Reforming the leasing and the use of agricultural land in Fiji

3. INDENTURED LAND – THE CAUSE OF THE

LANDOWNERS’ EXPLOITATION

In the previous section (Section 2), it was noted that agricultural land rents in Fiji are very low both absolutely and relatively. Indeed, on both counts they are many orders of magnitude below that in any other country for which the author was able to find data. While these low rents have proved an absolute windfall to tenants, for landowners, however, they have amounted to wholesale exploitation.

But what are the causes of this exploitation? How is it that landowners have been so victimised when the NLTB is supposed to act in their interests, and, until this year, post independence Fiji has always had Fijian governance?

A major part of the problem relates to the fact that the provisions of ALTA, and before that, the Agricultural Landlord and Tenant Ordinance (ALTO), often prevented the NLTB from properly acting in a trustee capacity for the landowners – which is why the NLTB quite naturally wants ALTA abolished. But apart from this legislative straightjacket, it has to be said that those charged with advancing the interests of landowners have not been doing their homework. And this applies not just to the NLTB. Fijian politicians and the BLV have not been nearly as assertive or successful in promoting general Fijian interests as the Indian politicians and labour leaders have been in promoting tenant interests, as noted in the previous section.

But over-riding these issues, is a hidden and surprising cause of the land problems that has served decisively to shape current tenure legislation. In order to understand this underlying cause of the land problems we have to revisit the country’s colonial past.

Both before and after Cession, European settlers were after Fijian land in order to pursue a variety of agricultural enterprises including cotton and later sugar. And sugar, of course, proved ultimately to be the only successful plantation crop. The Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR) emerged as the dominant sugar producer by the end of the nineteenth century and the sole producer after 1926. It leased huge tracts of the best Fijian land and purchased much freehold title. Of course, to produce sugar it needed not just land, but labour. Fijian labour proved unavailable, the Fijian population still collapsing from introduced disease, the chiefs unwilling to release young men for the colonial government’s enterprises, and commoners seeing no sense in toiling in the fields for a monetary pittance that could buy them nothing the village could not produce for much less effort. And so in order to obtain plantation labour the colonial government brought in indentured workers from India, starting in 1879.

The circumstances surrounding indenture have exercised a continuing domination over local Indian thought, historical research, political activism, and indeed mythology. The core of the indenture system, which was, and remains, so resented by the Indian community, consisted of a contract between worker and employer (the colonial government underwriting the CSR) which essentially gave the employer exclusive rights over the worker’s labour (and, to a degree, his non-working hours) for a period of five years. The resentment aroused by this bargain developed naturally from the three primary characteristics of the indenture contract.

First, during the contract (indenture) period, workers were not free to use their labour as, when, and how they wanted – they were always at the CSR’s beck and call. Second, workers were exploited by being paid a wage that did not reflect their economic contribution to sugar production – they remained poor while the company and colonial coffers prospered. Third, the workers, being uneducated and ill informed, were not aware of the full implications of the indenture contract. Often, they were pressured into agreeing to the indenture contract when they would not have done so had they known the full measure of what it entailed. Of course, workers were also physically abused, though this was not specific to the indenture system, but was a general component of the workers’ lot in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Of the three ingredients of the indenture system, exploitation was undoubtedly the major grievance. Had the indentured labourers been paid European wage levels, or more, and been treated accordingly, in all likelihood the Indian community today would fondly celebrate its indentured past.

The recruitment of indentured labour was terminated by the British colonial government in India in 1916, and current contracts of indenture were cancelled by the colonial government in Fiji in 1920. This development served to create a potential labour shortage for the CSR. Also, the end of indenture gave Indians in Fiji the confidence to demand greater freedom and higher wages, as indeed they showed in 1920 with a willingness to use industrial action to achieve these goals. Faced with this, the CSR needed a strategy both to increase the effective supply of labour effort and to discharge the incentive to strike. The solution chosen by the CSR was to abolish the plantation system, subdivided its lands into 4 ha plots, invite the Indian labourers to sub-lease these plots, and run them as independent, small-scale family farms. The theory was that the extra effort and motivation that predictably would be forthcoming from free, independent farmers would more than make up for the inability to further recruit indentured workers. Equally, it would obviate the need for the CSR to pay the higher wage rates it was being forced to pay the now free labourers employed on its estates. This fundamental change in business practice marked the birth of the current small leasehold cane farming system.

