A TRIBUTE TO PETER EDWIN GILL

By: Leonard Francis Gill

Peter Edwin Gill was born on June 29th, Seychelles’ Independence Day, in 1932. He died on April 14th 2009. My Father’s ashes were scattered by the lighthouse at the entrance to Port Victoria on December 29th 2010, and will be watched over in eternity by the black granite mountain faces of Mont Trois Freres.

On the night of my Father’s death, I wrote the following poem saying goodbye to him. I believe it sums up his qualities and the high regard that those with whom he came in contact had for him. So I will share it with you:
Goodbye Papa
Papa, we are here, to say goodbye
our sadness, knows no end
we can’t believe You’re gone
we grieve for You
but our grief, is tempered by our memories of You
by the good man that You were
You were always there to support and care,
to the very best of Your ability
You were kind, and You were generous
You were gentle, yet You were strong
but You were stronger than we could have, ever, imagined
You were dignified
but You were more dignified than we could have, ever, imagined
by Your example, You are our teacher and our guide
we know, You know, You were loved, by all those You touched
we know that Your soul rests in peace,
with the spirit of the universe
when we look at the stars
in Seychelles
Papa, we will remember You,
we will know, Your spirit, is with us still
Papa, goodbye.

But Peter Gill was more than just a beloved father, brother and friend. He played a small part in the history of Seychelles which should not be forgotten. Especially since the part he played, and the principles he held that underpinned his efforts, are very relevant to us in Seychelles today. So I will walk through some events of that part of his life with you that I believe are relevant to us Seychellois today.
 
My Dad was born in St Louis in a small wooden house. The house was built not far from the holding pen for the family tortoises, perched on a granite rock, and part of whose front step was the top of an even larger mostly buried granite boulder. He was born into a middle class Seychellois family, and as an adolescent young boy, he enjoyed the modest benefits of middle class status in Seychelles. At 18 years old he left for Kenya to see the world and seek his living. During his absence from Seychelles, he never forsook his Seychellois heritage but instead embraced it, a feeling perhaps reinforced by his absence from home. Twice, my Dad came back to Seychelles to find his bride and, thereafter, made sure all his children were educated in Seychelles’ primary schools so that we would love Seychelles like he did; this strategy worked. Like many Seychellois before him, when he felt he had “seen the world” and saved a nest egg, he returned home to live, work and to die in his homeland.
While in Africa, a young Seychellois lawyer named France Albert Rene, fresh from school, connected with my Dad in the early 1960’s. Mr. Rene was full of new ideas of independence and dignity for Seychellois. It was after all the post-colonial season in Africa with Kwame Nkrumah leading the way of African independence in Ghana. Mr. Rene spoke to my Dad of his dreams of a free and independent Seychelles. Rene promised my Father that he would work to achieve a Seychelles where Seychellois would have full control over their own country, so they could, in dignity, democratically determine the fate of their own country and enjoy its full benefits – in summary, Rene advocated “Seychelles Pour Seychellois”. My Dad was taken in by these magic words, since Rene’s words were my Father’s ideals.

My Dad once explained to me that Rene had the Devil’s gift of knowing exactly what was in your heart and had the uncanny ability to speak the prettiest most convincing words to make you believe that those feelings and ideals that you held so dearly, were as completely his as it was yours, even though Rene, in fact, thought very little of those beliefs which he usually only half believed. Mr. Rene skillfully concealed this deceptive part of his nature from even his closest friends and advisors, until it was usually too late.

