Democracy,
Power and Indigeneity
Dr
Dominic O’Sullivan
Charles Sturt University
Abstract
This paper identifies
a theoretical nexus between indigeneity and democracy in four post-colonial contexts.
Like democracy, the politics of indigeneity asks questions and makes
assumptions about where power ought to lie and how it ought to be shared.
The paper argues
that indigeneity’s interaction with democracy highlights liberal theory’s
limitations, as well as its opportunities, for meeting indigenous claims and conceptions
of justice. Exploring the ideological tensions and commonalities between
democracy and indigeneity allows the paper to contrast, in comparative context,
the proposition that in Fiji, for example, democracy is ‘a foreign flower’
unsuited to the local environment, with the argument that democracy can, in
fact, mediate power in favour of an inclusive national polity.
Introduction
Sitiveni Rabuka,
who led the military removal of two democratically elected Fijian governments
in 1987, viewed democracy as a ‘foreign flower unsuited to Fijian soil’.[1] He
insisted that the concept undermined the inherent right to paramountcy that
first occupancy accorded native Fijians. The argument was apparently so strong
that it justified the violent removal of two governments, setting aside the
Constitution, and the transfer of sovereignty from the people to the military,
which obtained power once again and by similar means in 2007. In the
intervening period a putsch, whose instigators proclaimed themselves the legitimate
indigenous rulers of Fiji,
had also set democracy aside and created a political impasse illegally resolved
by military decision makers.[2] Democracy
was positioned as a negative colonial legacy. But neither the military nor the
putsch leader, George Speight, could advance a coherent alternative notion of
power or admit a relationship between stable government, and indigenous
self-determination. The effect was that indigeneity’s principal purpose of
making the state responsive to indigenous aspirations became unattainable.
Rabuka’s logic
suggests that if democracy was a ‘foreign flower’ because it interfered with
inherent indigenous political rights it would also be unsuited to other
post-colonial societies. Yet for indigenous peoples democracy remains deeply
contested and from an alternative perspective, where indigenous peoples also
constitute the majority population, democracy guarantees the necessary space
for indigenous political authority to resurface. The two perspectives share the
view that extant indigenous political rights properly influence governments and
that internal decolonisation requires re-balancing political authority. But
they differ in their preparedness to juxtapose indigenety with prevailing
international ideas about state governance. Democracy’s limits and
opportunities are shaped by competing attempts to define and direct it towards
different priorities and interests. This contestation of power is the principal
common characteristic of indigenous politics across jurisdictions.
A principled
democratic order shaped and influenced by indigeneity may not, in fact, be a
noxious foreign flower but a medium for returning the balance of power to the
native Fijian people and for guaranteeing the participation of other indigenous
peoples in their national polities. Alternatively, if democracy is indeed an
unsuited flower the central liberal problem remains: how should societies
govern themselves in order to create peaceful relationships among people with
different perceptions of the common good?
The paper’s
majority/minority contextual comparison shows that negative power relationships
in Australasia are not simply a function of
minority status in a majoritarian democracy. Democracy is intended to
emancipate and include all citizens. When this does not occur it is usually
because prejudice prevails in the national political order rather than because
of any systemic barrier to participation in democratic theory per se.
Democracy and the Politics
of Inclusion
Held argues that a ‘‘fair framework’ for the regulation of
a community is one that is freely chosen’ and that
members of a political community – citizens –
should be able to choose freely the conditions of their own association, and
that their choices should constitute the ultimate legitimation of the form and
direction of their polity.[3]
So there is a
democratic parallel with indigeneity’s concern for personal and collective
freedom and an obvious theoretical convergence between these two concepts of
power and authority. All encompassing democratic practices limit the power of
elites to exclude. Exclusion is not the point of democracy. But at the same
time the concept can be more narrowly interpreted to restrict the terms of
public engagement in decision-making, even to the point that for minority
indigenous groups assimilation into a culturally homogenous polity is
positioned as an essential and necessary precondition for full democratic
participation. The former Australian Prime Minister, John Howard (1996-2007), developed a powerful assimilationist narrative
to counter growing demands for indigenous self-determination: ‘Son you’re
Australian; that’s enough for anyone to be’[4] became a simple theme of his Prime
Ministership. He was untroubled by the
intellectual conflict between socially conservative emphases on homogeneity and
the liberal emphases on freedom. Reconciliation and assimilation became the
opposite sides of a nationally polarizing debate which contrasted limiting with
expansive democratic interpretations.
Underlying the assimilationist narrative was a normative racism as
‘cultural artefact’,[5]
meaning that it stands to reason that prejudice influences the ends to which
democracy is ordered. But even so it is not true that the modern state is
necessarily ‘a compulsory association which organises domination’.[6]
Democracy, in fact, constrains the capacity of post-colonial states to
dominate, and while the state does monopolise coercive power,[7]
coercion is not always and necessarily negative for indigenous peoples. For example, guaranteed Maori representation in the New Zealand
Parliament and the enactment of settlements to grievances under the Treaty of
Waitangi when simple majority vote is likely to have prevented either in spite
of their foundation in justice and contribution to social stability and
cohesion. In recent Australian history it has been the coercive power of the
judicial system that has imposed incremental developments in indigenous legal
rights on unsympathetic governments. In both cases coercion is justified to
pursue fundamentally just objectives over simple populism. There is consequently pragmatic truth in the
general observation that: ‘While the state is the burden individuals have to
bear to secure their own ends, it is also the basis on which it is possible to
safeguard their claims to equal rights and liberties’.[8] The
limiting factor is that democracy only safeguards the right to make these
claims; it does not guarantee a political order that will ensure indigenous
perceptions of equality and liberty, which are themselves contested.
