by John Robinson
I have written an article on New Zealand apartheid. I sent it to the Northland Age, with the note: “I, as many others, have become increasingly concerned as New Zealand has moved to separate identity, together with the frequent label of racism put on those who call for equality. I have prepared a note, a short article, addressing this often neglected question; it is attached. Would you consider this for the Northland Age? I note that you encourage, and print, differing points of views and the debate that follows.”
The Editor, Peter Jackson, replied promptly that he would publish it in an e-mail of 3 March 2021. A day later, 4 March 2021, he phoned me to tell me that the article would no longer be published.
They had recently published an article by Michael Basset, which met with criticism and was withdrawn from their online publication under instructions from the paper’s owners as ‘not fit to publish’ – this has since been published on Waikanae Watch (‘New Zealand’s modern cultural cringe… racism on a grand scale’). This was followed by instructions to the Editor to forward any such material higher up the organisation’s chain of control for vetting, establishing a censorship system that removed the choice from the Editor (destroying any semblance of editorial independence and freedom of the press). My article was also deemed ‘not fit to publish’ — he had the decency and courtesy to phone with the news.
He mentioned that, as one of the few papers ready to carry divergent points of view, they receive letters from all parts of New Zealand. Peter Jackson is well known to many of us as an editor (one of very few) who will publish informed opinion that challenges the current dominant and dogmatic conventional wisdom. But he has been nobbled. We must speak elsewhere, and that article is presented as a companion to this note.
Apartheid, New Zealand style
by John Robinson
This article has been judged not fit to publish by the management of the New Zealand Herald, when overturning the decision of the Editor of the Northland Age to put it in the paper that he (supposedly) edits.
Acceptance of New Zealand law demands a belief in race, together with a willingness to accept apartheid with separation into members of “the Maori race” and other New Zealanders. Much of New Zealand’s law and system of government are based on that division.
This is clearly and unequivocally stated, in the Māori Affairs Amendment Act 1974, where a Maori is defined as “a person of the Maori race of New Zealand; and includes any descendant of such a person”.
Based on that definition, we have separation into two different peoples – with special seats in Parliament, special wards in much local Government, separate rights such as access to the Waitangi Tribunal, and much more. We are two people.
That definition makes no sense unless those who wrote it, and those who follow it, believe in the existence of the Maori race. That is, a belief, as members of a cult, in the outmoded and disgraceful concept of race and racial separation which is written into law. There can be no clearer definition of national racism, with the resulting apartheid in treatment and rights.
At times of crisis (terrorist attack, pandemic), the Prime Minister has proclaimed, with a straight face, “we are one people”, “we are all in this together”. What a massive contradiction! In this topsy-turvy, through-the-looking-glass land, those who have called for equality as truly one people have been labelled ‘racist’ – an evident contradiction fundamental to this distorted ideology of race. But that belief – that racism is needed to overcome racism – is so deeply ensconced that no logical argument or set of facts moves supporters of difference and the Treaty industry away from their dogma.
What then of the Treaty of Waitangi?
First, it must be said, if some national document or custom says we are two races and proclaims racism, it must be repudiated. No nation should accept inherited racism. That was not so in South Africa, where apartheid was faced and overcome. Nor in the USA where much progress has been made, and is continuing, with an ongoing call for equality – not separate rights.
The Treaty of Waitangi presents no such problem; it is a strong, unequivocal statement of equal rights, of one people, all as British subjects. There is no separation in the Treaty, no race. Indeed, there is no ‘Maori’. Rather there is reference to ‘maori’, the common people, all of us.
One positive step would be to turn away from the recent rewriting of the Treaty, back to the original and our common citizenship in a unified nation. And then to work through the unravelling of apartheid, ending separate Maori seats in Parliament and separate wards in local government, closing the Waitangi Tribunal (which after 42 increasingly disruptive years is well past its used-by date), and removing race-based laws.
In parallel, historical writings and education must be freed from the straightjacket of distorted politically-directed accounts, so that we can all see the glorious story of the meeting of peoples, with successes to celebrate as well as conflicts to remember (among Maori before 1840 and between different movements after the formation of the nation).
Well, as usual as in his many books ,the brilliant John Robinson ,pulls all the complex pieces together and makes a concise rendering of the sad state of apartheid troubled NZ. If we are not able to be one class of citizenship, conflict and bloodshed awaits our ignorance down the flawed social pathway ofdefining us by ethnicity.
It must be wondered, why it is that the European and English-speaking Liberal Democracies – the British Dominions – are artificially inflating the prestige of minorities within their populations?
