as betrayer

Political Currents

Jimmy Stevens as betrayer of a faith

Vlarx wrote that history repeats tself, first as tragedy and then is farce. Confronted by the uppressed rebellion on ispiritu Santo, one is hard >ressed to distinguish between he two. On the one hand it will ippear sensible to most that a ecently independent Pacific lation should begin its career in mity rather than division. On he other hand the storming of he secluded NaGriamel head [uarters at Fanafo by Papua slew Guinea troops at the end if August this year looked like n example of heavy-handed leo-colonialism.

Admittedly, the really awk ward side to the Vemarana or ispiritu Santo problem has ►een the international factor, 'here is no doubt that French nterests and the Phoenix Foun lation of the United States lave fanned the flames of liscontent and made it necess ry for Vanuatu’s Prime Minis er Walter Lini to send in rmed forces. The British and Tench governments could have lone something decisive well icfore Independence Day, but hey were too busy either trying o bow out of the whole scene or in France’s case) reluctant to quash a bunch of unorganised nutineers who actually had omething good to say about he French in the Pacific. So ow it is that, long after Jimmy itevens first proclaimed the ndependence of the NaGri mel Federation in August 976, and months after his upporters first showed they ould take over Luganville, ther nations have become in olved. PNG and to a lesser xtent Australia have entered p-stage to do the ‘dirty work’, 'he result? Tragi-comedy.

Those who have protested gainst the ‘punitive ex •edition’ approach nicely illus rate the paradox. For once, .eftist-looking advocates of hu nan rights and the very same

parties seeking to transform Espiritu Santo into a tax haven (and a destination for Mafia money) seem to come out de fending the same cause. Dig ging beneath the surface, it is not hard to discover the reason for this curiosity. It lies in the anomalous fact that the storm ing of Fanafo was at one and the same time the foiling of an international conspiracy and an assault on a Melanesian inde pendent church. Now I am realist enough to appreciate that there might have been no alternative, and that troops just ‘keeping the peace’ might never have satisfied the Vanuatu government’s instincts for eliminating trouble. After all, was not Jimmy Stevens flirting with the French? Was he not backed by the American Liber tarians and by businessman Oliver (who provided him with a powerful radio, 1500 pass ports and other accoutrements of rebel ‘nationhood’)? Was he not willing to receive aid from gunrunners and to countenance bursts of (albeit limited) viol ence against Vanuaaku Party opponents? All this is unde niable, but it is now high time to discuss an (all-too unexpec tedly?) important factor which has been consistently neglected in the press the precon ceptions and beliefs of the NaGriamel rank and file. Even after the quick surrender of August 31, we are still bound to look at NaGriamel as a (politico-)religious movement which has captured the imagin ation of ordinary men and women who have committed their lives to its ostensible message of liberation, even to the point of accepting dire consequences.

Most of the genuinely loyal supporters of NaGriamel con stitute an independent church, which goes under the long title of the NaGriamel Federation Independent United Royal

Church. At least 12 church buildings of bush materials have been erected under that name in west Aoba alone, and Fanafo village itself, the head quarters on Santo, is dominated by a large church building of the same unusual brand.

Independent churches are not new phenomena in Mela nesia. In some recent research I have been able to show that at least 15 or so movements fit into this category, rejecting as they do the control of European based churches or missions.

Readers of PIM will be aware that the Christian Fellowship Church is the best known among such special develop ments. Its prophet, Silas Eto, who dresses in white robes and sits enthroned in church ser vices, led a defection of New Georgians from the Methodist mission of the British Solomon Islands in 1960. Today the CFC is 4800 strong, is accepted as a properly constituted church, has its own schools and teachers funded by the state, and has received a grant from the World Council of Churches for training its pastors. And all this after some strange-looking be ginnings.