As my Dad recounted to me many years later while exiled in a foreign land, Peter Gill did what he thought was imperative for we Seychellois to gain our independence and to gain full control over our own country. He took suits and other clothes from his closet and gave them to Rene who had none that were equal to the attire needed for a man who promised “Seychelles Pour Seychellois” and needed to make this point with foreign dignitaries and other Seychellois. With these new clothes, Mr. Rene could respectably present himself on the world stage to begin the quest for Seychelles’ independence and for Seychellois to control their own country. Suitably attired, my Dad put Rene on the back of his motorcycle and off they went to various Seychellois homes throughout East Africa in search of funds and supporters for the new political party and movement Rene and my Dad had discussed. Many of these Seychellois families responded positively with their hard earned cash and with their support. The nascent seeds of what became the Seychelles Peoples United Party were thus nurtured into existence. My Father, Mr. Rene and Mr. Philibert Loizeau became the first three founding member of the Seychelles Peoples United Party with one of its principle missions to make “Seychelles Pour Seychellois”.
 
My Dad not only provided moral support for the party while requesting others to provide cash support, he put his money where his principles where. For instance, in those early days my Dad recounted to me while in exile in a foreign land, that during the early days, the party could not afford to publish the People newspaper which was essential to get the message out that the SPUP wanted “Seychelles Pour Seychellois”. So for approximately five years of its initial existence, my Father personally provided the bulk of the funding needed to publish the People newspaper. This was not the only material support he provided to the party and its important cadres. Throughout the early years there were multiple cash supplements and other support generously handed out by my father to those who were fighting for a “Seychelles Pour Seychellois”.
 
Eventually, after the last general elections in 1974 pre-dating independence, in which my Father stood as an SPUP candidate for Praslin, it appeared that my Father’s and many other Seychellois’ dream of a “Seychelles Pour Seychellois” would finally come to fruition. He traveled to London with other members of the SPUP delegation to negotiate the terms of independence with the British Government. He provided input on the coalition unity government that followed with Rene as Prime Minister and Mr. James Mancham as President, and was an SPUP delegate to the constitutional commission that drafted the unity constitution. He felt self satisfaction on his birthday on June 29th 1976 when Seychelles became a free and independent nation led by a united government ready to improve the lives of all Seychellois without regard to past divisions, wrongs or grievances. He believed we Seychellois would all work together to implement the slogan “Seychelles Pour Seychellois”.

Then came the betrayals. It is apparent now that all along, Rene had no intentions of all Seychellois working together for “Seychelles Pour Seychellois” regardless of past divisions, wrongs or grievances. On June 5th 1977 Rene overthrew his own government, shattered the recently negotiated unity of the Seychellois people and abruptly abandoned the nationalist slogan of “Seychelles Pour Seychellois”. On that same date, Rene brought into Seychelles hundreds of Tanzanian troops who eventually desecrated Seychellois soil by massacring scores of Seychellois in their own country, mercilessly spilling Seychellois blood into sacred Seychellois soil. Rene did this shamelessly, and to this date, without apology, remorse or regret.

Rene forgot about “Seychelles Pour Seychellois” in many other ways too. He threw off the cloak of Seychellois nationalism that he had used to convince many Seychellois to support him, and took on the cloak of international communism – you see, this was a more convenient ideology to support a dictatorship where he could kill, torture, imprison without charge, confiscate property without compensation, sell his house to the government for millions of rupees and lease it back for one rupee, enrich his family at the expense of the state’s treasury and on and on – Rene was, if nothing else, a practical man. Armed with the ideology of his false convenient communism, Rene could ignore the limits that “Seychelles Pour Seychellois” naturally imposed on him to better the lives of all Seychellois without retribution or recrimination while respecting their individual dignity and democratic rights.
 
Rene’s systematic persecution of a sizable portion of the Seychellois population to impose his dictatorship led to the exile of 30 percent of our population who now still, for the most part, live and die in exile away from their beloved country. This forced exodus is the single largest cause of suffering to Seychellois that one Seychellois has ever inflicted on other Seychellois – this was and is indeed the Great Suffering of the Seychellois people and is a stain on Rene’s soul and on all those who aided and abetted him. This is not just a theoretical form of suffering for me personally. I watched my Father live, and especially, I watched him suffer and die in exile away from his beloved Seychelles. I saw it in his eyes on his death bed, when he knew he was dying, as he asked me if I had any news from my brother Christopher of any new developments in Seychelles. As my Father suffered, I suffered. I am sure this is a ritual repeated thousands of times throughout the world by the many thousands of Rene’s Seychellois exiled victims.

