FOREWORD
This is my major research essay for the History of White Supremacy. It considers the Australian ‘History Wars’, a debate which sprang up in the 1970s and became publicly controversial in the 80s and 90s, concerning the extent to which racism towards Aborigines has played a part in Australian history. The first part of the essay explains the development of the History Wars as an intellectual and political debate, and the second section traces the impact of that controversy on Australian history education in schools.
While I have made reasonable efforts to write historically and accurately, I must warn the reader that the errors and imperfections in the essay are likely to be many and large. The interested reader should seek out Stuart MacIntryre’s The History Wars (2nd ed.), which makes a very thorough analysis of most of the topics covered below.
***
Beginning around the 1960s, the Western world began to think very differently about its own story. The impact of postmodern perspectives on colonisation, multiculturalism and epistemology led to new views about history which conflicted with received knowledge. The first part of this essay investigates the dynamics of these ‘History Wars’ in Australia as they relate to the telling of Australian indigenous history. The second and final section analyses the impact of this debate on school history teaching.
THE HISTORY WARS
In Australia, the History Wars can be traced to the 1970s writings of Manning Clark and Geoffrey Blainey, two historians representing the political left and right of the debate respectively. In his treatment of the Aboriginal history of Australia, Clark placed a strong focus on frontier massacres and dispossession. ‘Wherever the Aborigine stood between the white man and the ‘superfluity’ which he craved and confounded with survival,’ wrote Clark, ‘the white man resorted to violence. In defending their material interests the white men were at times transformed into monsters in human flesh.’[1] Responding to this depiction of Europeans as rapacious and violent, Blainey criticised Clark for presenting a view of history which promoted national guilt rather than national pride. Referring to this model as ‘black armband history’, Blainey argued that ‘in recent years… [it had] assailed the generally optimistic view of Australian history.’[2] Blainey was particularly concerned with the impact of this way of thinking on the next generation of Australians, insisting that it was a ‘deprivation’ of their ‘inheritance’ to claim that young Australians have little to be proud of.[3] Equally, Blainey was concerned with exaggerations of frontier violence: ‘Again and again we see and hear the mischievous statements that the Aborigines’ numbers were drastically reduced primarily by slaughter. In fact diseases were the great killer by a very large margin.’[4] For Blainey, the ‘gloomy view’ of black armband history consisted essentially of allegations of mistreatment of various minorities by large groups of European Australians.[5] The conflict between the Clark and Blainey viewpoints signalled Australia’s move towards heterogeneity and postmodernity as well as an increased consciousness about civil rights and minority interests, both 1960s traditions inherited from America. Prior to the 1960s Australian historians had told a more or less unified story of Australian settlement which concentrated on Australia’s commonwealth inheritance and viewed the Australian past exclusively from the point of view of white colonists, a model which Blainey referred to as ‘three cheers history’.[6] But the emergence of marginal voices in the post-colonial world of the 1960s, where categorical truth claims became suspect and a plurality of perspectives became the mainstream, encouraged the articulation of new perspectives and new purposes in history writing. Now more than ever before historians were conscious of the political significance of their work, and the political commitments of different historians came to shape the historical debate. [7]
A second, perhaps more memorable stage in the development of this debate was the conflict between historians Henry Reynolds and Keith Windschuttle. In various 1990s books variously entitled Frontier, Dispossession, etc, Henry Reynolds followed Manning Clark in portraying the violence and bloodshed in Australia’s colonial legacy. In the introduction to Frontier, Reynolds wrote: ‘No one who reads colonial newspapers, speeches, letters or books can overlook the persistent racial violence without grossly distorting the truth. Three chapters out of seven [in his book] are not an overemphasis on conflict given its ubiquity and longevity and its continuing influence in many parts of Australia.’[8] In opposition to this thesis, Keith Windschuttle launched a public and in some important ways eminently justifiable criticism of Reynolds and other historians, arguing that they had misused evidence and that they represented European Australians as significantly more violent and oppressive than they had ever in fact been. Certainly the objections based on misuse of evidence were valuable, and Windschuttle demonstrated that in some cases historians had actually fabricated evidence, citing sources that didn’t even exist. For Windschuttle, ‘The majority of deaths on both sides resulted from individual conflicts. To discuss all frontier conflict under the name of “massacres” is to falsify and wilfully exaggerate the down side of Australian history.’[9] But Windschuttle’s own arguments about the diminished responsibility of European Australians in frontier conflicts, etc, were every bit as speculative as any of his opponents’ cases. [10] In some senses the Reynolds / Windschuttle debate constituted a different sort of conflict from the Clark / Blainey dispute. Whereas Clark and Blainey had argued mostly over the role and effect of history – how it made people feel about their nation – Reynolds and Windschuttle gave more attention to the substance of history: what in fact were the details of Australia’s past.
In 1992 Paul Keating delivered a memorable address at Redfern Park in Sydney. A small park surrounded by state housing in a suburb just farther than a stone’s throw from Sydney’s CBD, Redfern Park today bears no witness to the significance of the speech which was given there in December of 1992.[11] The Redfern address essentially constituted an apology to Aboriginal Australia for the wrongs visited on it by European Australians. For Keating, the process of creating a new national story was an ‘act of recognition’: ‘Recognition that it was we [‘non-Aboriginal Australians’] who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the disasters. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion.’[12] Keating dared to voice his apology on a very broad scale. However when John Howard won the prime ministership in 1996 and the Report on the Stolen Generations, Bringing them Home, was tabled in federal parliament in 1997, Howard defied the example of state premiers in refusing to formally apologise on behalf of the Australian government for its role in the Stolen Generations removals.[13] According to Howard, ‘Australians of this generation should not be required to accept guilt and blame for past actions and policies over which they had no control.’[14] In a later address, Howard stated that his refusal to make the apology had three bases: first, it was nonsensical in principle to take responsibility for wrongs committed by one’s forbears; second, not all the removals had been forced or unreasonable; and third, providing an apology could create the impression that ‘the indigenous box’ had been ticked and cultural inequality had been solved.[15] In Keating and Howard, we can observe two diametrically opposed approaches to talking about Australian history, clearly aligned with the political left and right respectively. Keating’s ‘big picture’ for Australia involved multiculturalism and the promotion of minority interests. For Howard, like Geoffrey Blainey, dealing appropriately with Australian history meant concentrating on the parts of Australia’s past that inspired pride, nationalism and respect for government.[16]
Frontier violence and the stolen generations figure prominently as two focuses on the content of Australian history. Clark, Reynolds and Keating had argued that settlers had dispossessed Aboriginal Australians of their land by oppressive force and, in some cases, massacre; whereas Blainey and Windschuttle maintained that the death toll was significantly smaller or at least not so comprehensively attributable to violence; disease, which was an unintended injury, played a greater role. As for the stolen generations, historian Robert Manne concurred with the authors of the original report, Bringing them Home – including Sir Ronald Wilson – in concluding that the stolen generations essentially formed a calculated effort at genocide, aimed at completely annihilating the ‘pure-blood’ Aboriginal race. Ron Brunton treated this thesis as ludicrous and went along with Howard in presenting the policy of removal as well-intended programme with some undesirable consequences (but nowhere near on the scale that Reynolds and Wilson had suggested).[17]
As for the function of history, the ‘leftists’ had very little to say explicitly, whereas in their reactive criticisms of leftist history the ‘conservatives’ extolled history’s importance as a nation-building tool and a potential source of national pride and criticised history which promoted guilt about the past.[18] These themes were to become prominent in the debate over school history.