Another (I think more perti nent) example is the Hehela Church of Buka Island, North Solomons Province, Papua New Guinea. Emerging from an anti tax, anti-colonial organisation known as the Hahalis Welfare Society, it played an important part in the Bougainville se cession moves of 1976. Its leader, John Teosin, however unorthodox and peculiar his philosophy of life might appear, was the very man chosen to join Fr John Momis in conveying the North Solomons indepen dence brief to the United Nations, New York. Jimmy Stevens is yet another se cessionist, or more truly, has arisen as a protagonist for the indigenous reappropriation of expatriate land (on the whole ‘New Hebridean’ group), but he is a man who, even while almost all his indigenous sup porters cling fast to the original vision of regained land rights, has betrayed his cause by compromising with sinister out side pressure and ‘mixed-race French’ colons.

Originating in 1965 from an

association between Santo chiefs (especially Buluk) and Jimmy Stevens, who is an islander of mixed ethnic back ground, NaGriamel (best trans lated ‘Croton-Cycas Palm’) stood squarely opposed to the 80% foreign ownership of ar able land throughout the New Hebrides. In search of a new identity, Buluk and Stevens sided with the Church of Christ Mission against both the Presbyterians and Anglicans.

Two indigenous C. of C. pas tors, James Karai and Abel Bani, worked vigorously to give NaGriamel their theologi cal backing, and forged effective links between Fanafo and supporters on Aoba, Malekula, Epi, Pentecost and Maivo. As the emergent charis matic leader, however, Jimmy Stevens, with his syncretistic tendencies, his claim to be Moses leading people to the Promised Land, and un ashamed polygynous relations, greatly disappointed the pre viously elated C. of C. missionaries so that they dis owned NaGriamel by 1975.

With the two pastors choosing to remain loyal to Stevens, the independent ‘Nagriamel Church of Christ’ (later to be re-named with the much longer title) held its own, and it has remained distinct even while being integrally related to the land reform movement.

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since the early ’7os (when NaGriamel claimed to have 30 000 sympathisers around the country) down to the time of the two incursions on Luganville, one after the 1979 elections, and one before the declaration of indepen dence. To put it in a nutshell, Stevens was pushed by outside mainpulators into a volte face ; he turned out promising so much territory to expatriates that his policies looked posi tively reactionary beside the Vanuaaku stance on the inalien ability of native land. The crucial point is, however, that it is not just Stevens, nor his belligerent colon friends, nor even young local hotheads who were prepared to bully oppo sition supporters on Santo, who constitute the majority of NaGriamel loyalists. Stevens, what is more, because he made

the peculiar decisions, however aware or unaware he was of their implications, was leading that majority by the nose, because it was never informed about the ramifications of his policy shifts. Even the pastors Karai and Bani, essentially es pousers of justice rather than violence, went on preaching the original message without realis ing they had been sold down the

drain. Their sermons,/ recur rently about land, justified tra ditional rights to it by the appeal to such texts as Proverbs 22:28 (‘Remove not the ancient landmark which your fathers have set’) and Job 24:2 (‘Some remove the landmarks, violent ly taking away flocks and feed ing them’). The irony the tragi-comedy of it all is that Stevens and his newer confreres turned out to be by far the most dangerous-looking boundary shifters and they were fairly asking for gaol. (At the time of writing I remain uncertain as to whether James Karai, pastor at Fanafo, was also arrested.) Following the 71 arrests at Fanafo, however, almost half of which hit at the colons, we are now required to assess the effect of the whole affair on local people supporting NaGriamel on six islands. After all, NaGriamel is hardly dead as a church. A visit to the west Aoba churches, let us say, would soon reveal how pastor Bani has secured the continuous life of NaGriamel symbolism. Ban ners of nagrie and mel leaves are flaunted in services, and during marriages they flank those who take their vows. For the people belonging to these churches, who were wise enough to stay away during the Fanafo crisis, the arrests on

Santo are not going to come as a relief, but as persecution. It is probably obfuscating matters to liken NaGriamel to some of the great dissentient move ments of Africa and Melanesia, but we always need reminding that the best way to keep an idea alive is to oppress those who hold it, and that one way to heroicise a rebellion’s leader is to incarcerate him. Stevens has been in prison at least two times before and each time his follow ing has strengthened. It is significant that most of his supporters, not being in the know, still have an uncritical faith in both his bigman char isma and integrity, and they could easily turn him into yet another ‘victimised Jesus’, like the Congo’s Simon Kimbangu or Madang’s Yali. All those left to hold the can for NaGriamel, certainly, will probably lose face and suffer ignominy, but a hard core is likely to be resilient under pressure, and their sense of fellowship with other dis affected elements the Sul phur Bay movement and Len akel, for example, two emerg ent independent churches on Tanna Island is likely to intensify. Feelings of recrimi nation will naturally solidify; the typical Melanesian (why not say universal?) response of ‘payback’, more likely to come in the form of non-cooperation than violence, will have to be accounted for.

The siege of Fanafo was probably the only way out of the Vanuatu Government’s di lemma, but the act of military repression will now need to be tempered by sensitivity.

NaGriamel has a good 600 or more committed adherents over and above those arrested, and they make up vocal minorities on two-thirds of Vanuatu’s islands. That is precisely what has made the movement so un nerving in any case. Deliberate efforts to relieve present ten sion, however, with care to ensure that prisoners will not fall into the hands of angry mobs (as they did earlier), and attention to the ‘uncontami nated’ claims of NaGriamel, will help it develop into a more accepted, creative grass-roots institution like the CFC. The price of the recent military initiatives may not look so great

at this point in time, but to overplay one’s hand from now on will leave Vanuatu with an unrepentant ‘religion of the oppressed’ rather too early in the history of a young nation.

G.W.T.

Fiji criticism

of involvement

The involvement of Papua New Guinea troops in putting down the Espiritu Santo rebellion in Vanuatu (PIM Oct p 19) has brought a highly critical re action from sections of the Fiji parliament. Although most Island nations saw the PNG intervention as legitimate and as a sign of regional solidarity between democratically-elected governments, the intervention was bitterly attacked in the Fiji House of Representatives by Ratu Osea Gavidi. Australia was also subject to some criti cism for its role in supporting

Png.

Ratu Osea, the sole indepen dent member of the House of Representatives, spoke during an adjournment debate. Al though no party leaders com mitted themselves to a firm opinion during the debate his speech received a generally sympathetic hearing with no opposition and including an extension of time. (At the request of the Vanuatu Prime Minister, Father Walter Lini, PNG sent 400 troops to Vanuatu. Backed by Australian technical support and with the aid of Vanuatu police the troops ended a secessionist rebellion on Santo and arrested more than 100 rebels, including the nominal leader Jimmy Stevens).

Ratu Osea told the Fiji par liament that the use of PNG troops and Australian support had created an unpleasant and aggressive military precedent in the Island communities of the Pacific. He said that PNG and Australia might well have motives which bore careful watching. He said that Stevens had been ‘highly outnumbered and militarily outgunned’ which had made the end of the rebellion a foregone conclusion and had tended to detract from the serious implications.

What remained, he said, was that the peace of the Pacific

had been disturbed, and ‘if they exile or kill Stevens today, another Stevens will grow on the island tomorrow to keep haunting the government of Vanuatu and Father Lini’.

Ratu Osea said he had per sonally contacted PNG and Australian representatives to ‘alert them to the futility of the exercise’. He said he had visited PNG during the preparation stages and he had found that many people shared his views that their country should not be involved.

He said that the former PNG Prime Minister, Mr Somare, had once ended a secession movement on Bougainville Island by peace talks, dialogue and an offer to decentralise power. Ratu Osea said he failed to understand why similar tac tics could not have been used on Santo. Australian support of the military operation was quite obvious because of the ‘military hardware’ which had been made available.

Ratu Osea commended the Fiji government for its stand in not sending troops and for declaring that its only partici pation would be in a properly mounted international peace keeping operation approved by

United Nations. ‘I think this was a wisely-considered stand by our government, and it deserves all our praise’ he said.

The acting Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, said that Ratu Osea’s remarks con tained ‘useful information for us to bear in mind’. He added that the U.N. Charter did not forbid one country from intervening in another’s affairs provided that a request was made by the country seeking aid.

Jimmy Stevens

Ratu Osea