I have heard Rene justify his dictatorship and the exile of a substantial part of our population by pointing to the many achievements he accomplished in developing the country and providing many needed social benefits to our most needy citizens. This argument, in my view, is a red herring, and I reject it. Rene’s arguments do not establish that he could not have accomplished what he did in almost three decades of power without inflicting the Great Suffering on the Seychellois people and without imposing a brutal dictatorship on the country. After all, Rene was not a person without political power before his coup. He was the Prime Minister of the country with the full ability to fashion changes he thought were necessary and important. As Prime Minister in a unity government Rene could have developed the country as he pleased. But as Prime Minister in a democracy guided by the rule of law, Rene was constrained to follow the law and he could not rape the public purse and pillage national assets and sell out our country. He did the coup so he could act arbitrarily and with impunity for his personal benefit, and to enrich his family. He did not do it to develop our country and the current well know facts of a history of continuing corruption in his inner circle proves my point. So I say the opposite is true, Rene’s coup was not a necessary prerequisite to Seychelles’ development achievements. If we Seychellois retained our unity after Independence we could have achieved far more development, far more social and political justice and done it in a genuine democracy that respected the individual dignity of each of us. In the final analysis, the Rene/Michel dictatorship has set us back at least two decades in our national development efforts and at the cost of untold suffering and brutality inflicted on our small country.

Needless to say that after Rene’s coup, when Rene abandoned “Seychelles Pour Seychellois” and took on the convenient cloak opportunistic international communism he lost my Father’s support. As Rene’s actions became more dictatorial and oppressive so did my Dad’s criticism of him. A dictator does not like any kind of criticism, no matter where it originates and regardless of whether it is motivated by good intentions. In retaliation, the Rene dictatorship started to put more and more pressure on my Dad’s business interests. At the time, my Dad was part owner of a fishing company that exported fish internationally. My Dad had invested substantially in this business called Bon Poisson expecting to create more employment opportunities for Seychellois and to establish a large commercial fishing business owned not by foreigners, but by a Seychellois in his own country.

In other words, my Dad was implementing the SPUP slogan of “Seychelles Pour Seychellois” that had motivated him to help Rene raise funds from the back seat of his motorcycle in the early 1960’s. Rene’s government did not believe in Seychellois entrepreneurship or even the basic SPUP slogan of “Seychelles Pour Seychellois”. In my view, what mattered to Rene was what he could personally obtain from the business activities anyone conducted in Seychelles, and he required that any businessman allowed to operate in Seychelles provide his dictatorship with unquestioned support in order to receive government favor and be free from intimidation and harassment. These goals and needs of Rene eventually drove the bulk of Seychellois entrepreneurs into exile requiring decades to rebuild a partial replacement class of entrepreneurs from those who stayed behind. To replace the bulk of exiled Seychellois entrepreneurs, Rene then surrounded himself with a motley crew of foreign businessmen of questionable reputation who did his bidding without question – there was no more “Seychelles Pour Seychellois”. These foreign businessmen could care less about Seychellois democracy and dignity so they cooperated with and profited from Rene’s communism of convenience. To ensure that he put my Father out of business and silence him, Rene passed a law from his desk stating that all fish exports would be done by the government, and set a below cost price to purchase fish from my Dad. Ultimately that put my Dad out of business as Rene intended, allowing Rene to acquire his business for a pittance.

Eventually, even my Dad’s partner Mr. Jean Dingwall was imprisoned by the Rene government for many years, most or all of which were without any charges. The writing was on the wall. It was either exile or prison without charge for my Father. My Dad chose his long exile instead of prison, living and dying in exile and becoming one of the thousands of Seychellois on whom Rene had inflicted the Great Suffering of exile. Perhaps not coincidentally, Rene’s house in San Souci is named Exile foreshadowing Rene’s evil intentions to inflict the Great Suffering on the Seychellois people. The extent of the exodus from Seychelles caused by Rene would be equivalent to the exile of 100 million people from the United States today. This was and continues to be a catastrophic event to the Seychellois people.