Liberal
political theory developed to respond to religious diversity. It follows that it
ought to be able to consider the political and constitutional implications of
ethnic diversity. Its purpose is
to mediate rather than to mask difference and to resolve not dismiss
conflicting ideas.
Men have different views on the empirical end of happiness, and what
it consists of, so that as far as happiness is concerned, their will cannot be
brought under any common principle, nor thus under an external law harmonizing
with the freedom of everyone.[9]
Recognising
difference does not counter liberalism’s sacrosanct protection of individual
rights. Individual identity must come from somewhere. It is heavily shaped by
culture and derives meaning from communal relationships. Differences in
political identities contribute to the differences in ideas that democracy is
intended to mediate. The ideas that compete for popular ascendency are not
confined to abstract philosophical positions; they include the simple
proposition that indigenous perspectives ought to be seen and heard in the
wider body politic.
The unity of society and the allegiance of its citizens to their
common institutions rest not on their espousing one rational conception of the
good, but on an agreement as to what is just for free and equal moral persons
with different and opposing conceptions of the good.[10]
Indigeneity’s
concern with collective rights means that it is also inevitably interested in
correcting the effects of colonisation as a serious violation of individual
liberty. Indigeneity gives theoretical expression to the recognition of
differences based on first occupancy. Its interpretation of political rights
evolves in response to its theoretical and political interactions with other
discourses; its potency is a function of its engagement with liberal democracy
as the prevailing internationally accepted framework of state governance. Together
they create opportunities for indigenous peoples to articulate their own
conceptions of justice, and democracy is crafted towards its inclusive
potential. Indigeneity is concerned with differentiation from the wider polity,
but this does not inevitably or necessarily require political separation.
Instead
one of the interesting consequences of the encounter between
liberalism and its colonial past and present might be a more context-sensitive
and multilayered approach to questions of justice, identity, democracy and
sovereignty. The result would be a political theory open to new modes of cultural
and political belonging.[11]
Such a theory
can accord with indigenous aspirations because there need not be any
inconsistency between collective group rights and the sovereignty of the total
polity. Kymlicka’s argument that the paradigm shift from democracy ‘suppressing
to accomodating’ minority ethnic groups in the United States of America has
‘actually played a vital role in consolidating and deepening democracy’[12] can
be translated into indigenous contexts to add to the rationales for guaranteed
indigenous parliamentary representation in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, for
example. In these contexts emphasis on individual rights in isolation from the
collective offers no real prospect for securing comprehensive individual
freedom or the certainty of equal individual influence over the polity.
Held outlines four democratic criteria which would, if applied
consistently and universally, make states more responsive to indigenous
aspirations. Democracy should provide for:
Protection from the arbitrary use of political authority and coercive
power…
The involvement of citizens in the
determination of the conditions of their association through the provision of
their consent in the maintenance and legitimation of regulative institutions…
The creation of the best circumstances for
citizens to develop their nature and express their diverse qualities…
The expansion of economic opportunity to
maximize the availability of resources…[13]
These criteria
arise because ‘the capability of
persons to determine and justify their own actions, with their ability to
determine among alternative political programmes is the ‘core of the modern
liberal democratic project’.[14] Or
as Benhabib proposes: ‘the institutions and culture of
liberal democracies are sufficiently complex, supple, and decentred so as to
allow the expression of difference without fracturing the identity of the body
politic or subverting existing forms of political sovereignty’.[15]
Democracy and
Self-determination
There is a
theoretical link between democracy and self-determination which the state
President, Thabo Mbeki, explained on the tenth anniversary of South African
democracy: ‘South Africa’s next decade will unfold from a script written by and
for South Africans, within a country eager to embrace the continent and the
wider world beyond’.[16] Although
the following decade showed most graphically that the relationship is not a
causal one Mbeki’s aspiration provides two important points of contrast with Fiji. Firstly,
in spite of the rhetoric and the indigenous Fijian majority, Fijian futures are
not unfolding from a script written by and for themselves. Secondly, Fiji’s
inward looking indigenous politics means it cannot embrace the wider world
which is preliminary to the greater self-determination available where indigenous
peoples admit that the aspirations of others may also have a just foundation as
well as pragmatic economic utility.
Self-determination
cannot be reduced to the simplistic wish to overthrow governments on the
assumption that control of the machinery of government necessarily equates to
universal indigenous authority. The Mandela Government (1994-1999) in South
Africa, for example, well understood that internal decolonisation is not simply
a matter of domestic politics. Economic development is preliminary to
indigenous self-determination and political authority which makes non-indigenous
and international capital essential contributors to indigenous aspirations.
In New Zealand,
Maori persuasive authority and capacity to establish terms of engagement on the
basis of non-colonial relationships is strengthened by relatively pragmatic and
inclusive approaches to political relationships. For Fiji, however, there is a desperate
imperative to reconcile indigenous nationalism with harmonious co-habitation.