If one looks at History, the origins of most of these minorities are products of European Imperialism. Of all the Empires of the Past; the Chinese, Mughal, Persian, Greek, Roman, and such as the Inca in South America, none advanced the populations of the world as has done European Civilization.
The whole of mankind has benefitted from European research and invention; Penicillin, blood transfusion, organ transplants, cures for cancer, tuberculosis, vaccines for a variety of diseases. Syphilis and gonorrhoea, tuberculosis, Ebola, malaria, yellow fever are under control. Research into tropical diseases have enabled the world population to multiple exponentially, coupled with advances in hygiene, Pasteurization and food-production.
Other inventions are electricity, telegraph, X-ray, DNA, nuclear power, transportation; diesel-powered ships, the railway engine, motor cars and heavy vehicles, aeroplanes, rockets into space, satellites, computers and mobile telephones. They brought to light universes beyond our own, and so much more.
European inventions and intellectual achievements have been carried around the globe as never before, enriching the lives of distant populations. Their sons and daughters travel to attend Western universities, and thousands of their citizens migrate to the western world for the benefits to be found therein.
The institutions that monitor international affairs; the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, the Court of International Justice, International Monetary Fund, the agencies that alleviate suffering in stricken regions, i.e., the Red Cross, are all Western creations.
Woke – and its vanguard of Vandal shallow-thinkers – lacking depth of understanding of History, illogically believe that Colonialism was evil. However, Colonialism – while not without its faults – was more beneficial that not. I was the conduit along which all Western benefits flowed to the peoples who benefited most, and brought about the mingling of cultures, which Woke claims to advance.
‘Evil Colonialism’ is linked by ‘Wokiness’, with the Black Slave-Trade. ‘Black Slavery’ was propagated by conquering African tribes themselves, who sold their captives to traders. Europeans outlawed the slave-trade nearly two-hundred years ago.
Travelling the same route and accompanying the generating of ‘Enlightenment’ knowledge, came democracy which provides the rights that Wokiness would not otherwise enjoy. The Wokites only do what they do today because they benefitted from the things against which they protest.
The only reason for the elevation of minorities – providing them with advantages that they have not earned for themselves – is to give them some pride, for in the majority of cases, they have contributed nothing to the total advancement of humanity.
This tendency among generally well-meaning people to state that the NZ and South Africa situations are analogous, with reference to the much-maligned word ‘apartheid’, spits on the graves of thousands, including 20,000 women and children who died in concentration camps from typhus.
1. The Afrikaners settled a land that was devoid of people, in attempting to find a place where they could live in freedom according to their folkways. They did not ask to be incorporated into the British empire, and fought vigorously to defend their independence. In NZ many tribes, without any conception of a common identity, implored Britain to intervene and establish British Law for their own protection from their own savage tribalism.
2. Maori land was bought at considerable generosity, with payment given to multiple claimants of ownership, in a mess the Maori themselves acknowledged to be one of chaos, in a continual state of flux.. In SA British forces invaded Afrikaner land at the behest of mining interests, resulting in the Anglo-Boer wars.
3. The architects of apartheid (separate development; literally – apart-ness), the Nationalist Party, in alliance with the SA Labour Party assumed government as the result of the brutal manner by which the miners’ revolt on the Rand in 1922 was suppressed by the Smuts Government. The revolt had occurred because of the efforts of the mining monopolists to use Black labour against the Afrikaner. Apartheid has its origins in the fight for social justice against rapacious monopolists.
4. The destruction of apartheid remained a prime aim of monopoly capitalism, working in conjunction with Marxists, as is often the case. Mandela gave his assurance at Davos that he would pursue a policy of privatization and globalization, and the parastatals or state owned enterprises developed under the Afrikaners were sold off to international business,
5. The modern notion that ‘race’ is a false construct, and that individuals can be shaped into economic automatons through the impress of environment, a 19th C. doctrine that again sees economic liberalism and Marxism in accord, served as the basis for undermining apartheid and forming what Harry Oppenheimer of the Anglo-American Corp, and his business and political allies (i.e. Progressive Party) promoted as an expanding Black market and labour force.
In New Zealand as in other countries (namely USA) we practice separatism by calling people either Maori, European, PI or Asian/Indian. In the USA it is worst as you are either African American, indigenous American or American. In reality in New Zealand, we are all one people regardless of ethnic background and are entitled to celebrate our background in traditional ways. There must however also then be democratic representation within our governance structure and the concept of handing 50% of the governance to 15% of the population is abhorrent. Until we call ourselves New Zealanders or Kiwis then this separatism will continue to exist. History tells us we are all immigrants here, some just longer than others.