THE WARS IN THE SCHOOLS
History education in Australia pre-1960s had followed the entrenched pattern of emphasising Commonwealth connections, politicians and ‘great men’ of Australian colonial development. As Blainey reminisced, he had been raised on a ‘three cheers’ history whose jingoistic pride constituted something of an extreme.[19] Furthermore, the curriculum was content-focused and Anglocentric.[20] As the 1970s Clark/Blainey debates reached into the public consciousness, curricula began to change to reflect the importance of civil rights and minority groups. Instead of studying James Cook, Federation and Sir Robert Menzies, students learned about Aboriginal customs, African American liberation and female suffrage.[21] This movement towards a more ‘inclusive’ curriculum was solidified in the 1994 Commonwealth Curriculum Corporation Studies of Society and Environment curriculum framework. This document represented not only a crystallisation of the new content of history education within the SOSE model initiated by the Hawke government, but also an entirely new meaning of history. Whereas traditional education had distinguished history as a discrete discipline, SOSE fused history, geography, sociology, environmental and political studies into one catch-all subject where different sections of the course were called by names such as ‘continuity and change’. Teaching was now explicitly directed towards learning skills – called ‘outcomes’ – rather than specific factual knowledge.[22] The new curriculum presented history in light of all the developments of postmodernity: ‘Stories, historical accounts and other representations come to be understood as versions of human experience, based on selected evidence and able to provide no more than tentative conclusions. Increasingly, students see that the course material used as evidence, the person who interprets it, and the reader who studies it are all bearers of the assumptions, beliefs and value positions of their times and places.’[23] In the Curriculum Profile document, outcomes for Level 8 learning under the ‘Culture’ strand of SOSE education were: ‘8.7: Analyses contemporary issues of cultural importance from the perspectives and beliefs of [indigenous Australians]. … 8.8: Analyses factors that bring about cultural adaptation within groups, communities or societies. … 8.9: Evaluates moral and ethical issues and justifies personal positions.’[24] Under the ‘Time, Continuity and Change’ strand, outcome 7.1a was ‘Critically analyses the ways core values of Australian society have endured or changed over time.’[25] The results of the new teaching model for the purpose and content of Australian history were marked. The once ‘required knowledge’ of traditional history education – important leaders in Australian government, for example – began to lose out to theme and skills-based education which focused less on facts and more on ‘strands’. School history turned its attention from politicians and war heroes to contemplate the marginal voices of social history. And the once-strong grand narrative of glorious Australian democracy was no longer the ursatz behind classroom history.[26]
This undermining of basic factual knowledge concerned the historical conservatives almost as much as the notion that it was seen to generate white guilt.[27] When the Howard government entered office in 1996, it was so concerned about loss of substance and generation of guilt that it called in 1999 for a National Inquiry into History Education, the Final Report of which was delivered in 2000. The Report found: ‘There was no significant weight of opinion about national identity except that history teachers were keen to differentiate between, on the one hand, promotion of patriotism and nationalism and, on the other hand, an analytical exploration of national identity issues using a historical perspective.’[28] It seems, then, that teachers were feeling the conflicting pressures of competing approaches to history. The debate around school history flared in the early to mid 2000s. In the flagship conservative journal Quadrant, Geoffrey Partington noted that ‘It is hard to define a definite core of historical studies today in Australian schools, although one notes some emphasis on the suffering s of women, indigenous peoples and immigrants in Australia…’[29] Although deliberately refraining from suggesting what they might be, Partington argued for the need to find ‘criteria of significance’[30] and scale down the scope of school history in order to focus on those topics ‘on which significance, value and relevance should be based.’[31] In October 2006, Howard said in a speech marking the 50th anniversary of Quadrant that ‘Until recent times, it had become almost de rigueur in intellectual circles to regard Australian history as little more than a litany of sexism, racism and class warfare.’ Clearly for Howard, the threat of leftist history was still large. In his 2006 Australia Day address calling for a renaissance of ‘Australian values’, he called for a ‘root and branch renewal’ of Australian history education, ‘both in terms of the numbers learning and the way it is taught.’[32] ‘Too often, it is taught without any sense of structured narrative, replaced by a fragmented stew of ‘themes’ and ‘issues’.’[33] This criticism introduced a process which is still in swing to modify and standardise history education throughout Australia. One of the leading advocates of this front from its genesis was Julie Bishop, the once federal Minister for Education, who called for ‘the re-establishment of a structured narrative in the teaching of Australian history’[34] and for equipping students ‘with the fundamentals, essential and enduring skills and learning that will help make them informed and productive citizens. … History… classes should not be allowed to slide into political science courses by another name.’[35] Bishop blamed the inadequacies of history courses on ‘social engineers’ and ‘ideologues who have hijacked school curriculum’.[36] Meanwhile, other commentators, including teachers, have responded more positively to the education revolution, particularly in the area of indigenous studies. One teacher interviewed by Anna Clark reflected: ‘I’ve noticed a real difference in student attitudes over the fifteen years or so that I’ve been teaching this topic. We have a lot of country girls, boarders, and I used to find that at the beginning of the unit the country girls would be very very critical of Aboriginal people and as the unit progressed I could really see their attitudes change.’[37] However other critics from the education sphere such as Kevin Donnelly have decried the move towards a more ‘politically correct’ version of history, insisting that students who do not have a basic grasp of significant political and governmental developmental developments like federation are left impoverished and unable fully to grasp their Australian heritage.[38] In sum, the conservative critique of SOSE-era history studies does not yet seem to have had an impact on the way history is taught. In short, there has not yet been a turning point to rival the revolution of the 70s-90s. Further, although the public declarations of Howard, Bishop and others do not make the point explicitly, it seems implicit in their statements that an overly sympathetic view of the place of Aborigines in Australian history remains a deep concern alongside the lack of government and civics knowledge and the absence of a grand narrative.