There is a similar need for stable inter-ethnic relationships, as preliminary
to self-determination in all post-colonial societies. Problematically, in South Africa
When the biggest opposition party (the Democratic Alliance) rails
against transformation as a matter of course and aggressively attacks every
policy of a black government, whatever the merits, South Africa’s politics is in
danger of becoming polarised into ‘white’ verses ‘black’. That is the road to
certain disaster, since so far the abiding character of the democracy has been
its apparent ability to rise above race’.[17]
Economic security
is unattainable in ethnic isolation. Native and Indo-Fijians, black and white
Australians and South Africans, and Maori and Pakeha inter-relate to varying
degrees, but in no case are they completely separate, with no need for
cross-cultural interaction within the nation-state, any more than the
nation-state can exist in isolation from the international community. Even
without recourse to moral considerations there remains a pragmatic connection
between a political order which accommodates Indo-Fijian interests as
preliminary to enhancing opportunities for indigenous self-determination. Yet
as Lawson argues Laisenia Qarase, whose government was deposed in 2006, adopted
a national reconciliation policy which was not conciliatory at all. It required
‘Indo-Fijians reconciling themselves to a form of Fijian paramountcy that works
to subordinate their own interests across a range of goods from access to
agricultural land to education, employment opportunities and business
licences.’[18]
Democracy, Nationalism and
Sovereignty
Indian
immigrants came to Fiji
as indentured labourers because they were desperately poor; they are as much
victims of colonialism as the native Fijians and democracy does not permit
their political exclusion. But on the other hand, how can one justify recourse
to democratic ideas, when democracy is not an indigenous Fijian concept, and
when Fijians had little say in the mass migration of Indians which dramatically
re-shaped the local political order? Even the British Cabinet had accepted, at
the time of independence, that Fijian dominance was just provided that there
were ‘adequate safeguards for all other communities’.[19]
Outwardly, at
least, there is a conflict between Fijian indigeneity’s paramountcy and
liberalism’s individual paramountcy. Alternatively, as Horscroft put it ‘paramountcy
and equality can form a foundation for an inclusive national policy that
respects all its citizens and is attuned to the protection of Indigenous
culture and socio-economic well being’.[20]
Paramountcy, if it is concerned with protecting indigenous land, resources,
cultures and languages and the guaranteed participation of indigenous peoples
in the political community, even to the extent of ensuring an indigenous
majority in the House of Representatives, can be reconciled with non-indigenous
claims to political inclusion. There is, however, an obtuse logic in the
assumption that the rights of others must be subjugated for paramountcy to
prevail as Speight argued in 2000 when he suggested that Indo-Fijian rights
ought to be protected but that did not require or justify their participation
in national governance.[21]
The corollary to
the argument that Fijian independence ought not justify or require the
domination of others is that native Fijians need not accept subjugation to
allow Indo-Fijians to protect their own freedom. Indigeneity need not claim
privilege by taking rights from others, even though it does claim different rights
on the basis of first occupancy. The parallel in South African political
history is the division within the African National Congress (ANC) over whether
whites would be allowed to remain in South Africa once black rule was
restored. The debate was resolved with non-racialism becoming the principle of
the new democratic South
Africa. As the Youth League had argued:
We
take account of the concrete situation in South Africa, we realise that the
different racial groups had come to stay. But we insist that a condition for
interracial peace and progress is the abandonment of white domination, and such
a change in the basic structure of South African society that those relations
which breed exploitation and human misery will disappear. Therefore our goal is
the winning of national freedom for the African people and the inauguration of
a people’s free society where racial oppresssion and persecution will be
outlawed.[22]
Since
independence from Britain
in 1970, national constitutions have strictly protected indigenous Fijian rights,
meaning that ethnic difference is not the sole cause of political unrest. The coups
were motivated by class politics and it was only afterwards that alliances of
convenience were created with indigeneity to seek popular legitimacy. Ethnic
nationalism has been used to legitimise opportunism which has destroyed ordered
participatory government.[23] Bainimarama’s
resolve to ‘clean up’ a ‘corrupt’ indigenous led government in 2006
precipitated that year’s coup. Corruption was not, however, new. Bainimarama
simply reflected the prophetic as well as reflective nature of the Fiji
Times’ comment in 2001 that: ‘Years of Fijian leadership [have] shafted
indigenous people... their own people [have] been robbing them blind’.[24] In
addition the repeated failure of Parliamentary government and the political
marginalisation of the Great Council of Chiefs removed any popular,
institutional or cultural check on state power.
Fijian political
dominance seemed never to translate into real authority, influence and well-being.
Qarase’s was certainly a nationalist government pursuing policies of ‘Fijian
advancement’. But its affirmative action policies, for instance, were ‘characterised
more by play-offs among indigenous elites than a concern to raise standards for
ordinary Fijians’.[25] Indigenous Fijians dominated national politics
and there was always recourse to the political system to protect and promote
native interests. What was missing was a fuller
understanding of democracy and its implications for cultural strength and
economic power in a nation where land is substantially Fijian owned.[26] As
the Fiji Post has suggested
we are the most privileged and most protected indigenous community
in the world. We have had 30 years of indigenous Prime-Ministership for
Fijians; we have had all the permanent secretaries... but what have we done? We
have 84% of the land. But I would say that Fijians are the poorest community
not because of the other communities but because they have not been led by the
people who care about Fijian people.[27]
The 1987
Constitution’s requirement that a native person hold the office of Prime
Minister was based on too narrow a view of the relationship between that office
and fuller political authority. As the Fiji Post noted, the country had
had a non-indigenous Prime Minister for only one of the last thirty years.
Timoci Bavadra, whose government was the first to be forcibly removed in 1987,
was an ethnic Fijian while the limited policy success for indigenous people of
the Rabuka (1992-1999) and Qarase (2000-2001 and 2001-2006) governments
powerfully illustrates the absence of any causal link between an indigenous
Prime Minister and indigenous self-determination.
Parliamentary
democracy disperses authority among the executive, parliament and judiciary, and
no Prime Minister has authority to
the point of being unconditionally free and powerful. Prime Ministerial
authority is also hindered by a multitude of constraints on national
sovereignty so that when indigenous peoples, in whatever jurisdiction, speak of
reclaiming sovereignty it is not the all-encompassing commanding construct that
many imagine. It is not a final and absolute authority. Nor is it ‘natural or
inevitable or immutable’.[28]
Sovereignty ‘was originally an instrument of escape from rule by outsiders,’[29] yet
for many indigenous peoples it has become simultaneously an instrument of
entrapment as it shifted from indigenous
societies to colonial and post-colonial states. It is emancipatory only in so
far as it is located with the people as an all encompassing construct, rather
than vested in some individual or institution from which indigenous peoples are
excluded. If sovereignty belongs to the people it must, in the interests of
cohesion, order and justice, belong to all the people. Exclusion from full and
equal membership of the polity, either by virtue of race or alienation from the
centre of military power also undermines capacity for independent indigenous
political authority.
