Dr A Political

Man With A Cause

Opportunist?

From JOHN RYAN in Wewak.

Newest native man lined up “against the government” in Papua- New Guinea is bearded young William Hawari from the Sepik District, who, without admitting it, would dearly like to be another John Kaputin.

William Hawari, 29, second in a family of five boys and two girls, is the disgruntled son of a Kreer village (near Wewak) plantation labourer, “who only got 10 cents a month . . . like all my people, he was exploited by the white colonialists!”

I sat down with him over a beer at Wewak’s Boram Motel recently, and asked him what lay behind the fiery speeches he has been making against plantations, white men, and the Administration in P-NG.

HAWARI: “You white men came here many years ago, and just used all the natives in this country to make you rich. The natives should now be paid a real living wage—s2s a fort night, [Present wage for unskilled plantation workers ranges up to $5 monthly in cash, plus free clothing, accommodation and food.] “You white men have all got very good houses. You own all the planta tions. We natives have to live in bush huts —nothing but humpies.

“We’re sick of this. I’m telling my people [in village political rallies

notable for their fiery language, ges ticulations and quotations from Lenin, Marx and Engels] that they’ve got to be made into a powerful force to fight the white men!”

RYAN: "What do you mean by ‘fight’?”

HAWARI: "1 don’t mean with our fists. 1 mean fight against what the capitalist, colonial white men have done to us.

"When the missionaries came into the Sepik District they burned —they made us burn—all our carvings. They destroyed our culture, and left nothing. Now, we have no culture . . . and in some places, they’re mak ing us carve things again, so they can be sold for money!

“And what about these Europeans recruiting men for the plantations— they get money for every man they recruit—they’re making money by dealing in human flesh!

“Men on the plantations have got to be paid more. Their work for 60 years has made all white men rich.”

RYAN; “How much do you know about plantation production costs and overheads? How much profit are the planters making?”

HAWARI; “They’re getting rich and we’re getting nothing. We have to get more pay ... we need a “living” wage—s2s a fortnight. We’ll force them to give us more.”

William Hawari is growing a beard, and at some angles looks a Jot like the patron of Mataungan at Rabaul, Oscar Tammur, MHA. Like Tammur, William Hawari wants to “fix” the Wewak-But Multi-racial Local Government Council at Wewak so that it’s purely a “native” council, as it was in the old days. (There are three “non-natives” on the council— lay missionary Margaret Fitzgerald, teacher and tennis player Bob Davies, and Chinese Bill Seeto, a retailer with Australian citizenship).

At a recent political rally in a beachside village between Wewak and Boram, Hawari formed the national executive of his P-NG National Labor Party, declaring himself “the chief organiser —mi olsem Hitler ” (Pidgin phrase meaning “I’m the same as Hit ler”).

He was educated by the Roman Catholic Mission on Kairiru Island (off the Wewak coast) and eventually found himself in Rabaul, watching Sepik men work on the plantations.

He formed the Sepik Youth Move ment at Rabaul (a social group eventually talking politics) and last year went to Sydney— at the invita tion, Hawari says, of Labor Party man Bill Hayden. He had a “crash” education course in politics, came home toting Communist books (“I bought them myself”) and began quoting them at public meetings.