Port Moresby: University of Papua New Guinea Press; Oakland, CA: Masalai Press (distributor), 2012. x, 292 pp. (Map, B&W and coloured photos.) US$79.99, cloth. ISBN 978-9980-86-954-8.
Niwia Ebia Olewale was part of that generation which oversaw the establishment of an independent Papua New Guinea. His was the first generation educated beyond the completion of primary school, year 6. Up to the early 1940s schooling was in the hands of missions. In the 1950s a scholarship system was put in place to send selected students to schooling in Australia, and the cut-off age was fifteen. Ebia was selected but he was deemed, at age seventeen, too old. He was sent to Sogeri, a school established during the Pacific War to train Papua New Guineans for vocational work. He trained as a teacher at the Port Moresby Teachers College. He worked briefly as a teacher and union organizer before standing for political office. In 1972 he was elected as the member for his home electorate of South Fly. He did not reveal his membership of Pangu Pati until after his election.
In the ten years he was in parliament he rose to high office, deputy leader of Pangu Parti and deputy prime minister under the leadership of Michael Somare. It is a position he obtained partly through default. Albert Maori Kiki had been defeated in the 1978 election and Olewale was rewarded with the ministry of Foreign Affairs and deputy prime minister at a time Pangu was in decline. In 1982 Olewale was defeated.
The years following his election loss were years of disappointment and dismay, a period of political upheaval, a surge in corrupt behaviour, and the beginnings of the civil war in Bougainville, and a period when he had no influence on Papua New Guinea political life. There was no easy career move available as the public service was closed to him. His political opponents were in office. Moreover, he seemed to have no clear direction as he moved from project to project, even failing as a small businessman.
The leitmotif throughout this biography is a life of service, to Ebia’s people and his nation. In the years after 1982, Ritchie tells us, Ebia served both the people and the nation in various capacities, and avoided the corruption so prevalent in his contemporaries. There is a corresponding theme of destiny. As a young man, standing on the shore looking across the Torres Strait, Olewale dreamed of other places: “Even as a young boy he would stand at the water’s edge by his village and tell himself that he would see the marvelous places around the world he had heard about.”
Ebia Olewale: a life of Service is a biography with purpose. Ebia’s life is described as PNG’s story—“from the village to the world— … retold … through [his] experiences” (6). His “journey from the village to the nation,” the “triumphs and tragedies” (6). Of course, the story of PNG contextualizes Ebia’s life but claiming that his life is emblematic of the nation overstates and simplifies the importance of Ebia.
Writing Olewale’s biography was, Ritchie told his readers, an undertaking where he and Ebia “unknowingly … shared a place” which enabled him to shed light “on the unanswered questions of my own Papua New Guinea experience; it was an opportunity to question and learn about my [Ritchie’s] Papua New Guinean childhood:”
What was I, an Australian child, doing in that country? Does the fact that I was born and spent a happy childhood on its soil allow me to call it ‘my’ country? What assumptions about equality and inequality, about homogeneity and diversity, and about power did I grow up with, based on my experience as a child in what one feature film has called ‘a savage land’? (2)
Yet Ritchie had left Port Moresby by the end of 1970, when he was still in primary school. The biography of Ebia Olewale was a missed opportunity to examine the way Ritchie’s father, who rose to high office in the colonial service, represented the colonial regime, especially when Ritchie discusses Ebia’s rise in the 1960s. In what ways did their paths diverge? What did Jonathan learn about himself? Ritchie lays out these questions in the introduction. Ritchie states that the biography is about “fathers in a generic way. It is about the generation of men and women, who can be considered to be the mentors who helped to bring the infant TPNG to maturity as an adult and independent nation. I consider both Ebia and my Dad as ‘generic’ fathers in this way, as were many of the Europeans and Natives who contributed in their own ways to the creation of the nation of Papua New Guinea”(3).He suggests that colonizer and colonized bring the new nation to fruition, despite acknowledging that as PNG moved toward independence, many expatriate public servants and others left, including his father. He notes that the departing colonizers were not openly obstructionist but more concerned about what would happen to them and their careers.
Ritchie unfortunately can’t escape the language and tropes of colonialism. Why refer to Papua New Guinea as a “savage land”? The use of the language of colonial rule is disconcerting. Not only do we read the inference of children, the infant nation, not being ready and needing preparation for nationhood and independence, adulthood; we also read about “Natives” and “Europeans.” It is as if even now Papua New Guinea is in the waiting room of history, not ready yet.
In the end, Ebia Olewale: a life of service is a biography leavened with undue emphasis on nation-building and seeing Ebia as a role model for future generations.
Geoffrey Gray
University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
pp. 396-398