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Crocombe's South Pacific

For a long time the phrase 'South Pacific' used to conjure up visions of holidays in paradise, sunshine, coconuts, Godzone territory.

Then some Pacific Islanders encroached New Zealand by joining the working class. 'Pacific Islanders' and even 'coconut' became almost a dirty word in certain circles and most New Zealanders reverted to imagining their country as being an appendage of Europe and not in the South Pacific at all.

This year all the immigration trouble has blown up, and the government policies of sweeping it all under the carpet of Mt Eden Prison and departmental chaos have become harder and harder to accept

Just what is going on, why do the Pacific Islanders come here, who aids who, how much of an imperialist power is New Zealand, and what are conditions like in the Islands, are big questions now for New Zealanders to look into.

Crocombe's book is timely, then. Brief (130 pages), wide ranging, informative and provocative, it doesn't provide too many answers but will help any reader to shape relevant questions.

Ron Crocombe is Professor of Pacific Studies at the University of the South Pacific. Born in New Zealand, he has lived most of his life in various Pacific islands, and he has published extensive works on them. The New South Pacific aims to provide a personal view of major trends in the world's most widely scattered region.

The early chapter on economy begins with a scanty and unprogressive treatment of the growth of foreign dominance and the resistance movements formed to fight it. While these resistance movements have not had notable success, Crocombe underestimates their significance and gives no indication to future resistance to neocolonialism in the South Pacific.

Crocombe's few examples of resistance movements are all taken from the past. This could imply to readers that there are no similar movements at present. But in the New Hebrides, for example, there is a growing movement for national independence led by the New Hebrides National Party against the French and British rulers of the country. This movement includes the growing working class movement in the New Hebrides and is based to an important extent on the Presbyterian Church, which shows that some sections of the church are playing a progressive role in the Pacific Island countries.

The chapter ends with a clear description of partnerships of foreign and local businesses and summarises some of the dangers:

'Slowly more and more functions in the economy are being taken over either by government or by large-scale international capital The proportion of total business handled by small businessmen is dwindling all the time.

'The latest trend in economic change (I prefer not to call it economic development because "development" tends to have a fallacious connotation of something inevitable and invariably desirable) is for combined indigenous-expatriate enterprise. That is, a major foreign firm moves in and shares with local people. This has many advantages and it does facilitate participation, but in practice many of these organisations end up very substantially foreign owned, and with only token local participation.

'The foreign enterprise, being much larger and more experienced, is more likely to establish a profitable operation, but the main task of a local subsidiary is to serve its foreign parent company. Its loyalty, not only its moral obligation but its legal obligation, is to make as much profit as it can for its shareholders, the vast majority of whom are foreign. This question of partnership between foreign and local business is likely to become a crucial political issue in the Pacific in the 1970s.

One aspect of joint ventures that could have serious consequences, is that the local participant is usually chosen from within a fairly small, elite class. page break This is usually a strongly politically affiliated and unrepresentative segment of the local population. Joint enterprise in these circumstances may increase the already substantial political power of the local business elite, and divorce it further from the common people. There is evidence of this in several parts of the Pacific. As those with political power gain more economic power, they can entrench themselves in a smaller and smaller, more and more exclusive, richer, indigenous but foreign-influenced elite. And that inevitably has political consequences, for when hereditary or other leaders divorce themselves from their people and align their interests more closely with foreign business, there is a danger that (as in other forms of divorce and re-marriage) the children feel abandoned and tend to hate their step-mother. Such resentment can be hidden or muffled for a time and to a degree, but there are distinct limits.'

A later chapter also on the economy includes an excellent summary of what is going on in South Pacific aid. Who aids who? asks Crocombe, and answers:

'Paradoxically, restrictions on permanent migration lead to the poorer independent islands subsidising their rich neighbours! The Tongan economy, for example, pays the heavy costs of raising and educating children who produce nothing but consume a lot. When they become potentially productive, however, the young men seek paid employment overseas. Women, as well as unfit and aged men, remain a relative drain on the reduced proportion of active men left in Tonga. New Zealand, Nauru and the other countries employing Tongan labour, gain by acquiring fit men, usually without their dependents, at minimal pay-rates and minimum overhead costs in short-term jobs. When they become redundant or old they are returned to Tonga. In other words, contract employment which New Zealanders call "aid" to Tonga is more properly Tongan aid to New Zealand. For seasonal harvesting (which Fijians particularly undertake in New Zealand) Fiji in effect pays the unemployment benefits which New Zealand would have to pay during the off-season if New Zealand had a full work-force for these least desired tasks. (Incidentally, island villages have for over a century been subsidising foreign-owned plantations in the islands in the same way). It was the Fiji and Tonga governments which requested New Zealand to provide job opportunities for their under-employed citizens. It was not an exploitative plot by New Zealand to boost its economy with cheap island labour while the islands pay the overheads but that is the way it will be increasingly regarded, and in effect it contains an element of truth.

'Unskilled migrant labouring can be exciting once or twice, but as a way of life it is culturally sterile and psychologically depressing. Melanesians at home drop it in favour of almost any alternative. Permanent migration, on the other hand, does help the situation back home so long as it does not become a brain drain of the top talents.

The Pacific economies need aid, but much of it so far has been designed to benefit the donor countries more than the recipients. Indeed, beggars cannot be choosers, but it is probably to the long term advantage of the donors also to give more thought to long-term consequences. The aid relationship needs much further rethinking to generate opportunities rather than charity, confidence rather than humiliation and sell-reliance rather than dependence.'

Crocombe, of course, is no socialist. At times what he is saying does by implication advocate a socialist transformation of the economy, but he never goes anywhere near saying this. Generally, his analysis falls short of solutions. At least once Crocombe indicates that he doesn't know what socialism is about:

'Most of the capitalist governments in the world today are based on structures designed for conditions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Communism was designed to solve the problems of last century.'

Later, he describes the Marxist Maoist guideline as being as sterile as US imperialism.

Like a good number of liberal academics, he prefers to turn a blind eye to the positive economic transformation that has gone on in countries such as Albania and China in the last thirty years or so. How it is possible to talk about domination of foreign capital and the evil effects of economic imperialism, and to ignore the tremendous strides that socialist countries and liberation movements have taken in smashing their stranglehold, is almost beyond my comprehension.

Perhaps Crocombes standpoint comes through clearest when he quotes with approval what the Pro-Chancellor of the University of the South Pacific told tourist industry representatives recently:

"The culture, the friendliness, the songs and dances, the handicrafts and customs of my people of the Pacific are your most valuable asset, an asset which you can use without having to invest one single cent... Destroy it and you have destroyed your main asset which can never be created again..... new business opportunities beckon. Let us safeguard our customs and traditions in a way that will preserve both our profits and our heritage."

Note that 'profits' come first

Obviously such a book will deal extensively with culture, and fortunately Crocombe spends most of his time with the reality and little with the concept His examples clearly indicate that groups of people who are strongly attached to their culture and try to preserve as much of it as possible are at an advantage rather than a disadvantage in the modern world. They tend to do belter even in western-style education, and their economies are by no means less successful than those of over-colonialised people.

Crocombe is also clear on the costs of urbanisation. Urbanised people commit more 'erime', go mad more, have more drug addiction and need more welfare services. If closer consideration were given to the non-economic consequences of industrialisation and of such aspects of it as tourism, industry would have to pay back more to the community than it does now for the damage it does.

For people who leave their home environment for a new one Crocombe does not see much hope. He notes that at least by our standards, the vast number of islanders living in New Zealand, or for that matter Samoans and Tongans living in Hawaii, have not done very well. Aspirations for higher income are quickly met with unchallenging, unskilled work. This can reinforce or create feelings of inferiority. Polynesians become trapped in the vicious circle of the repressed working class.

On religion, the book includes some good points about the inflexibility of the church and its close association with the privileged classes. But Crocombe avoids making any more definite statements about the history of religion in the Pacific than that it had some good points, some bad. About the future he says that "radical' change is already in progress, but he neglects to outline what sort of radical change, and to what end

New Zealand's 'rather dull' record of colonial administration comes under fire, and Crocombe hopes 'that New Zealand people in the 1970s will honour the obligation that the previous generation did not adequately discharge — to equip sufficient islanders with the skills to enable them to more fully use the Limited resources available to them. Cook Islanders, Niueans and Tokelau islanders are, after all, New Zealand citizens who could, if they chose to, insist on receiving a much greater share of New Zealand's resources than they do at present.'