If there’s one thing I cannot remain silent about, it’s racism – especially the kind that hides behind the masks of tradition and protectionism.
No matter where we live, racism remains a persistent, painful, and heartbreaking reality. But when it becomes institutionalised and woven into a nation’s very governance – it’s like a cancer, eating away at the very heart and soul of a people and nation.
I speak not from theory, but from lived experience.
I grew up in a Fiji where race defined everything: our status, our rights, our voice, and even our worth. I still remember the sting of racist taunts – words that cut deep, though they left no visible scars.
At the time, we didn’t have the language to name it. No one called it “bullying” or “harassment.” But that’s exactly what it was – relentless, systemic racism entrenched by colonial bureaucrats who classified us by colour and culture, not by character.
As a child, I was told, “Go back to your country.” But what country? I was born here. My parents were born here. Fiji was and is our only home. And yet, I was made to feel like a foreigner in my own country. Not by accident, but by the design of a colonial construct that divided us by race, class, and privilege.
At first, we didn’t understand. Children rarely do. We played together – iTaukei, Indo-Fijian, Chinese, part-European, European, and others. Our friendships weren’t coloured by race. But the system made sure we knew our “place.” We were separated along carefully maintained racial lines: different schools, different clubs, different sports associations.
Places like the Royal Suva Yacht Club, the Defence Club, and the Fiji Club were strictly for “Whites Only.” So were the Suva Grammar School and even the public swimming pool. I still recall being invited by a Sea Scouts friend to go sailing. But when I arrived at the RSYC, I was turned away – told I was not welcome. My friend, whose father was the Commodore, intervened. We eventually sailed, we laughed, and we had fun on the open water – momentarily free from the toxic segregation of the society ashore. But I never forgot the sting of that moment. I wasn’t welcome – not because of who I was, but because of what I was.
Even in school, we were kept apart. “White” students had separate classes, separate schedules – all carefully designed so we wouldn’t mix, so we’d remember who we were not. When the insults came – “black,” “coloured,” “less than” – we had no one to turn to. We swallowed the pain, choking on a poison we didn’t know how to name or overcome.
Some of us fought back. Others, like me, withdrew. I became quiet. Reclusive. Almost invisible. It was the only way I knew how to protect myself. The pain of being devalued for something I couldn’t change – my ethnicity – was overwhelming and isolating. For any child, it is a trauma that leaves lifelong scars. It did for me.
But my saving grace was my faith.
In the stillness of my loneliness and isolation, I discovered a truth that no lie could erase: I am the workmanship of my Heavenly Father. A masterpiece. Fearfully and wonderfully made. (Ephesians 2:10). That truth became the foundation of my healing – the quiet yet strident assurance of who I really was: the apple of His eye.
But not everyone finds that freedom. Not everyone survives the pain and discomfort of being made to feel unworthy. Some escape into alcohol, drugs, or worse – self-harm. That’s why I write this. Because I lived through ethnic exclusion and ethnic enclaves. I felt like a pariah in the land of my birth. And I know the damage it causes – mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
So as Fiji enters a critical moment in its history, preparing to submit proposals to the Constitutional Reform Commission, I plead with those advocating for a return to any form of ethnic voting:
Please, do not take us back.
Do not reopen wounds we have worked so hard to heal. Ethnic voting is not protection. It’s regression. It’s a relic of colonial rule designed to divide us and engineered to keep us in ethnic enclaves, suspicious of one another, mistrustful of our neighbours and our brothers and sisters.
It will not protect our identities. It will fracture them.
Yes, I understand the desire to safeguard culture, language, and legacy. That is noble and has always been protected. But true protection doesn’t come from exclusion. It comes from inclusion – from building a nation where every child, regardless of race, feels seen, valued, and empowered to belong.
Thousands of children never experienced that. We grew up enslaved by an evil ideology of “divide and rule.” The only way we broke free was by pushing back against the walls of inequality that were systematically imposed upon us.
A democratic nation cannot be built upon division.
But if you insist on building one rooted in any form of racial separation during elections, history will not remember you with honour but with sorrow. Your descendants will carry the burden of your choices not with pride, but with pain.
We are all God’s children. One nation. One people. One shared destiny.
Now is the time to write a new chapter – one guided not by race, but by character. Not by fear, but by hope. Not by division, but by unity, dignity, and love.
Let us not resurrect the ghosts of our putrid past. Let us not rebuild the barriers we fought so hard to tear down. To do so would dishonour every citizen – past, present, and future – who dreamed of a better, more unified Fiji. A Fiji that celebrates diversity. A Fiji where democracy does not discriminate.
We deserve better.
Our children deserve better.
Let us build a Fiji where we vote not by race, but by conscience. Not for the past, but for a future where all are truly free and equal in the eyes of the law, and in the eyes of Almighty God.
Vinaka vakalevu. And may God bless Fiji on its journey toward peace, unity, and true prosperity.