If sovereignty is ‘popular’ then the populace must be defined either as
an homogenous whole where minority voices are rightly subsumed, or as a body
comprising many parts requiring some political solution to the question of how
these disparate parts ought to share power and authority. The theoretical
engagement of democracy with indigeneity offers one way of thinking about this
question. It suggests that some rearrangement of sovereignty is implicit in the
creation of more inclusive democratic orders while balancing the rights and
expectations of indigenous peoples vis-a-vis all others. Democracy requires
checks on unbridled majoritarian rule meaning that there must be constraints on
popular sovereignty so that one group’s liberty is never at the expense of
another’s.
Democracy is usually concerned with how territorial sovereignty is
exercised. But for indigenous peoples a wider conception of sovereignty is
advantageous; one which includes authority over resources, language and culture
and the institutions which might safeguard these. ‘In
the absence of any alternative, Fijian people may discover the “foreign flower”
of democracy as a political savior’.[30] Even for Fijian nationalists, democracy is only
selectively and hypocritically a ‘foreign flower’. Laisenia Qarase, for
example, has argued that democracy is unsuited to Fiji,[31] yet
in 2006 happily drew on the concept to resist the military coup against his
government. Mahendra Choudry, the country’s only Indo-Fijian Prime Minister
whose government was overthrown in 2000 sought recourse to democracy in defence
of his office, yet accepted a position in the military government after the
2006 coup.
Sovereignty cannot be divided but if the polity is understood as plural
then it can be shared. Indeed, indigeneity challenges
democracy to mediate contested sovereignties. Guaranteed Maori representation in the New Zealand Parliament is
illustrative, while South
Africa and even Fiji have at least attempted to
share sovereignty. In Australia
sovereignty is shared among the tiers of government but, as yet, not in any
substantive way with the indigenous populations. Two simple ways in which
Australia might intertwine indigeneity with democracy’s broad potential is
through guaranteeing indigenous representation at every level of government, or
through the recognition the Commonwealth chooses to accord a national
indigenous representative body. While both options could purposefully enhance
indigenous self-determination the former is likely to make the greater
substantive difference.
There is
presently no electoral incentive for mainstream political parties to court
indigenous votes. There are simply not enough of them to make an appreciable
difference in most electoral districts. This means that indigenous Australians
have recourse only to moral persuasion not electoral strength in pressuring political
parties to treat seriously their concerns. Political parties are not immune to
moral argument but they are more certainly attentive to electoral pragmatism,
courting the votes of those who count in electoral terms over those who do not.
Indigenous peoples require a
guaranteed voice and vote in Parliament to enjoy the full rights of
citizenship. It is a reasonable and fair expectation that they might sit in the
executive and participate in national affairs at the highest level, remembering
especially that policy failure which is the ‘most
significant feature of the relationship’ between governments and indigenous
Australians’[32]
is always a likely outcome of indigenous political exclusion. Guaranteed
representation overcomes the otherwise inevitable distance between the
executive and the indigenous peoples for whom policy is made. Democracy gives indigenous peoples the
reasonable expectation that they will engage in government as participants not
merely as interest groups. Although interest group status does remain
simultaneously important because these groups facilitate the robust yet ordered
contestation of ideas that are the inevitable outcome of different human
identities, which is important ‘because no democracy
ever reaches the point at which justice is simply done, democracies need to
recognize and foster enclaves of resistance.’[33]
Indigeneity is a
legitmate basis for belonging to the modern democracy and the notion of
guaranteed indigenous parliamentary representation confronts limiting
conceptions of liberalism which re-craft the culturally located indigenous
person as an individual citizen of an homogenous polity. It keeps democracy
from distortion, misrepresentation and positioning to exclude.
Denying
collective identities requires that ‘some existing rights have been constructed
on the very exclusion or subordination of others.’[34] When
difference is overlooked one has failed to consider that ‘difference is just
another word for what used to be called pluralism’[35] and
it is only undemocratic insecurities that lead to objections to plurality.
Populist
anti-indigenous sentiment in Australasia
arises in the absence of any clearly thought out position on the legitimacy of
the majority imposing its will on the minority. A medieval understanding of a
majority being ‘more likely to be substantively right than a majority’[36]
prevails in resistance to indigenous claims. This is, however, a simplistic and
divisive approach to power which is better shared according to the common good
and deeper principles of justice. There are grounds in justice for protection
against unbridled majoritarian rule because democracies can in fact ‘produce
outcomes... that are substantively unjust.’[37]
On-going popular support for the abolition of the Maori seats in New
Zealand’s House of Representatives is illustrative of democracy’s capacity to
entrench and even provide popular electoral demand for power to be used to
exclude. Guaranteed indigenous parliamentary
representation does not, however, impinge on the rights of others. Instead, it
secures the right of any group to participate in making decisions that affect
their own livelihoods and for minority indigenous groups provides a political
check on assimilationist pressures.
Everybody ought
to be included in the political life of the state. No one group should always
and necessarily find itself on the losing side. Democracy is intended to be
emancipatory and if it is to offer protection against the misuse of political
power it must make group interests an important concern of the political system
itself. Democracy should also protect and foster active political participation
although this is unlikely if there is systemic favour towards assumptions of
political and cultural homogeneity. So there is an argument for allowing equal
rights to be expressed in cognizance of indigenous peoples’ unique and
historically grounded circumstances, bearing in mind especially that
recognising difference is preliminary to recognising freedom, which is not acultural. Across the world
indigenous peoples do not wish to be part of a cultureless polity so often
presented as political ideal. Free societies ought to be able to accommodate
this wish, which secures social cohesion by giving indigenous peoples grounds
for believing that their value systems have a place in the public realm.[38] Inclusive and participatory understandings of democracy can also
contribute important foundations to self-determination and to indigenous
peoples’ common aspiration to belong in their own terms to the nation state
that has developed in the lands of their ancestors. For indigenous peoples
group autonomy is often preliminary to the individual liberty underpinning
liberal democratic thought. ‘If democracy means rule by the people’, the
determination of public decision-making by equally free members of the
political community, then the basis of its justification lies in the promotion
and enhancement of autonomy, both for individuals as citizens and for the
collectivity’.[39]
Removing the
Maori seats in Parliament would not eliminate Maori political significance.
