Past errors do not justify today’s mistakes
16 December 2010
BY PAUL OATES
WHEN I FIRST went to the then Australian Territory of Papua and New Guinea, I was personally put off that anyone should call another Masta.
Funnily enough, however, it wasn't all that long before that, that I used to be referred to in the diminutive as "Master" Oates, as young men in Australian society used to be called.
In Tokpisin that would equate to the expression Mangi. When I first arrived in PNG, I was referred to by some as mangi nating since I was young and knew very little about PNG.
So having made the effort to try my best at learning and using Tokpisin, I didn't invent or determine the vocabulary we had to work with.
One of those words used to be pronounced in the rural areas where I worked as Masa and I used that word rather than emphasising the English “master”.
While everyone these days knows what that word stood for, I believe it was merely an expression that referred to someone who was not necessarily PNGian. There was likewise another term for someone who came from Hong Kong or China that those who originally came from those areas may also have taken exception to in today's society.
These terms are now anachronistic and probably were then in the towns and cities. To judge people who accepted these words into an evolving language by today's norms of society may therefore be somewhat unfair.
It also could be slightly misinterpreting Tokpisin as it was used many years ago in order to justify a conviction. Unfortunately, there will always be some who view others who are different from themselves and refer to them disparagingly.
At our basic training in Anthropology at ASOPA, we were taught that there was only one race in the world and that's the human race. I can only speak for myself but that dictum is what I have always believed and accepted.
Isn't it extraordinary that, in pointing out where Somare might be bending history to suit himself and justify his actions, we seem to have been sidetracked into a debate on racism?
Surely there are always aspects in history that, with the benefit of hindsight, could always have been better.
The essence of what I was originally referring to in Sure PNG has changed, but for the better? was that something that supposedly happened more than 40 years ago or more in no way justifies a series of mistakes today.
I agree with the overall sentiments Paul Oates expresses in his interesting article. The title is both apt and relevant.
Phil Fitzpatrick echoed what Amirah Inglis in her book 'Karo' said about life in general for Papuans during the colonial era pre-1960s.
I remember my soldier Dad (PIB) would often tell the family stories of executions before and after the war (WW2 in PNG).
The one I remember to this day is about a famous Papuan criminal by the name of Karo who after a long manhunt was executed in a public hanging upon a hill overlooking the sea at the old Koki market in Port Moresby.
The place were the scaffold has been occupied by a large SDA church for the Wanigela market community since the 1950s.
I also heard a lot of bad stories told to me by my dad of what the authorities did to erring "natives", seen as renegades.
They were compelling events that were both interesting, but also disturbuing to a young Papuan growing up in the 1950s/60s.
Yes, the then colonial Australian administration ruled Papua under a form of apartheid regime.
All this is well known to PNGeans who were born before independence.
The information is in achives in Canberra and is not talked about much today for many obvious reasons.
PM Michael Somare in his address to the nation on the media last week alluded to this environment, and vowed to change this with a handful of like-minded men (probably refering to the members of his Bully Beef Club).
However, the PM did not explain to the public why he failed to send his annual returns to the relevant authorities when they were due, like other public office-holders.
He may have tried to garner some semblance of public sympathy in his media address. But unfortunately the PM did not clearly articulate himself too well.
PM Somare did not say what relevance the past had to do with why he had constantly failed to do his routine returns required under the law, and of his inactions in public office.
Posted by: Reginald Renagi | 20 December 2010 at 09:53 AM
I've heard it said: 'that the good a man does during his life dies with him and the bad lives on'.
In training young high school students recently in how to do their best at job interviews and when they obtain employment, I made the observation that it normally takes 14 good things a person does to overturn one bad impression.
Telling people what they want to hear has become a political art form. What political leader ever wants to make a definitive statement lest he or she be personally held to account.
Couple that with the seemingly inevitable fascination of the world's media to concentrate on disaster, death and tragedy in order to sell their product.
The media of course will say that they are only providing what the public wants but has anyone ever asked the public? As the Queen said in a Christmas message many years ago, "No news is good news but these days it seems that good news is no news".
One might be forgiven for becoming a tad depressed. Some may even seem consistently to see the glass half empty rather than half full.
