August 31, 2007

New Zealand's remote Tokelau has virtually no infrastructure but, as Michael Field reports, Wellington bureaucrats are embarrassed at finding themselves as colonial masters.

New Zealand's last colony has a population the size of a provincial high school, no airport, harbour or capital, so it is a mystery the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT) wants it to become independent.

   Last year recalcitrant 1153 Tokelauans refused to accept MFAT blandishments, voting against self-government. They are to be made to vote again in October.

   Auckland University anthropologist Judith Huntsman and Tokelauan educationist Kelihiano Kalolo in a new book, The future of Tokelau; Decolonising Agendas 1975-2006, reveal MFAT was acutely embarrassed and want to prove their anti-colonists credentials to the United Nations.

   Tokelau's three atolls, 480 kilometres north of Samoa, has been a colony for 80 years. It's one of 16 non-self governing territories monitored by the UN's Decolonisation Special Committee (the Committee of 24 or C24).

   Tokelau is the only territory of the 16 even close to self-government and C24 has declared the "second international decade for the eradication of colonialism". Its "crowning achievement" is supposedly Tokelau's independence in 2010 - even if the people don't want it.

   "Tokelau had truly assumed a wider significance in the Committee's eyes than its area and population warranted," the new book says.

   Huntsman and Kalolo chart how Tokelau was administered by Island Affairs Department which was closed down and in 1975 MFAT was given charge of the three islands.

   New Zealand's High Commissioner in Apia at the time, Paul Cotton, was despatched north where he was appalled at the seating arrangements. He was in a chair behind a table draped with the New Zealand flag while faipule or representatives sat on mats on the ground.

   At the time the regular sailings to Tokelau were aboard a comfortable Nauruan passenger-freighter, Cenpac Rounder. Cotton in a cable told Wellington "every future sailing of the Cenpac Rounder should be used to bring more members of the Ministry to our first and last colonial outpost."

   The faipule were "restless" and complained of "racial discrimination" by Wellington. They threatened to appeal for help from the United States and Japan.

   "The accusation and threat É could not have been better designed to cause alarm at the Ministry," the book said.

   A discussion paper was drawn up and it was decided in Wellington that Tokelau's political evolution would not need a constitution or a complex act of self-determination, it would just happen.

   Wellington diplomats were worried at C24 inspection of Tokelau with the likelihood of a negatively worded report at the General Assembly.

   Cotton comforted them by saying that the upcoming 1976 visiting mission would be satisfactory as they would find no expatriate presence in the administration "in fact no expatriate presence at all other than three boozy building overseers and two well-meaning but round-the-bend education officer families."

   While Cotton was describing Tokelau as "the most beautiful place on earth" New Zealand's diplomats in New York were warning the C24: "life in the Tokelaus is a constant and unremitting struggle for survival on coral atolls only marginally fit for human habitation."

   The 1976 UN mission was made up of diplomats from Tanzania, Iran and Tunisia who were frightened at being so far out at sea.

   "UN protocol requiring a UN car pennant to accompany the delegates was compromised by the want of any vehicles in Tokelau, so the pennant was attached to a bamboo fishing pole and carried aloft before the visitors."

   A 1981 UN mission had diplomats from the Ivory Coast, Yugoslavia and Fiji.

   "Upon their return from Tokelau, they seemed similarly naive, indeed rather stunned and their questions were inane," Huntsman said.

   "The chairman, though fluent in English, insisted on speaking French at all meetings; so in Tokelau interchanges were exceedingly tedious: the chairman's French translated into English by a Belgian interpreter, then into Tokelauan, and then the process reversed when Tokelauan was spoken."

   The authors note that no New Zealand or UN official "has ever understood, or let alone spoken, Tokelauan".

   MFAT used to appoint senior diplomats near retirement as Tokelau administrator. MFAT secretary Graham Ansell got the job in 1990. He had never been there and issued instructions on a trip to Apia.

   The book says he was "an authoritative Wellington bureaucrat who had no comprehension of the realities of Tokelau". The islanders who met him found him "overbearing if not ignorant".

   While Britain and the United States had stopped cooperating with C24, New Zealand wanted to stay in with them. The authors said C24 had achieved very little "while at the same time it continued to chastise the remaining administering powers and seemed not to appreciate that some dependencies remaining on its list were probably happy as they were."

   But the committee was revitalised in 1991, committed to ending colonialism by the beginning for the 21st Century.

   New Zealand's UN diplomats became angry at Tokelau for wanting to stay part of the country and irritated at MFAT's head office complacency."

   "Member States display increasing impatience with the persistence of colonialism," said one cable back to Wellington, "especially as the (General Assembly's) target date for its eradication will not be met. NZ will enter the new millennium as one of the last remaining colonialists countries, which hardly seems fitting."

   The pressure is on to push Tokelau out by 2010.

   The authors note Tokelauans in the past they have not been asked about issues that affect them.

   They questioned the validity of the referendum last year and coming up, suggesting it lacked integrity by being forced through again.

   "They intend to repeat the basically flawed procedure, using the same flawed rationale, in order to obtain the outcome that they and New Zealand desire."

   "It is not an honest act of self-determination.

   "Rather, it is the promotion of one particular option by those who have an undisclosed interest in the success of that option," the book says.

Copyright: Michael Field