The foregoing argument has linked the debates of the History Wars with a key development in Australian history education and noted the conservative backlash to this revolution. Although the concerns of the History Wars have reached into all aspects of school history, however, it would be misleading to suggest that they were the only factor behind the major changes. Purely pedagogical interests have naturally had a profound influence on teaching approaches. For example, in her research for History’s Children: History Wars in the Classroom, Anna Clark discovered that while students regarded Australian history as an important subject which they should study at least until year 9 or 10, many were bored with Australian history topics and therefore opted for other units such as ‘Revolutions’ whenever the system allowed for it.[39] Students found it difficult to engage with content on settlement and federation because they were presented in a dry fashion. For Clark, it was very well for politicians to agitate for a firmer basis of factual knowledge through history education, but it was much harder for teachers to convey this relatively colourless information than politicians understood.[40] Further, students of all ages were curious and investigative, and responded with hostility whenever they felt they were being fed a particular ‘line’.[41] This may explain in part the failure of conservative interest holders to promote a facts-based civics emphasis in history teaching. Where students are unwilling to learn and teachers unable to teach well, knowledge cannot be transmitted no matter how much politicians may desire it. This lack of attention or boredom with facts about settlement and federation may be equally attributable to the genesis of a media generation – whose hunger for ‘relevance’ encourages a piecemeal curriculum structure and focus on ethnic minorities – just as much as any factors connected with the History Wars or its philosophical and political foundations.[42]
REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
The scarcity of teaching time for Australian history in schools demands a strong answer to the question how that time should be used. A strong answer would involve a considered, scholarly and practical response to the questions, ‘What happened in Australia’s past?’, ‘What part of it is important?’ and ‘What is the purpose of teaching national history?’ Far though it may be from the scope of this essay to seek to answer those questions, one observation gleaned from the literature on the United States’ own crisis of history wars in education seems relevant and significant. In History on Trial, Gary B. Nash et al argue that the right wing concern about multicultural history education having no grand narrative is misplaced. ‘Quite simply, the particularities of social history can be mainstreamed readily enough by changing the governing narrative from the rise of democracy, defined in terms of electoral politics, to the struggle to fulfil the American ideals of liberty, equal justice, and equality.’[43] Yes, as Kevin Donnelly states, an effective history curricula needs to communicate to students they are part of a ‘unfolding narrative’ or ‘big picture’ which connects them with the past, present and future of ‘something more lasting and significant than the often mundane routine of one’s day-to-day existence,’[44] possibly, for example, one’s nation. But the traditional right-wing, civics-focused historical paradigm is not the only grand narrative which communicates this meaning, and a curriculum which seeks to instil respect for ethnic minorities, including Aborigines, can conjure a powerful and prideful story about nationhood and purpose.
The development of curriculum standards focused on multiculturalism and portraying a sympathetic picture of Australian Aboriginal history originated both in the intellectual furnace of the History Wars and its foundational wellspring of postmodern philosophy. The minds of students have become battlefields where the future of nation is contested between proponents of egalitarianism and advocates of a specific brand of nationalism. However the interests underlying the debate over history teaching are not purely political, as recent sociological trends and the pedagogical responses which sprang up to address them have been equally significant factors shaping curriculum policy and classroom practice. With the implementation of a national history curriculum still in process, the struggle over classroom history is not yet at an end, and it remains to be seen what further impacts the History Wars may have on the minds of tomorrow.
[1] Manning Clark, A History of Australia, Vol. 5 – The People Make Laws: 1888-1915, Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1981, p. 106.
[2] Blainey, ‘Drawing up a Balance Sheet of Our History’, Quadrant, Vol. 37, Nos. 7-8, July-August 1993, p. 11.
[3] Ibid, p. 15.
[4] Ibid, p. 15.
[5] Ibid, p. 11.
[6] Ibid. See also Stuart MacIntyre and Anna Clark, The History Wars (2nd ed.), Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2004, pp. 173-174.
[7] See generally e.g. Kevin Donnelly, Dumbing Down: Outcomes-based and politically correct – the impact of the Culture Wars on our schools, Prahran, Vic.: Hardie Grant Books, 2007, pp. 13-24.
[8] Henry Reynolds, Frontier, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1987, p. viii.
[9] Windschuttle, ‘The Myths of Frontier Massacres in Australian History: Part 2: The Fabrication of the Australian Death Toll’, Quadrant, Vol. 44, No. 11, November 2000, p. 21.
[10] Windschuttle, p. 18. For an adjudication of this controversy see MacIntyre and Clark, pp. 161-170.
[11] I was extremely disappointed to discover this when I visited the park in early 2010.
[12] The Hon. Paul Keating, ‘Redfern Address’, Redfern, Sydney, 10 December 1992, accessed 17 October 2011, <http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Redfern_Speech>.
[13] Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, ‘Content of apologies by State and Territory Parliaments’, 2008, retrieved 21 October 2011, <http://www.hreoc.gov.au/social_justice/bth_report/apologies_states.html>.
[14] John Howard, ‘Opening Speech of the Australian Reconciliation Convention’, 26 May 2000, retrieved 20 October 2011, <http://web.archive.org/web/20060524083706/http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/car/arc/speeches/opening/howard.htm>.
[15] John Howard, John F Kennedy School of Government, 11 March 2008, retrieved 20 October 2011, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4DzOhk6sBw>.
[16] See e.g. MacIntyre and Clark, pp. 176-177, 181.
[17] Ibid, pp. 145-146, 155-156.
[18] Tony Taylor, ‘Disputed Territory: The Politics of Historical Consciousness in Australia’, in Peter Seixas (ed.), Theorizing Historical Consciousness, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004, pp. 225-228.
[19] Blainey, p.11. However for Blainey, this extreme was far preferable to the ‘black armband’ option.
[20] Taylor, 2004, p. 229.
[21] Donnelly, pp. 88-97.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Curriculum Corporation, A Statement on Studies of Society and Environment in Australian Schools, Carlton South, Vic.: Curriculum Corporation, 1994, p. 13.
[24] Curriculum Corporation, Studies of Society and Environment: A Curriculum Profile for Australian Schools, Carlton South, Vic.: Curriculum Corporation, 1994, p. 6.
[25] Curriculum Corporation, Profile, p. 4.
[26] Taylor, 2004, pp. 224-225.
[27] Taylor, 2004. See also John Howard, ‘Address to the National Press Club, the Great Hall, Parliament House’, 25 January 2006, accessed 20 October 2011, <http://australianpolitics.com/2006/01/25/john-howard-australia-day-address.html>.
[28] Tony Taylor et al, Final Report of the Report of the National Inquiry into School History: Executive Summary, Churchill, Vic.: The Faculty of Education, Monash University, 2000, Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, accessed 17 October 2011, <http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/school_education/publications_resources/indexes/documents/summary_x3_pdf.htm>, [1.7].
[29] Geoffrey Partington, ‘What History Should We Teach?’, Quadrant, Vol. 49, Nos. 1-2, January-February 2005, p. 69.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Ibid, p. 71.
[32] Howard, 2006.
[33] Ibid.
[34] The Hon. Julie Bishop, ‘Address to the History Teachers of Australia Conference’, Fremantle, 6 October 2006, accessed 21 October 2011, <http://www.dest.gov.au/ministers/media/bishop/2006/10/b001061006.asp>
[35] Ibid.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Clark, p. 76.
[38] Donnelly, p. 94.
[39] Clark, p. 94.
[40] See, e.g., ibid, pp. 94-96.
[41] Ibid, p. 85.
[42] William J.R. Allen, An Analysis of Curriculum Policy for Upper Secondary School History in Western Australia from 1983 to 2000, Thesis, Ed.D, UWA, 2004, pp. 54-55.
[43] Gary B. Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn, History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998, p. 101.
[44] Donnelly, ?.
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Gone, your spinning, dancing flesh
Gone to die your nightly death
While in another tomb I lie
And long for you – your soul and sigh.