There is a complex set of relationships giving stability and legitimacy to New Zealand’s
political order and Maori are not so small in number or lacking in moral claim
to be insignificant.[40]
Although, on the other hand, indigenous Australians, are numerically too small
to have great political impact, their just claim to government by
representative government remains and recognising it would add to the moral
legitimacy of the Australian state. Legitimacy is, after all, derived from the system’s acceptance by the
people.
If democracy holds that power belongs inalienably to the people then in Fiji it is a
more likely protector of indigenous interests than unaccountable military
power. Fiji’s deposed governments certainly faced crises
of legitimacy of their own and important weaknesses in democratic arrangements
were exposed. But it remains that
legitimacy requires power to be ‘acquired and exercised according to
established rules.’[41]
Military rule has never been subjected to any test of legitimacy meaning that
it, too, is open to the charge of being a ‘foreign flower unsuited to Fijian
soil’. Further, the separation of executive and judicial powers and civilian
authority over the military is essential to legitimacy. The political order
descends into crisis when these conditions are not met.
Fiji’s experiences provide evidence to support Beetham’s argument that
it is generally erroneous to seek cultural explanations for the breakdown of
democracy in developing countries. Instead ‘there are certain politico-economic
conditions… in which the different requirements of legitimacy come into
conflict with one another, because effective electoral choice can only be
realized at the cost of an intensification of social and political division’.[42] Although
the electoral system enshrined in the Constitution adopted in 1997 was
seriously flawed, Horscroft describes it as established
on ‘an inclusive polity based on fundamental individual equality and
affirmative action principles to realise equality of opportunity’.[43] It
was intended to reduce ethnic conflict but instead the electoral system allowed
the Fiji Labour Party to obtain an absolute Parliamentary majority without
winning a single Fijian seat. The Fiji Labor Party, formed in 1985, was the
first officially non-racial political party, but as its support base remains
disproportionately Indo-Fijian it has, in effect, only added to the
entrenchment of race-based parties as the standard political arrangement.
The limits of democracy
Alley’s
assessment of political tensions between paramountcy and democracy in Fiji in
2000 parallels the outbreak of ethnic violence in KwaZulu-Natal in 2008.
While Speight’s hostage-taking lacked the endorsement from
indigenous Fijians that his backers claimed, the bored, aimless, unemployed,
and poorly educated rallied in number to the clarion of ethnic demagoguery.
This signified an erosion of the respect previously paid to indigenous national
leaders now perceived as corrupt, incompetent, and unable to discharge customary
responsibilities to ordinary Fijians in a market economy under the rule of law.[44]
The
apartheid state’s legacy was also a very poor, uneducated and angry population
making it difficult to acquire the ‘workable moral consensus’ needed to secure
South Africa’s future. As in other post-colonial societies there needs to be
some reconciliation of the aspirations of those previously excluded with the
interests and indeed rights of those traditionally privileged. At the same
time, although indigenous South Africans are a significant majority population
there are institutional weaknesses in the country’s democracy which undermine
the connection between that concept and self-determination.
When the ban on
the liberation movements was lifted in 1990 the ANC began a transformation from
political agitator to political party seeking government of a nation state
morally and economically crippled by its history. The enormity of the
transition shows in the ANCs failure to make significant progress in the
critical areas of economic and social reform. It had no plan
for the practical implementation of anything except donning the
mantle of power after centuries of colonialism and oppression. There was a
strangely naive expectation that the abolition of apartheid in itself would put
an end to black economic deprivation.[45]
Jacob
Zuma’s election to the ANC presidency in 2008, in spite of his alleged
wide-scale corruption, shows that there remains personal and tribal rather than
policy bases to intra-party power relationships. Indeed, its intra-party
democracy is weak and there is no serious alternative government. Substantive
checks on power and ‘accountability, transparency and active engagement with
the people’ do not, therefore, feature strongly in domestic political relationships.
Intra-party
democracy subjects policy decisions to wider scrutiny which is preliminary to ‘the
ability of ordinary... citizens to make decisions for their own good.’[46] As
Gumede argues, if there had been greater internal debate, South Africa
may not have lost 500,000 jobs in five years and if the ARV AIDS drug had been
made available five years earlier thousands of lives might have been saved.[47] Policy
failures of this magnitude inevitably undermine democracy itself.
