Samoa must hold on to its land

Dear Editor,

Samoan Aiga must hold on to their land. 

Technology is progressing so rapidly that land is the only asset that will be in demand. This explains the push by foreigners to take over all of the land of our ancestors and make our people wage slaves, paying rent and looking for odd jobs. Samoa will receive a palagi makeover once all land is owned by the HRPP and sold to foreigners for massive profit. The HRPP having sold out the people of Samoa wish to establish themselves as the government forever receiving taxes and doing business deals worldwide. However once these wealthy foreigners take the land, they will then take over the government, because a religion which is based on money worships the billionaires.

Already the Torrens System has been unconstitutionally and unlawfully brought into Samoa, because it takes away the rights of the family members and gives them to the Sa’o. This ends their connection to the benefits of the land which is their birthright. Who decided that Samoans should lose their land without asking them? Will anyone stand up and admit to it? Or is it a trick being played to shift the land from the many to the few?

Faamausili Solonaima Brown said that tricks are being played by Sa’o to take over the land for themselves.

1) A false Fa’aSamoa is shown to the Aiga by granting them titles without consultation with the whole family.

2) Family are being shifted off the land so it can be used only by the Sa’o.

3) Tautua means nothing now as pure advantage and greed takeover. 

You must give but have no say in land or title decisions.

4) The Sa’o are planning to pass the Sa’o title to their son and grandson.

These changes have been seen in NZ at the time when Maori had a chief system and the title passed around the family.

The Torrens System was designed in New Zealand using the Native Land Court created on 30 October 1865 in the words of Former

Attorney-General Henry Sewell, “to destroy if possible, the principle of communism [Aiga] which ran through the whole of their [Maori] institutions, upon which their social system was based, and which stood as a barrier in the way of all attempts to amalgamate the Native race into our own social and political system.”

These are my predictions for the sorrow, which has already begun.

Consider an Aiga with ten thousand acres in Samoa, 20,000 members in Samoa and 10,000 overseas and a Sa’o with a wife and ten children – 7 boys and 3 girls.

Each year 15 million dollars in remittances comes to the Aiga in Samoa from the 10,000 Aiga overseas.

If the Sao registers all 10,000 acres in his name, then the following

results occur:

1.  All 10,000 acres become the property of the State ending all Aiga customary land rights. Of the 30,000 Aiga members only one has

any claim to the land – the Sa’o.

2. The State grants the Sa’o a form of secondary ownership called a Freehold Title and gives him a certificate of title with his name on it.

3. The Aiga don’t really understand so remittances continue.

4. The Sa’o must obey government orders in how that land is used, allow the government to enter the land, pay any tax on the land asked for by the government and even give up the land if ordered to by the government.

5. None of the Aiga or other matai in the family have any right to use the land or to live on it without the permission of the Sa’o. If you anger the Sa’o you can be removed by the police for trespassing because you no longer have any claim to the land at all.

6. After 5 years the State imposes a tax of $1,000 per acre per year. The Sa’o must pay $10,000,000 to the State every year. 

As he earns less than $100,000 a year, he must sell land, lease it or borrow from the bank to pay the tax. Selling it would seem the easiest option because in the next year and every year after the taxes may go up. If he builds up a debt of tax owed the overnment will just take the land from him. 

If he asks his Aiga to help they soon learn that they have no say about the land or Sa’o title and abandon him as he betrayed them, as all family decisions in relation to the land and the Sa’o title will then be made by the Sa’o who owns the land. 

Due to the stress in the family and the financial pressure the Sa’o dies.

7. In his will he leaves all of the land that is left to his eldest son and the Sa’o title. His 6 other sons and 3 daughters have no rights to the land at all but must obey their brother like slaves. 

They abandon him as he acts more and more like a tyrant. 

Soon there is only 500 acres of land left and the Sa’o sells 490 acres because he can’t afford the tax.

8. Only 10 years has passed since the land was registered. The original Sa’o is dead. His eldest son now only owns 10 acres but has a million in the bank. He is a Sa’o with no Aiga.

It is time for the HRPP to tell the Aiga of Samoa why they are ending Customary Land Ownership without a National Referendum and who among them is responsible. Please set a time and place in Beach Road so Samoa may assemble and judge you.

 

Maua Faleauto

Samoa Observer

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