In December of this year, when I returned to Seychelles to scatter my Dad’s ashes under the eternal gaze of Mont Trois Freres, I was met by story after story of how Seychelles is rapidly being stolen from real Seychellois. To me a real Seychellois is one who forms the roots of the country, the roots of Seychellois culture and the roots of Seychellois society. These are the indigenous Seychellois people – perhaps one of the most newly formed indigenous groups in the world. The indigenous Seychellois are the people who were Seychellois at the time of independence and their descendants, and their spouses who became or who will become Seychellois through naturalization – these are Seychellois Rasin, born of and nourished by the roots of Seychelles.
 
To replace the thousand of indigenous Seychellois Rasin that Rene exiled from our country, Rene and Michel have sold or given Seychellois passports to thousands of foreigners who now dutifully return the favor in bribes and votes to keep the SPPF and its successor the PP in power. These are Counterfeit Seychellois or Seychellois Fabrike. These Counterfeit Seychellois now hold the balance of power in our country. They are the margin of victory for the SPPF and now the PP. They held this margin of victory in the last election and will do so again, in increasing numbers, in any future elections. This vote from Counterfeit Seychellois and the fraudulent votes the PP has placed on the register, along with other deceitful and fraudulent practices of the SPPF are intended to allow the PP to claim an electoral victory with a small minority of genuine Seychellois Rasin votes in their favor. The Counterfeit Seychellois not only hold the balance of political power but they believe and, in many instances do, have more rights to the benefits of our country’s wealth than indigenous Seychellois Rasin. The SPUP/SPPF/PP government has given these Seychellois Fabrike social benefits such as social security payments and houses while genuine indigenous Seychellois Rasin are told there is a budgetary crisis and there are not enough of these benefits for them. Time after time indigenous Seychellois Rasin’s benefits are cut back while more and more are given to Counterfeit Seychellois. This is completely intolerable and flies squarely in the face of the principle of “Seychelles Pour Seychellois”. The benefits of our patrimony belong to genuine indigenous Seychellois Rasin and not to Counterfeit Seychellois Fabrike. This insult from the Rene/Michel dictatorship must be stopped at all costs.

Seychelles belongs to Seychellois Rasin. While foreigners should and must be welcomed to invest in and live in Seychelles, they must not be given control over our country no matter what. This is non-negotiable. What they have been fraudulently given must be returned. At a minimum their citizenship must be cancelled. If they ever vote in our elections from this day forward, whenever a Racin government takes over, these Counterfeit Seychellois who have violated our sovereignty by voting, must be deported – no exceptions; full stop. This is “Seychelles Pour Seychellois”. On the other hand Seychellois Racin, wherever they are, must permanently and unambiguously have a homeland in Seychelles, and they should be given a voice in the affairs of their country – they should be given the right to vote by absentee ballot. Anything less is to continue the effects of Rene’s Great Suffering on the exiled Racin Diaspora who have been forced to live in exile.

The displacement of genuine indigenous Seychellois Racin with Seychellois Fabrike subservient to the SPUP/SPPF/PP does not only exist when it comes to distributing the wealth and social benefits of our country, but extends to the distribution of other privileges in our country as well. For instance, foreign Counterfeit Seychellois are given tax credits to bring in cars, furniture and all other equipment they need to do business in Seychelles. Meanwhile, a fisherman who is an indigenous Seychellois Racin who needs to buy a Yamaha motor for his fishing boat has to pay full taxes and fees on hat Yamaha. In fact, he or she is required to pay full tax payments on all the equipment he or she needs to conduct business in his or her own country. This goes for any other Seychellois Racin doing any business in their own country. Seychellois Fabrike are given more opportunities and more benefits than Seychellois Racin. In some cases, PP Seychellois Fabrike are allowed to bring in goods without even clearing custom formalities, much less pay the equivalent taxes as a genuine Seychellois Racin is forced to pay.