Perhaps it's time for those who have worn those old grey coloured glasses to take them off and have a look at the world from a different perspective.
The comments and articles on this blog that have been made by educated, intelligent PNG people should not be dismissed lightly.
It is true that there were mistakes in PNG's past and it wasn't all 'beer and skittles'. It is also true however that Australia did provide a framework for its then external territory that enabled PNG to advance as a nation.
An example of that framework is the safety valve of the current PNG judiciary to examine the actions of leaders and determine whether they should continue in their positions.
That sort of opportunity has been denied many other nations in the past and that denial ultimately led to revolution and mayhem when the majority will of the people was repressed past the point of no return.
Posted by: Paul Oates | 17 December 2010 at 11:01 AM
I see the point you are making about PNG, Arthur, but I'm also aware that people tend to see the past in a rosy glow.
I sometimes reminisce about my childhood in Suffolk in the 1950s to the chagrin of my kids. We lived on a farm without electricity and took water from a well out the back.
I have trouble sitting in a room where a television is blaring these days and I sometimes think it would be nice to live in a house without it but I don't think my wife would agree.
You sometimes hear old people in PNG talking about how life was under the kiaps; it was considerably safer for one thing. Nevertheless it was an authoritarian regime and wouldn't sit well with PNG's current elite.
Really all you need is an honest, well resourced and restrained police force to achieve the same end, although I'm starting to think that in some areas it might be too late and the army needs to go in boots and all.
At Awaba, among your peaceful and law abiding Gogadala friends, a rough house policeman was summarily ejected from the community, which proves that policing has to be a measured expedient.
Past systems may sound good to dulled memories but one has to be choosy and only pick the good bits if you go down that road.
Re-establishing the sort of power that reigned in Papua in the past will only lead to a new kind of despot.
As I pointed out, you mustn't forget the past because it teaches good lessons. At the same time I don't think you need to go back there.
Posted by: Phil Fitzpatrick | 17 December 2010 at 09:37 AM
When I first was able to sit down and talk with some old timers on Lavongai I was told that “taim bilong Geman emi bin gutpela tru!”
These old folk would have been mere lads when Germany was sent home, though I believe it took some years after 1919 for all the planters to quit their plantations.
I wondered then why that claim was made and recalled it again when recently watching a short documentary on Russia today.
Several very poor rural Russians told the researcher that they wished for a return to the totalitarian days before the dismantling of the USSR. They claimed that then at least they had enough food on the table, regular employment, better health care etc.
They said that under the old regime, “You knew who were your bosses and obeyed them. That way you would receive the basic necessities of life.”
Sad to hear such hankering after what we believe was a very bad regime. Especially comparing the peasants lot today alongside that of the oily-garchs and other billionaires who snapped up the nations assets at fire sale prices when the Soviet system collapsed.
Were my old timers on Lavongai more happy with a similar autocratic manner of the Germans than the apparent laissez faire of the average Oz bosses?
I assist a lifelong mate with his charity for the poor of Romania and Moldova. One of the drivers in the convoy that is in the snow there at the moment, told me recently, when we were having a third coffee at our South Wales local depot (it was minus 8 that day):
“Arthur I stayed with a family who want to vote at the next election for a candidate whose CV includes working in administration for the old communist regime. Apparently they too feel there is far more visible corruption now than in the old days."
In the Ukraine too there have been hankerings by many people for old time officials to be elected. Colonialism is a weird unnatural animal.
During the year I was collecting a small organ for the Romanian charity in ‘wild’ Wales at Fochriw. That night I did a little research on the area which I had only visited a few days in the 1960s.
So I end with a quote from the Fochriw history website:
Nearly 2,000 years ago a Roman presence was established in Gelligaer. Such was the advanced state of their [Roman] society and buildings it is recorded that the Celtic prince Caradog, when captured and taken to Rome, looked in wonder at its civic splendour and asked his captors, 'Since you have all this, why do you covet our huts?'
Tua’r goleuni (Towards the light).
Posted by: Arthur Williams | 17 December 2010 at 05:41 AM
David - I totally agree with you.
Posted by: D Yurus | 16 December 2010 at 02:05 PM
Yes, it's important to be mindful of the past, but times have changed now.