The less the ANC can offer a convincing and effective strategy for
improving the material situation of the black masses, the more many of the most
wretched and impoverished members of the population are likely to look to
alternative ethnic solutions, which, however retrograde, offer both
psychological comfort and, often, immediate economic relief.[48]
It is, however,
misleading to suggest that ‘those who suffered the worst deprivation under
apartheid also ended up paying the highest price for democracy.’[49]
Aparthied’s legacy remains among the most significant constraints on black
economic and political advancement. Democracy does not explain why the people
who suffered the most under apartheid remain the most disadvantaged. When the
two are compared as if they are equally legitimate alternatives the potential
of one and the evil of the other are diminished. Most importantly, however:
Should a new opposition emerge that is prepared to speak out for
social justice, redistribution and a better lot for the poor, the... ANC could
find itself in real trouble. There is neither an ideological nor a cultural
guarantee that the nation will stand together, and South Africa’s salvation
will lie in a broad nationalism that not only accommodates its diversity, but
addresses the fears and needs of all its citizens.[50]
The absence of
serious opposition negatively impacts upon South Africa’s democratic
functioning. Although Mattison does suggest there may be some ‘unexpected
democracy deepening consequences of one-party dominance’ which mitigate against
the possibility of degeneration ‘into hegemonic one-party rule.’[51] The
argument is that because alternative positions are not meaningfully expressed
by opposition political parties; civil society steps in to fill the void and is
itself strengthened in the process. The Mbeki Government’s (1999-2008) inept
handling of the HIV/AIDS crisis is a case in point. The government was
challenged by a successful civil partnership among churches, trade unions and
the media which ‘held the government to the ideals and values entrenched in,
and protected by, the Constitution.[52] As
the example illustrates, there is much more to democracy than electoral systems
and procedures for the formation of governments. Civil society’s capacity to
influence from outside the legislature is important especially where one
political party dominates to the extent of the ANC:
if citizens are encouraged to see that their participation can make
a substantive difference, they can provide the countervailing power to check
the government until such time as this can be provided by conventional party
politics.[53]
The
debate showed the limits of a politics of indigeneity that is concerned only
with the acquisition of power. But a strong civil society is not a substitute
for an electoral system that ensures a contested political voice for the most
vulnerable.
Democratic Failure
Australia’s stable democracy is conducive to broad conceptions of liberty.
Yet in Australia democracy is widely interpreted as unbridled majoritarian rule
giving the minority indigenous population no moral claim to particular
recognition. Even when apartheid was at its strongest in South Africa there was
always the expectation that the system’s inconsistent logic coupled with
gradually increasing international moral objection would make it unsustainable.
There was always the potential for the Western democratic ideal of one person
one vote to deliver empowerment. Democracy’s prevailing international
acceptance also meant that indigenous South Africans could intellectually align
their cause to a philosophy that others could endorse. In this sense there was
no parallel with the indigenous Australian experience. In Australia exclusion and suppression remain
the legacy of a political order over which indigenous
peoples had no influence or connection and which in many cases offers people
negligible control over even the most basic elements of their day-to-day lives.
Even arguments about the propriety
and form of a national indigenous representative have been couched in exclusive
assumptions of state power and regulation. The
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) which was the primary
national representative indigenous body for fourteen years was abolished by the
government in 2005. In gaining Non-Government Organisation accreditation at the
United Nations[54]
ATSIC had provided an alternative to the distorted picture of indigenous
affairs provided by the official Australian mission in New York, and as its
political voice increasingly diverged from prevailing government policy direction,
it became a voice to be sidelined.
Sanders, among
others, argued that ATSIC should not have been abolished until an alternative ‘representative
arrangement’ was ‘negotiated’ with indigenous Australians.[55] This
view supposed that governments, not indigenous communities, should determine
how they are represented to government. Yet, as well as being elementary to
both citizenship and indigeneity, the representation of indigenous peoples to
governments is preliminary to a well-functioning representative democracy.
Governments constrain independent political expression when they develop then
‘negotiate’ the terms of some citizens’ political engagement. Indigenous Australians ought not therefore wait
for governments to set the boundaries of their participation. Democracy ought
to empower groups of citizens to pursue their common interests balanced only by
the right of other groups to do the same and limited by the requirement that
they not impinge on the rights of others. An independent civil society is an essential
accompaniment to elections and political parties in protecting against tyranny
and in ensuring that the full plurality of political perspectives can be
expressed.
Democracy can
encourage conformity but it can also protect difference depending on how its
fundamental purpose is understood and how its institutions and processes are
ordered. The democratic ideal of a strong civil society creates space for
indigenous political expression and a forum for the contestation of ideas. When civil society functions well across the
entire polity a significant check on power is established. This means that a
national representative indigenous body could be expected to enhance democracy.
But, as the ATSIC experience so pointedly illustrates, it ought to stand apart
from the state if substantive independence capable of contributing to checks on
power is to be assured. ATSICs abolition creates an
opening for indigenous Australians to make a definite statement of
self-determination by strengthening their own representative organisations.
A national
representative organisation is not, however, a bad idea per se. ATSIC
did facilitate indigenous political participation, broadened indigenous
leadership opportunities and strengthened possibilities for the public
expression of indigenous voices. But a new body will not necessarily enhance
democracy or self-determination and has the potential to limit both if all it
does is contain, manage and restrict the nature of national indigenous
political participation or institutionalise ‘conflict in a way that sets limits
on debate.’[56]
During the 1990s
the New Zealand Prime Minister, Jim Bolger, argued for a national Maori
representative body to be established to provide policy advice to the
government. It did not succeed because Maori tribes saw the initiative as more
concerned with meeting the needs of government than with advancing their own
interests. An alternative and still functioning representative model was
developed by the Tainui tribal confederation. The Tainui people elect members
to a parliament, Te Kauhanganui, which is concerned with managing its own
affairs and assets in its own way and for its own self-determining purposes. So
if indigenous Australians desire a new national representative structure it is
best that it is not a statutory creation or it may well contribute to an
assimilationist centralisation of power, rather than to a self-determining
dispersal of power from the state to indigenous communities.