But these indignities and offenses to the principle of “Seychelles Pour Seychellois” are compounded even more than I have already explained. As time goes by, Seychellois are being excluded from even going to enjoy a day at the many world class beaches that exist throughout our country. For instance, Petite Anse is now closed off to genuine Seychellois Racin on Mahe, and on Praslin, Anse Georgette is closed off to Seychellois Racin, and soon, Anse Possession will be, while some Counterfeit Seychellois and foreigners have free unimpeded access to these beaches. When approaching the gates that guard these beaches o visit the beaches, you can hear Counterfeit Seychellois with foreign accents accosting indigenous Seychellois Racin demanding to know what that Seychellois Racin is doing at these gates. What happened to “Seychelles Pour Seychellois”? Additionally, I am told that if a Seychellois Racin wants to visit Silhouette, he or she must make an appointment three days in advance, and then suffer the indignity of listening to a Counterfeit Seychellois with a foreign accent instructing on the history of Mr. Dauban, a prior Seychellois proprietor of the island.

Our beaches and our islands are part of our patrimony. They belong to all Seychellois Racin wherever they live and we all should have free, unimpeded and inalienable access to them. There was a time when Rene believed that too, or at least he pretended to in order to gather support from Seychellois nationalists like my Dad. I recall the numerous times that my Dad recounted proudly how he and Rene and numerous others including I believe Mr. Michel, gathered to protest Mr. Pomroy, a millionaire American investor who had purchase Port Launay, who was attempting to close off the Port Launay beach to public access by Seychellois. My Dad and the others brought drums and other means of making party noises to the Port Launay beach by boat, and held a party on that beach to emphasize the fact that all the beaches of Seychelles are our patrimony and will not be wrested from us Seychellois Racin without a fight. Now, some in this same group who protested on the Port Launay beach on the grounds of “Seychelles Pour Seychellois” are selling us and our beaches to the first Seychellois Fabrike they create with a one rupee coin to give them.

I realize what I have written will be questioned on the grounds that being a Seychellois living outside the country I have little standing to speak to the issues I have written about. To those people I say, “I do not stand on only my own two feet when I write what I have written here. I stand first and foremost on the shoulders of my departed Father. But secondly, I also stand on the shoulders of all those who sacrificed and contributed to achieve “Seychelles Pour Seychellois” who have come before me and whose contributions I can never hope to match. So the grounds I stand on are thousands of Seychellois Racin thick and thousands of Seychellois Racin deep.” These issues of the loss of our country to PP Counterfeit Seychellois were crystallized for me when I returned to my office after scattering my Dad’s ashes in Seychelles. There, on my office wall hangs a political poster. On the poster are my Dad and Dr. Maxim Ferrari who were standing as SPUP candidates in the 1974 pre-independence election. On that political poster exhorting Seychellois to vote for my Dad and Dr. Ferrari stands the slogan “Seychelles Pour Seychellois”. This slogan was on Rene’s election poster in the same election. It was on Michel’s election poster as well.

It occurred to me that my Father, a champion for the slogan “Seychelles Pour Seychellois” has fallen. Others who believed in that slogan have fallen too. Given the Seychellois Fabrike takeover of our country, there has not been a time since prior to independence, when we Seychellois Racin needed to fight harder for a “Seychelles Pour Seychellois” and we need to retake our country from the Fabrike and their collaborators. We all need to lift this fallen banner, dust it off, and while carrying it high, to charge the ramparts of all those who have sold out our country and betrayed their people and route them from their positions and establish “Seychelles Pour Seychellois”. It is my responsibility, and it is your responsibility, to take up this fallen and almost forgotten banner and continue the fight. We owe it to the memories of those who have left us with a legacy of struggle and sacrifice for this ideal of “Seychelles Pour Seychellois”.