What happened then was not only unique to us; it was a trend that abound the world over. That was the colonial history of human relations between the colonisers and their colonies, not just in PNG but elsewhere too.
Yes, we may have been mistreated by our colonisers, but that is more a reflection of their own level of intelligence than us. We know we are better than whatever was dished out to us.
And I’d rather use that experience as a motivation to build a bigger and better PNG than as an excuse to destroy PNG.
Posted by: David Kitchnoge | 16 December 2010 at 11:18 AM
Phil's absolutely right about bringing up the past unless you can learn from it. It is liable to skew today's considerations with yesteryear's anachonisms.
Posted by: Paul Oates | 16 December 2010 at 11:07 AM
I think one has to be very mindful of the past. Otherwise how do you avoid making the same mistakes again?
To quote Amirah Inglis in her book Karo:
"A Papuan was not allowed to sleep in the town (Moresby) but only in special compounds outside the town limits: he was not allowed to be in the town at all after 9 pm curfew had sounded, neither on the streets nor on any premises other than those of his employer.
"If he were caught without a note or reasonable excuse, he could be fined up to one pound or go to gaol for up to two months and not even his employer's note was an excuse for him to be absent from his quarters after 11 pm. If he had no employer, he had to be out of town by 7 pm.
"A Papuan had to wear a loin cloth in town and behave in a decorous manner; he was forbidden to loiter on any footpath 'to the inconvenience of passers by' and if he were found near a house, he was in danger of being charged with entering 'upon the curtilage with intent'.
"He was not allowed into the swimming baths at all nor into the big stores without a note from an employer. If he worked, it was under an indenture system and he was obliged, by the regulations that bound him, to be diligent.
"He was forbidden to gamble under penalty of a two pound fine or four months in gaol and he was forbidden to drink alcohol.
"After 1926, when the Criminal Code was amended by the White Women's Protection Ordinance, any rape or attempted rape of a white woman or girl was punishable by death; any indecent assault by life imprisonment.
"A Papuan who was not a Motuan from the villages near town, was known as a 'foreign native' and he had to be especially careful after 1926 when such men, unless they were indentured, could be ordered out of Port Moresby unless they could give a good account of themselves. The penalty for these men was gaol for six months."
I don't know about you, but to me all that sounds very much like apartheid. It is also sobering to note that quite a few men were hanged and jailed for rape in very dubious circumstances, most notably when bored Sinabadas took advantage of their servants.
When I arrived in TPNG, a Cadet Patrol Officer were universally referred to as a SPOS, which stood for 'smallest particle of shite'. In the pecking order we came just below the station dog.
In Papua as a twenty year old I was referred to as Taubada, an appellation otherwise reserved for elderly and sage old men. After a while you got used to it.
Posted by: Phil Fitzpatrick | 16 December 2010 at 10:22 AM
In complete agreement with you, Paul.
We can not continue to live in the past and bring up the misgivings of yesteryear to try and justify the blunders of today and destroy tomorrow in the process. That is childish and irresponsible.
Knowing our history is important. But unless knowing it can make us become better people and create an environment of respect and understanding towards our fellow human beings, it is better we confine those ugly events of the past to history books and move on.
Posted by: David Kitchnoge | 16 December 2010 at 08:17 AM
You have my complete agreement on that, Paul. Nothing could ever justify the blatant blunders of the Somare government, particularly over the past few years.
My reference to the Ela Beach sign was made to point out some history where PNGeans were in some instances restricted; not for any other purpose. It was no "urban myth" as one reader suggested, it was a fact.
I would like to believe that all of us on PNG Attitude are pretty much on the one side of the river, and love PNG with a passion.
As a country, PNG needs all the friends she can get and who better than a wonderful group of Australians who gave their hard work and heart to PNG many years ago.
Times have changed. Sadly Somare refuses to change with the trend. The people have suffered too much; as he has greedily made decisions in his own interests instead of in the interests of his people - especially the very old and the very young.
There may now be hope for my country especially if all of the other crooked MP's follow their "masta" out the door of the big house!
Posted by: Peter Kailap | 16 December 2010 at 07:11 AM