In 2008 the
Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner,
who is independent of the executive, initiated discussion on the establishment
of a new national representative body. The Commissioner’s discussion paper
raises the possibility of the body not being a government entity but does not
commit itself to that course of action, even thought it notes the importance of
such a body being able to work credibly with each tier of government – implying
that independence from the Commonwealth would be desirable. The paper also
makes the significant observation that although a government entity ought to
have the advantage of ‘privileged access to government’, this was not the ATSIC
experience. Privileged access, if it were to occur, could come at a very high
cost for a body that requires independence to establish its own authority and
to provide an unhindered indigenous public voice. A further perspective
considered by the Commissioner is that an indigenous representative body might
have a formal role in Senate Estimates committees because their ‘abilty to call
the government and bureaucracy to account is something that many Indigenous
peoples would like to emulate’.’[57]
Given the constraints of contemporary Australian politics this could provide a
more inclusive and accountable democratic form. But on the other hand it masks
one of the most fundamental failures of Australian democracy – that there is
not a single indigenous Senator able to speak and vote as of right on an
Estimates Committee.
A further manifest failure of democracy and civil society
in recent Australian history was the Commonwealth government’s emergency
military intervention to counter widespread child sexual abuse in indigenous
communities in the Northern Territory.
The desperate dysfunction of these communities was a product of political
exclusion, built on paternalism and secured by successive state policy choices
which made welfare dependence the only real life style expectation for large
numbers of people. Poverty, poor housing, health and education also seriously
curtail the freedoms that democracy is intended to foster. The democratic
principle of state rule by the peoples’ consent has never applied substantively
to indigenous Australia which has never had formal representation in any of the
country’s parliaments, nor been able to organise a collective independent
political voice. On the other hand, liberal democratic justification for the
Howard Government’s intervention into indigenous communities could, perhaps, be
found in the description of Bentham’s view that:
Tied to the advocacy of a ‘minimal state’,
whose scope and power need to be strictly limited, there is a strong commitment
to certain types of state intervention: for instance, intervention to regulate
the behavior of the disobedient, and to reshape social relations and
intstitutions if, in the event of the failure of laissez faire, the
greatest happiness of the greatest number is not achieved.[58]
If individual autonomy is to be upheld
government interference in people’s lives ought to be minimal and truly aimed
at enhancing self-determining capacity, in contrast with the historical
intrusion which is indefensible in liberal terms. There is consequently an
active but tightly focused role for governments which is at odds with
conventional neo-liberal ideas about limited government.
Conclusion
Democracy is a
‘foreign flower’ to indigenous peoples in post-colonial societies. But that
does not, of itself, make this prevailing internationally accepted theoretical
basis to ordered and representative government unsuited to realising indigenous
needs and aspirations. Indeed for majority indigenous populations in
jurisdictions such as Fiji and South Africa it offers a path to reclaiming
traditional authority. Yet, in spite of a massive indigenous majority South
Africa has struggled to make democracy serve its people by alleviating poverty,
reducing unemployment or negative health outcomes, or improving housing and
educational levels. Political power is no longer seriously contested and the
dominant ANCs own intra-party democracy is too weak to provide serious policy
checks on government, meaning that democracy does not fully serve its representative,
inclusive and emancipatory purpose. Nor does it serve this purpose for minority
indigenous populations, in Australia and New Zealand for example, if it is understood
as demanding unbridled majoritarian rule.
Notwithstanding
these objections democracy, broadly interpreted, still finds intellectual
convergence with the politics of indigeneity, which aims principally to make
the state responsive to indigenous claims and conceptions of justice. Crafting
an inclusive national polity is central to this aim and to the re-balancing of
political authority to give indigenous peoples greater authority over the
things that are important to them.
The politics of
indigeneity is concerned with the recognition of difference based on first
occupancy. Like democracy it aims to secure freedom and liberty, but sees
protection of group rights as preliminary to these wider goals. Democracy and
indigeneity emphasise separate but intertwining conceptions of power. Democracy
serves indigeneity by potentially providing a way of mediating power
relationships and reconciling indigenous nationalism with the harmonious
sharing of national sovereignty, which short of expelling non-indigenous
populations, is the only means indigenous peoples have of securing
self-determination. At the same time, democracy is served by indigeneity’s
constant reminder that it ought to be interested in the liberty and
representation of all not just some people. In this way Fijian
paramountcy can be reconciled with Indo-Fijian participation in national
governance, and indigenous Australians can construct an argument for
substantive inclusion in the country’s parliaments, perhaps in similar fashion
to the representational model enjoyed by Maori in New Zealand. It is where
narrow and limiting individualist conceptions of democracy are maintained to
restrict indigeneity that democracy becomes injurious to indigenous
aspirations. Democracy ought to be an all-encompassing inclusive concept or it
excludes some people from full and equal membership of the polity which in turn
limits indigenous political authority. But so too does unbridled military
power, which is at least as foreign to Fiji as democracy.
[2] Fiji Court of Appeal, Republic
of Fiji v. Prasad (Unreported, 2000).
[3] David Held, Democracy
and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), p.145.
[4] Judith Brett, ‘Relaxed
and Comfortable: The Liberal Party’s Australia.’ The Australian Quarterly Essay (Melbourne: Schwartz Publishing Pty,
2005), p. 25.
[5] Roberta James, ‘Rousseau’s
Knot: The Entanglement of Liberal Democracy and Racism’, in Gillian Colishaw
and Barry Morris, eds, Race Matters: Indigenous Australians and ‘Our’
Society, (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1997), pp. 53-75 at p. 57.
[6] Max Weber, ‘Legitimacy,
Politics and the State’, in William Connolly, ed, Legitimacy and the State,
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), pp. 32-62 at p. 37.
[7] Weber, ‘Legitimacy, Politics and
the State’, p. 37.
[8] Held, Democracy and
the Global Order, p. 145.
[9] Immanuel Kant in H.
Reiss, ed, Kant’s Political Writings, (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1970) pp. 73-74.
[10] John Rawls, ‘Social
Unity and Primary Goods’, in A. Sen and B. Williams, eds, Utilitarianism
and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1982), pp. 159-185 at p. 160.
[11] Duncan Ivison, Paul
Patton, and Will Sanders, ‘Introduction’, in Duncan Ivison, Paul Patton, and
Will Sanders, eds, Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 1-21 at p. 21.