Under the small leasehold system, the demand for Fijian land now had new voices. Alongside the CSR, which had been arguing that its long-term profitability could best be served by the permanent alienation of leased native land, the Indian smallholders, their union and political representatives, and indeed the government in India, were also demanding land security. The economy too depended on sugar revenues and colonies must turn a profit. And so the pressure mounted for Fijians to accommodate these demands, for it was now in the national interest of the country to ensure the full and proper utilisation of land. Ratu Sukuna echoed the national interest argument in his selling of the NLTB concept in 1936. Equally, he emphasised the prevailing reality that unless Fijians accepted the idea of the NLTB, over which they were to have control, the colonial government would introduce direct and much stronger controls over native and leased land. And so Fijians, always ready to make sacrifice for their country, eventually agreed with the suggestions of how they may serve the national interest as it was presented to them: they assented to the concept even though few knew the full import of what was happening. Henceforth, discretion over the right to lease was removed from the individual mataqalis and invested with the NLTB. And leasing, in turn, was further and decisively influenced by colonial policy and the legislation governing leasing obligations between the NLTB and the thousands of smallholder tenants – ALTA being but the latest version.

It is this precise set of historical circumstances that served to create the conditions by which native Fijian landowners were exploited.

The end of the indenture of labour, which marked the beginning of smallholder farming, did not mark the end of the indenture system. The principle and the practice of indenture were simply shifted on to land.

Sugar profits and colonial finances required exploitation and the instrument of exploitation was indenture. But once labour became emancipated and demanded both land security and greater shares of sugar revenues, there was no choice but to shift the burden of indenture on to land. And the primary instrument of land’s indenture has been the circumscription of the NLTB by ALTA legislation.

INDENTURED LAND, THAT, AND THAT ALONE, IS THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE LANDOWNERS’ EXPLOITATION

Lest anyone doubt the reality of this, consider the three principles of indenture and see how they relate to land:

Principle 1. Landowners are not free to use their land, as, when, and how they want. Since 1940, not only has exclusive control over native land been removed from the owning mataqalis and been invested with the NLTB, but the discretion of the NLTB in acting in a trustee capacity for the landowners has been decisively constrained, initially by colonial policy and then by the overtly pro-tenant legislation, ALTO and ALTA.

Principle 2. Landowners are exploited by being paid rentals that do not reflect the economic contribution of land to sugar or other agricultural production. As mentioned earlier, landowners are receiving a rate of return on their land that bears no resemblance to market value. They remain poor while the users of their land have prospered comparatively.

Principle 3. Landowners were, and many still are, ill informed on the full implications of leasing contracts. Many have no idea of what they could be getting, or their rights and responsibilities. Overt threats, the national interest argument, and patriotism for noqu vanua were used to pressure the BLV and landowners into agreeing to a complex legislative framework governing leasing contracts when they would not have done so had they known what ultimately it entailed.

In short, the systematic exploitation of landowners that has been witnessed over the last two generations and more can be traced to an inability of Fijian leadership to wield the kind of political power that capital and labour were able to muster to serve their interests. For the colonial government, investing Fijians with nominal land ownership was enough of a concession. Confronted by the demands from capital and labour for land security, and for maintained or greater economic returns, officialdom followed the path of least resistance. They effectively indentured Fijian land for the benefit of the other groups. And thus it remains today.

The cumulative effects of land’s indenture have been to precipitate the widespread desire of mataqalis to be free individually to decide the disposition of their lands. On top of this, the nation has witnessed manifold pernicious economic and social effects that have flowed directly from ALTO and ALTA. And these effects, ultimately, are as damaging to the tenant as to the landowner. These effects will be discussed in Section 4 below.

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