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Here, for the benefit of critics, enthusiasts, singers, guitarists, and unknown others, is a transcription of ‘Friday’ by Rebecca Black. Corrections appreciated. Enjoy!
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FOREWORD
If you ever cared about these history essays, by now you almost certainly don’t. But for the sake of completeness here’s my essay for African History this year. It’s about dictators in Africa.
INTRODUCTION
Contemporary Western popular media presents Africa as a continent ruled by violence, despotism, and greed. The picture of Africa we are fed as laypeople suggests that authentic liberal democracy is anomalous, and anarchy – or, perhaps more so, dictatorship – is the standard in national governance. If Robert Mugabe can be considered the current cover-boy of this trend of dictatorship, then he is preceded by such notables as Idi Amin (Uganda), Francisco Nguema (Equitorial Guinea) and Jean-Bedel Bokassa (Central African Republic).
This raises an interesting, if perhaps coarse, question: Is Africa prone to dictatorship? In this essay I attempt to answer this nebulous question in a way that is both broad and focused. My answer is broad in the sense that it considers a variety of distinctive explanations for African dictatorships. These fall into two categories. First, there are theories which stress the effect of foreign agency on African dictatorships: both through the legacy of colonialism and through contemporary trade and intervention in Africa. Last, there are accounts which attempt to tie dictatorship to inherently African characteristics. These include ‘big man’ theories, which treat the personal characteristics of the dictatorships as the true cause of their rise to power, and ‘savagery’ theories, which claim that Africans are by nature unable to equitably self-govern.
Is Africa prone to dictatorship? My answer is, ‘it depends’. It depends on the country in question: its colonial inheritance, and the extent to which international authorities are willing to intervene in its interests. It depends much less, in my argument, on those causes which are by nature constant or arbitrary: the supposedly consistent ‘savagery’ of Africans or the arbitrary charisma of certain ‘big men’. Thus the thrust of my essay is that the phenomenon of dictatorship in Africa is driven less by factors that are internal and much more by the role of foreign powers whether in the past as colonists or as neo-colonists in the present.
If the essay is broad, it is also narrow in the sense that it focuses on the rise and rule of a particular dictator: Idi Amin Dada. From 1971 to 1979 Amin ruled Uganda with a strong and brutal arm. This ‘buffoon tyrant’ – a scatterbrained yet politically adroit dictator – was responsible for the death of up to 300,000 Ugandans. Amin achieved and sustained control through a number of crucial actions, which will be outlined and constantly examined and re-examined through the course of the essay.
PRELIMINARIES
Dictatorship in Africa
First, let us be clear that in statistical terms Africa is definitely prone to dictatorship. Between 1960 and 1989, 81 out of 117 leadership transitions in Africa came about through ‘coup, war or invasion, including assassinations’.[1] If we define ‘dictatorships’ as any form of violent rule, it seems fair to extrapolate from this data that the first thirty years of the African post-colony[2] were marked by dictatorship. Fortunately the rate of violent regime change radically dropped in the 1990s, with less than half of the leadership changes in that period occurring violently.[3] This may reflect the declining influence of the colonial legacy as it is filtered through political evolutionary processes and foreign aid.
Overview of Amin’s reign
Amin took control of Uganda in a coup d’état in January 1971, deposing Milton Obote, the first prime minister of the independent state.[4] Amin’s coup was a success and for a short time the new ruler enjoyed popular approval. But over the course of his reign Amin’s popularity declined significantly. [5] In fact for much of the eight years there was a powerful feeling of antipathy towards Amin and his regime.[6] Thus in examining Amin’s reign we begin not only with the question of how he achieved power in 1971, but also how he retained control for such a long time in the face of popular resentment.
In order to begin to answer these questions it is important to observe three things. First, although the Ugandan public resented Amin there was a lack of any organised resistance.[7] In fact, it was ultimately the Tanzanian army and a small band of 2,000 Ugandan resistance fighters based in Tanzania who defeated Amin in 1979.[8] Second, Amin used violence to establish and secure his authority. Upon seizing power in 1971 one of his first moves was to eliminate opposition in the army, executing Loangi and Acholi soldiers.[9] This act of violence was emblematic of the overall tenor of Amin’s regime. The third and last point is that Amin relied heavily on foreign ‘aid’ for the success of his coup and for continued support throughout the decade. For example, it is generally recognised that Britain and Israel had a significant part to play in orchestrating the 1971 coup.[10] These three aspects of Amin’s reign – violence, popular disunity and foreign abuse of Uganda through assistance given to Amin – all reflect the role of foreign nations in Ugandan dictatorship, whether through the legacy of colonialism or by direct intervention. I turn now to analyse each phenomenon in detail.
FOREIGN INFLUENCE
Violence
As with most colonies, the colonial experience in Uganda was typified by violence. The first Europeans in the Ugandan province of Acholiland were traders who arrived around 1861 and allied with certain rival chiefs in order to capture their opponents, taking them away to market as slaves.[11] In the colonial period, the British protectorate recruited northerners to quash a peasant revolt in the south.[12] Last, the colonial system of paying native administrators a salary based on the amount of tax raised encouraged indigenous Ugandans to violently extort tribute from their kinsmen.[13] These examples illustrate two faces of colonial violence: first, violence by the state against indigenous subjects, and second, violence among subjects enforced or encouraged by colonial policies and structures.
What is the relationship between violence in the colony and in the post-colony? Fanon has claimed that:
The colonised… have been prepared for violence from time immemorial. As soon as they are born it is obvious to them that their cramped world, riddled with taboos, can only be challenged by out and out violence.[14]
This view is obviously exaggerated to the degree that colonial states did provide opportunities for Africans to engage in the political process, in however token a fashion. In Uganda a system of tiered local government allowed Bagandans (from the southern province of Buganda) to act as administrators in other districts.[15] Thus violence was not the only route to power. However Fanon’s claim is more deeply flawed because it assumes that violence should continue into the post-colony merely because it is customary.
A more subtle interpretation suggests that post-colonial violence is a ‘power stage’ in a struggle to re-establish lost self-esteem.[16] ‘Decolonisation… implies the urgent need to thoroughly challenge the colonial situation,’[17] which involves the oppressed asserting their superiority. The superiority complex thus developed compels those who were once victims to find their own targets for violence and exploitation.[18] In this way the violence native to dictatorial regimes can be seen as the first stage in an attempt by colonised people to re-establish their sense of personal potency, authority and control. The colony casts its shadow long onto the face of the post-colony, and only the passage of time and the pains of growth allow the shadow to recede, the light to shine, and colonised peoples to develop healthy notions of self-worth and autonomy.
Disunity
‘To many, the ‘solution’ in Uganda seemed remarkably straightforward: … pump a few bullets into Amin’s great hulk and the country would be free from oppression.’[19] But such a simple solution was made impossible by the profound disunity of the Ugandan populace.[20] Divisions produced a culture of blame whereby rival factions shifted responsibility for atrocities to each other rather than making a collective effort to combat Amin’s dictatorship.[21] Moreover, Amin himself capitalised so comprehensively on economic, cultural and religious divisions and their corresponding prejudices that the concept of disunity must be seen as fundamental to his power.
In one sense, it is unremarkable that Uganda should have lacked any cohesive national identity. Like so many African countries, the state of Uganda arbitrarily grouped culturally, ethnically, linguistically and politically distinct communities under one administrative authority.[22] Thus by the very act of grouping apples with oranges, the colonial state created tensions that need not have otherwise existed. At independence Uganda inherited a governmental system that pushed these tensions to the limit. British-style majoritarian democracies, which create strong leadership disproportionate to the amount of votes won, may be appropriate in homogenous societies, but in the divided world of the colony, they plunge ethnic minorities into a mortal struggle that can only end in representation or subjugation.[23]
The most significant divide in Ugandan indigenous society was between members of the southern kingdom of Buganda and non-Bagandans. Due to the rich fertility of its land along the banks of Lake Victoria, Buganda was already dominant over surrounding regions prior to the colonial era.[24] The province then had the added benefits of being the first region of Uganda to be settled, and the first to have missionary schooling and commercial agriculture.[25] In addition, Buganda was allowed to govern itself through a system of ‘indirect’ rule, whereas other districts were subject to direct British control.[26] One of the most important consequences of this situation was the emergence of an élite class of wealthy Bagandan farmers and businessmen.[27] Whereas Obote’s socialist reform programme had attempted to remove the privileges belonging to this and other economically advantaged groups, Amin secured support for his regime by returning these élites to their former status.[28]
Cultural divisions were just as integral to Amin’s rule as economic disparities. When Obote came to power in 1962 he inherited an army that was drawn from his own home region. The colonial government had recruited from among the Acholi and Loangi people, ostensibly because they were the most ‘warlike’ of the Ugandans.[29] But Amin’s mistrust of these ethnicities and his dependence on his own people for support can be seen in his radical military reforms, which involved a complete ethnic re-constitution of the army. Amin’s army comprised 75% foreigners from Zaire and Sudan, and roughly 25% soldiers from his homeland in the West Nile region.[30] The significance of cultural allegiances clearly ran deep in Amin’s mind, and the brutal loyalty of his army vindicates this conviction.
Ugandans’ clear sense of belonging to a culture distinct from all others allowed Amin to persecute one group while producing a false sense of security among others.[31] Kiwanuka records how one of his colleagues ‘did not realize it was all that bad’ until in March 1973 Amin’s government began to abduct many of his colleagues.[32]
Amin also realised the utility of prejudices held by Ugandans against foreign cultures. From the time of the coup in 1971 Amin began a campaign of Asian expulsion.[33] Colonial authority had first allowed Asians into Uganda as labourers and commerçants, and by the mid twentieth-century they formed a wealthy and successful class in Ugandan society, second only to the whites.[34] The policy of Asian expulsion must admittedly be seen primarily as an economic strategy. Amin appropriated the property of exiled Asians, using the new wealth to finance his government as to lubricate his relations with wealthy businessmen.[35] But the strategy can also be seen as pandering to an anti-Asian sentiment in Uganda,[36] which may have been quite strong considering the elevated position of Asians in Ugandan society.
Amin was able to use cultural and economic divisions to his political advantage. In other African countries the dynamics of postcolonial life did not support such tactics. In South Africa, for example, indigenous peoples may have developed a nationalist sentiment in response to large-scale colonial conquest.[37] By contrast, colonisation in Uganda was slow and thus there was little opportunity for separate groups to unite against their common enemy before colonial structures could aggravate pre-existing cultural and socio-economic divides.[38] It is difficult to see just how important the tendency of disunity is in precipitating dictatorship. Kiwanuka puts the case very strongly: in his view, ‘The elimination of tribal and religious divisions and hatreds is the only guarantee against the rise of another Amin.’[39] However true this may be, it is difficult to see how such a comprehensive re-shaping of Ugandan society is possible. Nevertheless, it is clearly essential that educators and politicians work and increasing tolerance and unity in divided African states, especially among élite groups. According to Linder, democracy only ever flourishes where privileged groups decide to pull together and adopt democratic modes of behaviour.[40] While disunity breeds dictatorship, democracy must come from co-operation.
Abuse
Foreign nation states were arguably just as guilty as Amin in abusing the Ugandan situation, often for their own benefit. The culprits fall into two classes: Britain and Israel supported Amin in the initial coup, while a host of other nations including France, USSR, Libya, Pakistan and USA supported Amin’s regime through arms deals and other trade relations.[41] Britain was motivated to intervene by its concern over the growing violence and political radicalism of Milton Obote. Meanwhile, Israel recognised Amin’s control over the military, which in past years had backed anti-Arab rebels in Sudan. Eager to maintain this support for this cause, Israel made a vote for the Ugandan army by helping its new leader into power.[42] The other states, it appears, were compelled to assist Amin for purely economic reasons. Companies in the US, for example, supplied torture devices and other instruments of war in exchange for valuable Ugandan coffee.[43]
Another abuse allegedly visited on African states by foreign powers is that of aid. Some have suggested that, despite the best intentions underlying foreign aid, financial support of Africa only serves to entrench corruption and increase the likelihood of oppressive governments.[44] Fortunately, a study by Arthur Goldsmith has shown that ‘aid dependency has not systematically set back Africa’s political evolution,’ but rather there is a positive (if weak) correlation between foreign aid and democratisation in African countries.[45]
The case of harmful foreign intervention in Africa highlights the continuities in the colonial experience. Even after decolonisation, it is possible for ‘neo-colonists’ to exact the same economic and political benefits from post-colonies as were enjoyed by colonial governments before independence. It is truly the responsibility of the international community, and individual nations, to administer policies which aim at minimising the risk of harm possible through intervention and investment in African post-colonies.
AFRICAN PREDISPOSITION
It may suffice here to give a very brief explanation of the inadequacy of competing accounts of African dictatorship; theories which posit a pre-disposition to despotic rule. Something along the lines of this philosophy was a rudimentary notion in European colonial administration. In 1892, Sir Theophilus Shepstone wrote of colonists as the ‘great teachers’, bringing civilisation to the ‘barbarous’ practices of the natives of the Orange Free State.[46] The concept of an inherent African despotism may have been magnified by the distorting passage of time. Writing in 2008, Wendy Hamblet describes the myth of African savagery as a prejudice ‘still deeply embedded in the minds of some powerful and highly educated persons… in the West.’[47] She cites the example of an academic colleague who told her, in response to an anecdote of some incident of violence in Africa, that ‘[t]hese people have always been killing each other.’[48]
It is not worth trying to establish the preponderance of despotic rule in pre-colonial Africa since the evidence is clearly lacking. What should be noted, however, is the way in which the savagery of colonising forces turned otherwise peaceable African people into violent combat forces. It has already been noted how British colonists in Uganda cultivated a division between north and south, putting northerners in military uniform in order to destroy the southern peasant resistance.[49] This must be seen as proof that supposedly civilised European colonists have as much capacity for savagery as any African, and to a large extent the violence endemic in contemporary Africa is merely a continuation of practices enforced by colonial rule.
A corollary of the myth of African savagery is the tendency to see dictatorships as brought about solely by the charismatic and brutal personalities of ‘big men’. In this paradigm, dictatorial regimes are created not because of circumstantial factors so much as through the inner genius (and perhaps savagery) of individual leaders. Thus some regard Amin’s unique political style – characterised by frequent policy changes fostering fear and paralysis among some and a false sense of security among others – as the decisive factor in his success as a dictator.[50] It is valid to recognise these remarkable aspects of Amin’s character as important in his rise to power. But to draw the substantive attention away from the context of his actions and the deeper forces of colonialism and international intervention is to ignore the political scaffolding which gave his behaviour its special significance and effectiveness.
CONCLUSION
This essay has sought to demonstrate that African dictatorship is best characterised as the product of colonial legacies and neo-colonial abuses, rather than as a phenomenon inherently endemic to Africa. Presuming this is true, where does it leave us?
First, the world must not give in to the temptation of a blaming psychology. In ‘Africa: How we killed our dreams of freedom’, William Gumede observes how Robert Mugabe and other despotic rulers have blamed the corruption of their regime on the colonial legacy.[51] When blame becomes a justification for violence, we know it has become unhelpful. If we are to learn the lessons of Uganda we must see that positive change can only be effected through unity, and that unity comes not from blaming but from a sense of collective responsibility.
To avoid blame is not to forget the past or overlook the effects of colonialism, however. Mamdani is conscious of his responsibility as a historian. In Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda he writes that his purpose is
To dissect every nerve and muscle of fascism so as to identify the conditions and forces that made it possible so that we may be in a position to build a movement to identify, isolate and defeat these forces.[52]
This is the true duty of historians: to analyse the past in order that we may shape our present action in an effort to build a better future: for Uganda, for Africa, for ourselves, and for the world.
[1] Arthur A Goldsmith, ‘Donors, dictators and democrats in Africa’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 39, no. 3, 2001, p. 422. This statistic relates only to national leaders: e.g. presidents and prime ministers.
[2] I am referring here to the broad concept of the post-colony rather than to any particular country.
[3] Goldsmith, p. 422.
[4] Sean Moroney, ed., Handbooks to the Modern World: Africa, vol. 2, Facts on File, New York, 1989, pp. 565, 567.
[5] Ibid, pp. 567-8.
[6] Tony Avirgnan and Martha Honey, War in Uganda: The Legacy of Idi Amin, Zed Press, London, 1982, p. 3.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Moroney, p. 568.
[9] Ibid, p. 567.
[10] Avirgan, pp. 8, 10.
[11] Kenneth Ingham, The Making of Modern Uganda, Greenwood Press, Conneticut, 1958, p. 24.
[12] Mahmood Mamdani, Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda, Heinemann, London, 1983, p. 10.
[13] Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, Princeton, 1996, p. 56.
[14] Frantz Fanon, trans. Richard Philcox, The Wretched of the Earth, Présence Africaine, 1963, p. 3.
[15] David Apter, The Political Kingdom in Uganda, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1961, p. 159.
[16] Wendy Hamblet, Savage Constructions: The Myth of African Savagery, Lexington Books, Maryland, 2008, p. xii.
[17] Fanon, p. 2.
[18] Hamblet, p. 7.
[19] Avirgan, p. 3.
[20] Semakula Kiwanuka, Amin and the Tragedy of Uganda, Weltforum Verlag, Munich, 1979, p. 3.
[21] Ibid, p. 22.
[22] Mamdani, 1983, p. 6.
[23] Wolf Linder and André Bächtiger, ‘What drives democratisation in Asia and Africa?’, European Journal of Political Research, vol. 44, 2005, p. 864.
[24] Moroney, 564.
[25] John Kiyaga-Nsubuga, ‘Managing Political Change: Uganda under Museveni’, in Taisier M. Ali and Robert O.
Matthews, ed.s, Civil Wars in Africa: Roots and Resolution, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 1999, p. 15.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Avirgan, p. 5.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Ibid, p. 6.
[30] Ibid, pp. 6-8.
[31] Kiwanuka, p. 93.
[32] Ibid, p.94.
[33] Ibid, p. 103.
[34] Ibid, p. 102.
[35] Moroney, p. 567.
[36] Kiwanuka, p. 22.
[37] As per Jeremy Marten’s lecture for UWA Introduction to African History HIST 2247, ‘African dictatorship: Uganda under Idi Amin’, 14 September 2009.
[38] Moroney, p. 565.
[39] Kiwanuka, p. 4.
[40] Linder, p. 863.
[41] Avirgan, pp. 8-9.
[42] Morney, p. 567.
[43] Avirgan, p. 9.
[44] Goldsmith, p. 412.
[45] Ibid.
[46] Sir Theophilus Shepstone, ‘Sir Theophilus Shepstone Disagrees with the Orange Free State President, 1892’, in J.A. Williams, ed., From the South African Past, Narratives, Documents, and Debates, Boston, 1997, p. 159.
[47] Hamblet, p. ix.
[48] Ibid, p. x.
[49] Mamdani, 1983, p. 10.
[50] Samuel Decalo, Psychoses of Power: African Personal Dictatorships, Westview Press, London, 1989, p. 191.
[51] Gumede, William, ‘Africa: How we killed our dreams of freedom’, New Statesman, vol. 136, no. 4838, Apr. 2, 2007, p. 12.
[52] Mamdani, 1983, p. 2.
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Bars 27-38: Tension builds
This is a brilliant example of the principle of ‘subversion of expectation’ in post-romantic harmony.
First, the expectation of Db Major created by the imperfect cadence on Ab7 in bar 26 is subverted by the use of E/G# in bar 27:
Fig. 3.1 bb. 25-27
A degree of continuity is achieved by the static bass line, which changes only in the enharmonic substitution of G# for Ab. But this continuity goes largely unnoticed by the listener, who is surprised by the unanticipated harmony. They do not fail to notice the motif:
Fig. 3.2 bb. 27-28
which appears first in bar 27 and then in a variety of guises and and different transpositions over the proceeding bars. A sense of building tension is created by (1) the gradual rising of the motif through various transpositions, (2) a crescendo (first marked in bar 33), (3) and the continued use of unsettled harmonies.
The harmonies are unsettled in two respects. First, most chords in this section are chords based on the median: that is, chords where the third note of the scale is used as the bass note. The initial chord of E/G# is an example (see fig. 3.1, above). Chords based on the median tend to sound unsettled and it is often very hard to predict where they are leading.
The second respect in which the harmony is unsettled is that Bruckner persistently creates expectations and then defies them. Let’s have a closer look at the first few bars of the section:
Fig. 3.3 bb. 27-30
Now as I alluded to above, being a chord of the median, the E/G# in bar 27 could pretty much lead anywhere. But the use of C# and D# in the melody suggests that this is a harmony of the dominant of A major. So a progression to A Major would sound fairly predictable. But Bruckner subverts this by moving to a very strange and foreign chord in bar 29. In light of the f minor chord in bar 30, bar 29 appears to consist of a dominant C Major chord imposed over an Ab in the bass. The movement from C(b9)/Ab to f/Ab is the first ‘natural’ progression in this section. But in bar 31 the harmony takes another unexpected leap to Gb/Bb.