[12] Will Kymlicka, ‘American
Multiculturalism and the `Nations Within’, in Duncan Ivison, Paul Patton, and
Will Sanders, eds, Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 216-36 at p. 227.
[13] Held, Democracy and
the Global Order, p. 150.
[14]
Held, Democracy and the Global Order, p. 149.
[15] S Benhabib, ‘Introduction’,
in S Benhabib, ed, Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of
the Political (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 3-18 at p.
5.
[16]
Thabo Mbeki “Introduction’ in F Sicre, ed, South Africa at 10: Perspectives by
Political, Civil and Business Leaders, (Cape Town: Human and Rousseau,
2004), pp. 1-15 at p. 13.
[17] William Mervin Gumede, Thabo
Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2005)
p. 254.
[18] Stephanie Lawson, ‘Nationalism
versus Constitutionalism in Fiji’; Nations and Nationalism, 10 (2004), 519-38, p. 535.
[19] Eleanor
Emery in Robert Norton, ‘Seldom a Transition with Such Aplomb: From
Confrontation to Conciliation on Fiji’s
Path to Independence’; Journal of Pacific
History 39, (2004), 147-62, p. 163.
[20] Virginia Horscroft, The
Politics of Ethnicity in the Fiji Islands: Competing Ideologies of Indigenous
Paramountcy and Individual Equality in Political Dialogue (MPhil,
University of Oxford, 2002), p. 2.
[21] Greg Fry, ‘Political
Legitimacy and the Post-Colonial State in the Pacific: Reflections on Some
Common Threads in the Fiji and Solomon Island Coups’, Pacifica Review 12
(2000), 295-304, p. 299.
[22] African National
Congress, ANC Youth League Basic Policy Document (1948 [cited 19 August 2008); available from
http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/ancylpol.html.
[23] Lawson, ‘Nationalism
versus Constitutionalism in Fiji’, p. 536.
[24] Fiji Times, 7
April 2001.
[25] Lawson, ‘Nationalism
versus Constitutionalism in Fiji’, p. 536.
[26]
Horscroft, The Politics of Ethnicity in the Fiji Islands, p. 4.
[27] Fiji Post, 24
August 2001.
[28] Robert Jackson, ‘Sovereignty
in World Politics: A Glance at the Conceptual and Historical Landscape’, in
Robert Jackson, ed, Sovereignty at the Millenium (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers, 1999), pp. 9-34 at p. 10.
[30] Lal, ‘Making History,
Becoming History: Reflections on the Fijian Coups and Constitutions’, p. 166.
[31] Henry Srebrnik, ‘Ethnicity,
Religion, and the Issue of Aboriginality in a Small Island State. Why Does Fiji
Flounder?’; The Round Table (2002), 187-210, p. 210.
[32] Ian Cook, Government
and Democracy in Australia (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 239.
[33] Jane Mansbridge, ‘Using
Power/Fighting Power: The Polity’, in S Benhabib, ed, Democracy and
Difference. Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1996) pp, 46-66 at p. 58.
[34] C Mouffe, ‘Democracy,
Power and the "Political"‘ in S Benhabib, ed, Democracy and
Difference. Contesting the Boundaries of the Political (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 245-56 at p. 247.
[35]
Bonnie Honig, ‘Difference, Dilemmas,
and the Politics of Home’, in S Benhabib, ed, Democracy and Difference:
Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1996), pp. 257-77 at p. 257.
[36]
Mansbridge, ‘Using Power/Fighting Power: The Polity’, p. 53.
[37] Mansbridge, ‘Using
Power/Fighting Power: The Polity’, p. 57.
[38] Dominic O’Sullivan, ‘Keeping
Maori Seats Ensures Democracy Provides Fair Deal’, New Zealand Herald 12
February 2007.
[39] Held, Democracy and
the Global Order, pp.
145-46.
[40] O’Sullivan, 2007.
[41] David Beetham, The
Legitimation of Power (London: Macmillan, 1991), p. 121.
[42] Beetham, The
Legitimation of Power, p. 171.
[43]
Horscroft, The Politics of Ethnicity in the Fiji Islands, p. 4.
[44] Roderic Alley, ‘The Coup
Crisis in Fiji’, Australian Journal of Political Science 35 (2000),
515-21, p. 519.
[45] Gumede, Thabo Mbeki
and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC, p. 67.
[46] Gumede, Thabo Mbeki
and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC, p. 305.
[47] Gumede, Thabo Mbeki
and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC, p. 307.
[48] Gumede, Thabo Mbeki and
the Battle for the Soul of the ANC, p. 67.
[49] Gumede, Thabo Mbeki
and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC, p. 95.
[50] Gumede, Thabo Mbeki
and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC, p. 225.
[51] Heidi Mattison, ‘Beyond
Party Politics: Unexpected Democracy-Deepening Consequences of One-Party
Dominance in South Africa,’ Theoria, (2004), 1-30, p. 1.
[52] Mattison, ‘Beyond Party
Politics: Unexpected Democracy-Deepening Consequences of One-Party Dominance in
South Africa‘,
p. 10.
[53]
Mattison, ‘Beyond Party Politics: Unexpected Democracy-Deepening Consequences
of One-Party Dominance in South Africa,’ p. 26.
[54] Will Sanders, ATSICs
Achievements and Strengths: Implications for Institutional Reform (Centre
for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, The Australian National University,
August 2004), p. 2.
[55] Sanders,
ATSICs Achievements and Strength, p. 1.
[56] Milton Fisk, The
State and Justice: An Essay in Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989), p. 171.
[57] T Calma, Building a
Sustainable National Indigenous Representative Body (Sydney: Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, 2008), p. 99.
[58] Held, Democracy and
the Global Order, pp.
10-11.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment