Race, ethnicity, and class issues in Fiji soccer 1980-2015

ABSTRACT

This article explores the race and class issues which continue to define Fiji soccer and perplex its stakeholders up to the present day. Cultural hegemony is clearly present with indigenous Fijian ex-star players finding it difficult to reach positions of status in administration and management after their playing careers end; this usually condemns them to a life of village-based poverty and (from a secular western standpoint) unemployment. The Fiji-Indian community (37.5% of the total population) ‘controls’ the game, and indigenous Fijian stars are basically accepted as players but not as managers or administrators. Although deliberate racism is probably not common, the game’s culture is imbued with a ‘racial feeling’, to quote the ex-Ba and Fiji player (and Fiji-Indian) Julie Sami, and is exclusionary in its effects. Fiji-Indian stereotypes of indigenous Fijians as lazy, ill-disciplined, and prone to drunkenness mirror white stereotypes about black footballers referred to in prior literature.

Acknowledgments

This article’s Background section draws upon the previously published article on Fiji soccer history by James and Nadan (2019). We thank the Editor for permitting us to draw upon this previously published article.

Dedication

This article is dedicated to the late Nadi fan and University of Fiji accounting lecturer Mr Jai Chandra.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Across the country as a whole, in 2016, the ethnic make-up of Fiji was as follows: Indigenous Fijians 56.8%, Fiji-Indians 37.5%, Rotumans 1.2%, and Others 4.5% including Europeans, part-Europeans, other Pacific Islanders, and Chinese (source: CIA World Fact Book, 2016). Most Fiji-Indians are descendants of the indentured labourers brought from India to Fiji by the British between 1879 and 1916 to work on the sugar-cane plantations.

2. Giulianotti, Sport, 74.

3. Ibid.

4. Loy and McElvogue, ‘Racial Segregation in American Sport’.

5. Maguire, ‘Sport, Racism and British Society’.

6. Giulianotti, Sport, 74.

7. Hallinan, ‘Aborigines and Positional Segregation in the Australian Rugby League,’ ‘Aboriginal Involvement in Elite Football’.

8. Miller, ‘The Anatomy of Scientific Racism’.

9. Duncan, ‘Babysitter’; Thomson, ‘His Own Doing’. The 22-year-old Morelos had scored 23 goals for Rangers by 10 February of the 2018–2019 season but, by that date, had also conceded four red-cards and 15 yellow-cards (Provan, ‘It’s Gerrard Who Needs Help’.)

10. Rugari, ‘The Forgotten Story of … the Socceroos’ Defeat to Fiji’.

11. Ibid.

12. Managers at the 2019 Battle of the Giants held in July-August were: Lautoka: Aginesh Prasad, Nadi: Pranesh Amarsee, Tavua: Anand Sami (interim), Suva: Kamal Swamy, Rewa: Pita Rabo (indigenous Fijian), Nasinu: Tagi Vonolagi (indigenous Fijian), Labasa: Roneel Lal, and Ba: Shalen Lal (sources: various articles in Fiji Sun and Fiji Times).

13. Prasad, The History of Fiji Football Association, 100.

14. Population figures are 2018 estimated figures sourced from the following website: http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/fiji-population/ (accessed 27 July 2018).

15. Source: http://www.rsssf.com/tablesn/nz-intres-det80.html (accessed 29 September 2018).

16. Sources for 17 November (versus New Zealand) and 19 November 1988 (versus New Zealand) match results: Prasad, The History of Fiji Football Association, 116; http://www.rsssf.com/tablesn/nz-intres-det80.html (accessed 20 September 2018). Sources for Australian game score and venue: Hay and Murray, A History of Football in Australia, 210; Prasad, Celebrating 70 Years of Football, 48 and Appendix VII, 94; Rugari, ‘The Forgotten Story of … the Socceroos’ Defeat to Fiji’; Singh, ‘Ba Magic lifts Fiji to Victory’; Thompson, One Fantastic Goal, 201.

17. Part-European is the official name given to those of mixed European and indigenous Fijian heritage in Fiji censuses and is a left-over category from the days of British colonial rule. It also represents a distinct community today, which exists somewhat separately from the other communities.

18. James and Nadan, ‘Fiji Soccer History 1980–1989’.

19. Prasad, The History of Fiji Football Association, 17–9.

20. Gorman, ‘Indigenous Rugby League Festivals becoming the “Saviour” of the NRL’.

21. Ibid.

22. Regarding Australia’s ethnic soccer clubs see Gorman, The Death & Life of Australian Soccer; Hay and Murray, A History of Football in Australia; Hughson, ‘Football, Folk Dancing and Fascism’, ‘The Bad Blue Boys and the “Magical Recovery” of John Clarke’, ‘A Tale of Two Tribes’, ‘The Boys are Back in Town’, ‘Australian Soccer’s “Ethnic Tribes”’; James et al., ‘Where to now, Melbourne Croatia?’; James and Walsh, ‘The Expropriation of Goodwill and Migrant Labour in the Transition to Australian Football’s A-League’; Kreider, A Soccer Century, Paddock to Pitches; Lynch and Veal, Australian Leisure; Nimac et al., More than the Game; Warren, Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters.

23. Lautoka Blues dominated the competition during its (Lautoka’s) glory years, 1938–1959 (Prasad, The History of Fiji Football Association, 103). Since then it has only recaptured its brilliance in short spurts such as the 1984–1985 team. As at 1 August 2019, the former Lautoka star Wally Mausio was a regular customer at the Lautoka Club in Lautoka City.

24. James and Walsh, ‘Islamic Religion and Death Metal Music in Indonesia’; Kahn-Harris, Extreme Metal; Thornton, Club Cultures.

25. At the time of the 2000 coup, a number of assaults, burglaries, and other violent offences were committed against Fiji-Indians (Trnka, ‘Violence, Agency and Freedom of Movement’, 279). The tale of the time was that it was ‘angry Fijian men’ who were responsible for all of the attacks. Although the crimes ceased, the image of the ‘angry Fijian man’, who poses a threat to Fiji-Indians, and especially to Fiji-Indian women, remains a constant stereotype and bogeyman figure within Fiji-Indian society (Ibid, 281). In one tragic case, on 26 June 2005, three Fiji-Indian sisters, Aashika Sherin Lata (aged 19), Renuka Roshni Lata (aged 18), and Radhika Roshni Lata (aged 17), disappeared near Rakiraki; the man probably behind their disappearance and probable murder was a Fiji-Indian, Dip Chand, aged 42 (a neighbour and family friend) (Ibid, 278). He had first attempted to mislead the victims’ father and police by blaming the events on ‘some Fijian men’, ‘several Fijian men’, and ‘three Fijian men in a boat’, the alleged perpetrators remained crucially unidentified by Chand apart from their race and gender so as to play into prevailing local fears (Ibid, 278–9).

26. The Gujaratis were the main sub-set of Fiji-Indians who arrived as free settlers, rather than as girmityas or indentured labourers, and they quickly established themselves as the shopkeeper class.

27. The Singapore ruling regime, with its principles of neo-liberalism, hyper-capitalism, meritocracy, and multiracialism, has become a role model for the Fiji First government.

28. Giulianotti, Sport, 56–7.

29. For the purposes of this computation, I classify Ba’s Bale Raniga as Fiji-Indian although he was of mixed indigenous Fijian and Fiji-Indian descent. For Nadi, I classify Dyer as indigenous Fijian.

30. Alawattage and Wickramasinghe, ‘Appearance of Accounting in a Political Hegemony’.

31. Source: https://sociologydictionary.org/hegemony/ (accessed 18 September 2018).

32. For more information on the Fiji village system, see James and Leung, ‘On the Relationship between Catholicism and Marxism’, Section 2, 171–8; and the November 2005 special issue of Fijian Studies: A Journal of Contemporary Fiji which was about gender issues in the island nation.

33. Bourdieu, Distinction, The Field of Cultural Production; Kahn-Harris, Extreme Metal; and Thornton, Club Cultures.

34.. For an excellent discussion of the organizational culture of the Fiji military, and how that culture is inextricably tied to indigenous identities, see Teaiwa, ‘Articulated Cultures’.

35. S.M. Singh, as he was commonly known, managed the Fiji national team from 1960–1976. As an 18-year-old, he played in the first ever IDC tournament in 1938 (Prasad, The History of Fiji Football Association, 126).

36. Giulianotti, Sport, 70, emphasis added.

37. Ibid, 79.

38.. Sources: Chand, ‘Passion and Pride for Football’; and pictures in the Fiji Times of Tuesday, 30 July 2019.

39. Prasad, The History of Fiji Football Association, 166, 173–4.

40. James and Walsh, ‘Islamic Religion and Death Metal Music in Indonesia’; Kahn-Harris, Extreme Metal; Thornton, Club Cultures.

41. Giulianotti, Sport, chap. 5.

42. According to Dyer, the players who went for the drinking session outside the camp were the late Joe Tubuna, Upendra Choi, Semi Tabaiwalu, and Henry Dyer.

43. Giulianotti, Sport.

44. Prasad, Celebrating 70 Years of Football, 43 and Appendix VII, 95.

45. The Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited, commonly called ANZ, is the third largest bank by market capitalization in Australia.

46. Sailes, ‘The African-American Athlete’, 190–6.

47. Quoted in Wiggins, ‘Great Speed but Little Stamina’, 179.

48. Singh, ‘Ba Magic lifts Fiji to Victory’.

49. The University of Fiji was opened in December 2004 and was set up by the Hindu religious group Arya Samaj. It is located on the Queen’s Highway in Saweni, between Lautoka and Nadi (around one-third of the way towards Nadi if you depart from the Lautoka side).

50. Giulianotti, Sport, 53–7.

51. Ibid.

52. Turner, ‘Wild and Domesticated’, 379.

53. Prasad, The History of Fiji Football Association, 113. For coup-leader Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka’s worldview and justification for the 1987 coups see Dean and Ritova, Rabuka.

54. Ibid, 112–3.

55. Ibid, 113.

56. Ibid, 113.

57. Kelly (‘Meet Malcolm’) lists the match date as Saturday 25 May, but this is contradicted by the Monday 27 May Fiji Times match-report (and one other article) which both refer to the match as having taken place ‘yesterday’ (see Anonymous (‘Joy for Billy’) and Chambers (‘Fiji Team thrash Newcastle United’) who both refer to ‘yesterday’). The front page of the Monday 27 May 1985 Fiji Sun also confirms that the match took place ‘yesterday’ (Anonymous, ‘3–0’).

58. Chambers, ‘Fiji Team thrash Newcastle United’. Rusiate Waqa was a crowd favourite of the Fiji-Indian supporters throughout his sterling career. The nickname bestowed on him by the Fiji-Indian fans, Waqan (pronounced ‘Wang-un’), was even used in the media reports of the era. Dyer suggested to the author that the indigenous Fijian players felt that this was disrespectful because Waqa was his real name and Waqan was not a Fijian name at all; Waqan shouldn’t have been used in the media reports in place of Waqa.

59. Ibid; Prasad, Celebrating 70 Years of Football, 44.

60.. Source for Bill Murray opinion: Comment from the floor, Sporting Traditions XX: Old Stories-New Histories conference, Darwin, Australia, 30 June-3 July 2015.

61. Chambers, ‘Fiji Team thrash Newcastle United’, 24.

62. The other annual knock-out cup competition, the Fiji FACT, commenced only in 1991.

63. Kelly, ‘Meet Malcolm’; Singh, ‘Newcastle Gain Sweet Revenge’.

64. Masih, ‘McFaul Praises Fiji Duo’.

65. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 106.

66. Beckles, The Development of West Indies Cricket, 87.

67. Majors, ‘Cool Pose’.

68. Giulianotti, Sport, 76.