Such suspicions may also be far from groundless. Even village-dwellers need money in a cash-driven world, and a century of colonial policy that limited them to usually-precarious agricultural commerce (such as copra and bananas) has left a legacy where money is still hard to come by. So leases have been looked to hopefully as a possible source of cash. But little of the money from these leases has filtered down to the common landowning clan-member. The NLC has effectively treated chiefs, quite a number of them absentees from their villages, as though they were the landowners, rather than all the members of the clans concerned. Scaled payments have meant that they not only receive the lions' share of rent monies, but have often been in a position to double-dip into the pot. In 1993 I was told by an official that one chief, whose villagers are noticeably poor even by Fijian villager norms, was receiving over $100,000 a year. Those few villagers who can get "good" employment, such as hotel maids, might expect to earn in the vicinity of $4,000 p.a., and by the time the lease money gets down to them, they would be lucky to be receiving two-figure amounts.

Had the Chaudhry government had the wit to focus on this inequity, and move to change the law so that chiefs received only the same share as every other clan-member, rather than trying to usurp control of their land from the clans, they may well have been greeted with acclamation rather than demonstrations by the commoner Fijians, who are by now thoroughly sick of being at the bottom of the heap in every way.

Finally, as in other cases, it was successive indigenous-dominated governments that ignored the Monasavu issue - it was merely one of the very large array of poison chalices handed to the Chaudhry government. The ministers in those earlier governments (including that of "indigenous rights" coup-leader Rabuka) were overwhelmingly chiefs themselves, and mostly Eastern ones at that, as I discussed in an earlier note. Monasavu, however, lies high in the "colo" (mountainous) part of Vitilevu, an area that has had very little share in the political stakes. Quite the contrary in fact. Their early history was one of stubborn resistance to being dominated by outsiders against their will (first the Cakobau government, then the British government who finally suppressed them after the protracted so-called "Hill Wars"). Because of this, the name by which these proud people are known ("Kai Colo" or "Mountain People") has come to be a pejorative term, meaning something between "hillbillies" and "bushwhackers". Cakobau even sold a pair of Mountain Men (prisoners of war) to Barnum and Bailey's Circus, and they spent the rest of their days doing the circuit in the USA as curiosities - "Fijian cannibals"! Speight aside, these people have little reason to respect governments in which they have no voice, or favour their instruments, the police and the military.

As I said above, none of this excuses violence, let alone murder. But it provides the soil in which resentments can flourish and grow into mindless hatred. What we are now seeing is the bitter harvest from that soil, and Speight was the thoughtless reaper.

Rod Ewins © August 2000. This note is copyright. Apart from those uses permitted under theCopyright Act 1968 (as amended), no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission from the author.