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Perspective of reporter Haas on Pousima Afeaki
TONGA-NEW ZEALAND 1870-1950
Historical milestones
Introduction
Pacific Citizens:
Lifting our game
 
List of oral archives
Career of a Parliamentarian
Coping with the depression
Putting things together in Ha’apai
Gifting fish in Ha’apai
Export bananas to NZ through the Produce board
Organising people to produce bananas
Respecting commoners
Respecting Queen Salote
Expanding secondary education options
Expanding education options
Andrew Afeaki arrives for education in NZ
Early Tongans at Victoria University of Wellington
King Dick, the British and Tonga
Closeness of annexation
Queen Salote and New Zealand
Maori and Tongan leaders contact
Lawyer into Parliament
Previous generation also in Parliament
Leader of the opposition, Pousima Afeaki
Working through government marketing then and private sector now
Son's perspective on a giant of a man Pousima Afeaki
Andrew Afeaki’ s hopes for his time
 
Archives
Lifiting our game - 2003
 

 



  

Social Studies Level 2 Social Organisation:

TONGA - NEW ZEALAND 1950

HOW AND WHY PEOPLES’ PARTICIPATION IN ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES HAS CHANGED, AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF THIS

 

Organising people to produce bananas

DecisionMaker sound:

Click here to listen to this oral archive


Andrew Afeaki says:
My father was driven in similar vein to him spending months and months fund raising for the scholarships in the mid late 40s. In the early sixties through the vehicle of the ‘Api Fo’ou College Old Boys, he had decided as President of the Old Boys Association they needed to do more than just meet once a year as old boys and celebrate their coming together. He and Dr Leopino Foliaki, and Laitia Fifita, were the main players. They put up a proposal to the AGM of the old boys in the early 60s that they should take the opportunity of banana exports to New Zealand, grow bananas and export them through the produce board, for them to earn a living. Only a few of the old boys had jobs, like Leopino Foliaki, a doctor, my father as a lawyer, Fifita as a weatherman in Tonga. There was not that many actually in jobs. They set about organizing committees in each of the villages, of old boys. They set monthly targets. They must have so many banana trees planted – every one of the members of the old boys network in the villages. They went out to the villages and inspected it. They did this for three years. Banana production just kept increasing through the sixties into 1968-69 when they had reached about 600,000 cases. But most of that huge increase of banana exports in Tonga was driven by that simple people organisation. Other people joined in with the old boys. But bananas were then hit by disease in the 1970s onward, and killed it. But there was a huge influx of cash income into Tonga.

Next, Respecting commoners

   

Source: Anthony Haas personal collection

Traditional practices produce much of Tonga's food for local and overseas use.

   
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