Thus the harmony in this section is never quite settled. As the tension mounts we are made to anticipate the music to come…
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Bars 19-26: Majestic-lyric passage
These eight or so bars got me into Bruckner. As a 15 year old (as I recall) reading these notes out of a musty miniature score borrowed from the school library, Bruckner’s harmonies had me in rapture.
The section presents an extension of the horn melody begun in bar 5. It sounds (along with the bar 18 upbeat):
Fig1 2.1 bb. 19-26 with upbeat in bar 18
Note the prominence of double-dotted rhythms and note repetition (e.g. eb, to eb in bar 19), borrowed from the first section.
This section uses some very normal chords, and there is a strong emphasis on Cb Major towards the middle of the passage. However it is difficult to tell what note the music is anchored on – the tonic. This is in marked contrast to the first section, which is strongly rooted in D Minor.
The signal that the key of D Minor has lost its power comes at the start of bar 19. The tonic is literally split – like an atom in fission – as the music moves from a D pedal point to a harmony of Eb over a Db in the bass:
Fig. 2.2 bar 18 into 19
It is as if the D has split in two, one half moving up to Eb and the other falling down to Db. This progression sounds ethereal and majestic when overlayed with the confident fanfare of eight horns in unison. Bruckner may have been a nut for brass, but he sure knew how to use the horns.
To draw an analogy to western classical music at large, the movement from D to Eb/Db could be seen as a symbol for the decline in the importance of the tonic. As the 1800s crept their way into the twentieth century, Germanic composers wrote music where it was increasingly difficult to ‘feel’ the pull of a tonic note. The home key would always be waiting at the end of the work, ready to tie up all the loose ends and give the listener a sense of rest. But music was often (as they say) ‘tonally ambiguous’: you don’t know where it’s coming from or where it’s going!
The section ends on a harmony of Ab7 with a suspended Db (bar 25) resolving to a C in bar 26. In the traditional syntax of western harmony, this should resolve to the chord of Db Major. Will it? Stay tuned.
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FOREWORD
While we’re on the topic of aboriginal affairs, here’s an essay I wrote for Aboriginal History last year.
Some Aboriginal Australians take offence at being called ‘Aboriginal’. This is completely reasonable, because Aboriginal people overwhelmingly identify with a particular cultural group rather than with ‘Aborigines’ at large. I am sorry to any Aboriginal or other people who may read this article and take offence at my use of the word. Please understand that I use it only out of necessity, for the scope of the essay is very general and covers the whole of Australia.
Otherwise, the same prefatory remarks apply to this essay as to the post on ‘Have Casinos Been Good for Indians?’ I would love to hear your ideas.
THE 1967 REFERENDUM
In 1967 a federal referendum proposed the removal of two passages from the Commonwealth Constitution that referred explicitly to Aboriginal people. The proposition was passed by an overwhelming majority of Australians: six out of seven states and territories, and 90.77% of voters overall.[1] It is surprising that such a large proportion of voters was in favour of the amendments, especially considering that the referendum took place at a time when a national policy of assimilation – now regarded as fundamentally racist – was still the norm in Aboriginal affairs.[2]
The referendum proposed the repeal of Section 127 of the Constitution, and the amendment of s 51(26) to eliminate a reference to Aboriginal people. The deletion of s 127 would cause all Aboriginal people to be counted in national and state censuses, whilst the amendment of s 51(26) would permit the Commonwealth to make legislation referring specifically to Aborigines.[3] These proposals formed the second item in the 1967 referendum. The first item involved a separate issue, called the ‘nexus question’, which concerned the relative sizes of the houses of federal parliament. Aware of the widespread support of the amendments referring to Aborigines, the Coalition government sought to gain favour for the nexus question by raising the two items in one referendum.[4] This failed dismally, with only 40.25% nationally voting YES on the nexus question.[5]
Australia has been called, ‘constitutionally speaking… the frozen continent.’[6] Of the 44 referendum questions put to the Australian people since federation, only eight have succeeded.[7] None of these have done so with the flair of the 1967 Aboriginal question. Although some items have won a majority vote in six out seven states and territories, not one has achieved a national total of 90.77% in favour. The next highest national majority was 82.65 for the 1906 referendum.[8]
In Australia’s Constitution, J. McMillan suggests an analytical framework for understanding why certain referendum items pass or fail.[9] Among the determinative factors are:
- The content of the proposal;
- The creation of a popular momentum for change;
- The prevailing political environment; and
- The form of the proposition.
These broad considerations are a helpful tool in accounting for the unparalleled success of the 1967 referendum on Aborigines.
The content of the proposal
There are two ways of looking at the content of the referendum. There is an objective view, which has already been outlined. But it is more interesting to examine the subjective views of various groups: the public, the politicians and the activists campaigning for change. What emerges in the primary sources is a highly atomised society, where each of these separate groups had a vastly different perspective of what the proposed amendments would do if passed. This section will focus on perceptions of the Australian voting public, who were directly responsible for the referendum’s success.
On May 24 1967, just three days before the referendum, The Sydney Morning Herald attempted to clarify the content of the referendum: ‘[It] does not give Aborigines the right to vote. They already have it. It does not deal with equal rights for Aborigines.’[10] Thus there was a common ‘mythological’ conception that the proposed amendments promised civil rights for Aborigines, and in particular the right to vote. This general sentiment was reinforced by Gary Shearston’s ‘Vote Yes for Freedom’, sung by members of the Australian-Aboriginal fellowship on ABC television one week before the referendum: ‘Equal rights / Equal rights / Together we fight / For Freedom.’[11]
It has become almost clichéd to point out that the amendments offered neither civil rights nor racial equality. In fact, the proposed constitutional changes had little power in their own right. The repeal of s 127 would bring all Aborigines within the census figures. But this would not confer any extraordinary privileges. Not even the official classification of Aboriginal people as Australian citizens under the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948 (Comm.) had any effect on their civil rights.[12] Furthermore, the federal franchise had been granted to Aboriginal people in 1962 by an amendment of the Commonwealth Electoral Act. But Aboriginal suffrage was impeded by the unwillingness of many government officials to inform Aboriginal people of their voting rights.[13] Ultimately, Aboriginal social equality would be a matter of precise legislation and fair administration. The amendment of s 51(26) would give the Commonwealth greater power to ensure civil rights for Aboriginal people. But the federal government was already in a strong position to do this. It could provide tied grants to state governments for use on certain projects, and it could legislate for Aborigines as part of the wider citizen body.[14] The repeal of s 51(26) could place pressure on the Commonwealth to play a more active role in Aboriginal affairs, which had been managed dismally at a state level. But the idea that it was a necessary prerequisite to such action was purely mythological.
Nevertheless, it was this mythological understanding of the referendum that dominated the popular conscience both before and after the campaign. As late as 2007, the editor of the Griffith Review wrote of the 1967 referendum as the harbinger of suffrage and citizenship rights for Aborigines.[15] For Australian voters, these were the central implications of a YES vote.
But why did Australians count these objectives so valuable as to vote for them? First, it must be said that not all did. It appears that the distribution of YES and NO voters was strongly geographical. In Aborigines and Political Power, S. Bennett summarises the pattern: ‘Within divisions, the subdivisions with the highest and/or most obvious populations of Aborigines recorded the highest proportion of NO votes.’[16] The rural divisions of New South Wales, for example, recorded a NO vote of 13.13%, whilst the urban divisions recorded 6.78%.[17] It appears that the closer people lived to Aborigines, the more likely they were to vote against their ‘rights’. This is perhaps explicable merely in terms of habitual antipathy. On the other hand, voters in urban centres, being removed from any significant Aboriginal population, would have been more susceptible to media campaigns and civil rights movements such as the 1965 Freedom Rides, which sought to raise public awareness of systematic racial discrimination towards Aborigines, and to provoke guilt and a desire for change in the public conscience. With no real examples of Aboriginal people to check against media portrayals, it is possible that urbanites were much more easily swayed by these forces of change.
In summary, Australian voters held a mistaken belief that the 1967 referendum would deliver voting and civil rights to Aboriginal people, and this conception of the implications of the proposal led an overwhelming majority to vote YES to the amendments. But it remains to be seen how the false perception was produced.
The creation of a popular momentum for change
In ‘(The) 1967 (Referendum) and All That’, Attwood and Markus argue that campaigns by organisations such as the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Straits Islanders (FCAATSI) deliberately cultivated a mythological view of the referendum among the public.[18] They recognised that the amendments did not ensure citizenship rights, but saw the changes as a necessary step in the direction of a just and uniform national policy on Aboriginal affairs. It is debatable whether all activists were engaged in ‘deceit’, however. For example, Faith Bandler, New South Wales campaign director for FCAATSI, was deeply convicted that the referendum was a crucial act of symbolism in the fight for full racial equality. She offered an Aboriginal perspective on the significance of the referendum: ‘All the Aborigines were seeking was to be made, legally and statistically, “one people” with white Australians.’[19] On the other hand, activists such as A.P. Elkin made a point of informing the public as to the more mechanical, tangible implications of the amendments.[20]
So then, perceptions of the implications of the amendments among activists hardly seem to be unified. But it is easy to see how the movement for change gathered momentum and influence. The FCAATSI did not campaign on its own but was joined by vocal advocates in the Church as well as the ALP, such as Gordon Bryant and Gough Whitlam.[21] Faith Bandler travelled around NSW, promoting the referendum among a large number of educational and social institutions, from colleges to churches.[22] On 16 May 1967 Gough Whitlam addressed the Australian people, arguing forcefully for a YES vote.[23] The campaign material is not unified, but presents the referendum in any number of different lights, all positive. It is not hard to see how, in what became such a sweeping campaign, the simpler, easier to grasp promises of civil and voting rights might have forced their way to the front of the public conscience.
The prevailing political environment
The proposition concerning ss 127 and 51(26) enjoyed almost unilateral support from politicians.[24] This ensured the passage of the referendum questions through parliament. Previous suggestions for reform, which had begun as early as 1957, had not been taken seriously.[25] But by 1967 Australia had become recognised for its backwards approach to Indigenous affairs, and parliamentary discussion surrounding the referendum bills demonstrates a desire among politicians to portray Australia as a nation conscious of and concerned about racial equality. In 1962 the Department of External Affairs and the Department of Territories sent a confidential letter to overseas Australian diplomatic posts. It warned that international agitators were apt to ‘indulge… in emotional criticism of other countries’ domestic policies, especially where these appear to involve discrimination by white people against coloured people.’ As a result, there was no significant campaign for a NO vote.[26] Of course, not all politicians were exclusively concerned with Australia’s international image. For example, Gough Whitlam publicly recognised the relationship between Aboriginal representation in the census and proportional representation in federal parliament.[27] However the international issue seems to have been a prevailing concern among politicians, and one that contributed significantly to the success of the referendum.
The form of the proposition
One final aspect of the referendum that should be noticed is its structure. Unlike the 1944 referendum, which proposed 14 changes grouped as a single package, allowing only one vote of YES or NO,[28] the 1967 referendum was split into two parts: the nexus question and the question concerning Aborigines. In the end, only 40.25% of Australians and one state supported the nexus proposal. By virtue of the structure of the referendum, antipathy towards the nexus proposal was not deflected onto the proposal about ss 127 and 51(26). The 1944 referendum, amongst whose suggestions was a widely supported change concerning Aboriginal affairs, but which finally failed,[29] had shown the radical effect the structure of the questions could have on the outcome. The success of the 1967 referendum is at least partially attributable to its categorised formulation.
Conclusion
As has been shown, the success of the referendum hinged on only a few important factors. These may be summarised:
- It was practically unanimously supported by politicians, and there was no visible campaign for a NO vote.
- The campaigns led by activists led voters to an understanding of the content of the proposal that appealed to their desire for increased social justice for Aboriginal people.
- The structure of the referendum did not allow any of the negative feelings towards the nexus question to affect the vote on the Aboriginal question.
With attractive content, a sympathetic political climate, a popular momentum for change and a helpful structure, the 1967 referendum was almost bound to experience what was and remains the clearest success in Australian constitutional history.
[1] J. McMillan et al, Australia’s Constitution (1983), 27.
[2] See e.g. ‘Assimilation aim for Aborigines ‘needs patience’’, Sydney Morning Herald (September 8, 1967).
[3] Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus, The 1967 Referendum: Race, Power and the Australian Constitution (2nd ed., 2007), vi.
[4] Ibid, 35.
[5] Above n 1.
[6] Geoffrey Sawer, Australian Federalism in the Courts (1967), 208.
[7] Above n 3.
[8] Above n 1.
[9] Ibid, 24-35.
[10] ‘Public confusion evident on Aboriginal issue’, The Sydney Morning Herald (May 24, 1967).
[11] Gary Shearston, ‘Vote Yes for Freedom’, ABC Television, The Day of the Aboriginal (broadcast 19 May 1967): referenced in Attwood, above n 3, 45.
[12] John Chesterman and Brian Galligan, Citizens Without Rights: Aborigines and Australian Citizenship (1997), 156.
[13] Ibid, 159.
[14] Above n 3, vii.
[15] Julianne Schultz ed., Unintended Consequences: Griffith Review (no. 16, Winter 2007).
[16] S. Bennett, Aborigines and Political Power (1989), 54.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus, ‘(The) 1967 (Referendum) and All That’, Australian Historical Studies (October 1998) 29(111), 1.
[19] Marilyn Lake, Faith: Faith Bandler, gentle activist (2002), 114.
[20] E.g. in A.P. Elkin, ‘A Yes Vote for Aborigines’, The Sydney Morning Herald (16 May 1967).
[21] Above n 19, 104-5.
[22] Ibid, 89-90.
[23] Mr E.G. Whitlam puts the YES case on behalf of the ALP Broadcast, 16 May 1967, Whitlam Institute, University of Western Sydney, <www.whitlam.org/collection/1967/19670516_Referendum/19670516_Referendum_TV.rtf>.
[24] Above n 19, 116.
[25] Ibid, 85.
[26] Above n 19, 116.
[27] Above n 23.
[28] Above n 3, 11-12.
[29] Ibid.
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