Creating Deviance: Criminality and Elite Amateur Soccer in the Fiji Islands, 1975-2015 ()
1. Introduction
This article considers criminality, both on-the-field and off-the-field, within the history of elite amateur soccer in the Fiji Islands, covering the period 1975-2015. Using an oral history approach, based on interviews with ex-players, administrators, and an ex-team doctor, I explore the role of criminality and borderline criminality. This topic has a contemporary relevance, in Scotland at least, when David Goodwillie was removed from the Raith Rovers club, just after signing, due to concerted opposition from within and outside the club, because he had been found guilty of rape in a civil case. My discussion includes examples of on-field behaviour, which breaks codes of sportsmanship, such as the “throwing” of games; and off-field behaviour, such as the after-hours robberies of (Indo-Fijian owned) jewelry stores committed by a prominent ex-player suffering from depression and possible alcohol-related issues. All of these events will be placed in their historical and cultural context, and specific attention is paid to not viewing these events through a modern-day Western imperialist lens (Chakrabarty, 2000: pp. 3-16; Shaw, 2016: p. 607). As Chakrabarty (2000: p. 6) says, “European thought…is both indispensable and inadequate in helping us to think through the various life practices that constitute the political and the historical in India”. This would have to be true of Fiji as well, which was a British colony until 1970. References to territorial gods and black magic rituals abound in the discourses of ex-players and at least some supporters seemed to have practiced black magic to try to get a win for their team. In the words of Chakrabarty (2000: p. 14), “[e]xamining, for instance, over a hundred known cases of peasant rebellions in British India between 1783 and 1900, Guha showed that practices which called upon gods, spirits, and other spectral and divine beings were part of the network of power and prestige within which both the subaltern and elite operated in South Asia”. Others eschewed such references and practices on the grounds of either conventional religion, rationality or both. So we have both a strong British colonial heritage of rationality in Fiji soccer and also an Indian worldview of spirits and karma. It is important to understand this background, although magic and spirits are not directly covered here. In relation to criminology, the overall framework is critical criminology and especially the labelling perspective and Marxist criminology.
I find that recurring poverty and disappointment faced by players and ex-players plays a major role in all of these dramas. Indigenous Fijian players, finding themselves on overseas tours, often break free of constraints imposed by tour management. Alcohol is usually involved and curfews frequently broken. Players realize that these trips are only available due to their soccer talent and, once they retire, the opportunities will cease and they will effectively be “banished” back to their villages. As a result, they are determined to break free and enjoy their tour moments to the fullest. The drinking escapades are then recalled fondly by ex-players when they meet together, as ex-players, after their playing days are over. Resentment towards Indo-Fijian (i.e. Fijians of South Asian descent) coaches and administrators, of the business-class, may also be involved, as indigenous Fijian players feel that these people have more life-chances than them, and hence they are unwilling to adhere to their dictates while overseas where local status hierarchies are weaker and hence capable of being challenged. Indigenous ex-players also often perceive that their chances of moving into coaching or administrative positions post-retirement are slimmer for them than for their Indo-Fijian counterparts (James & Nadan, 2020). Indo-Fijian managers and journalists complain about the indigenous players’ ill-discipline and drunkenness, and do not attempt to look at sociological or psychological causes of the events.
I also explore how “game throwing”, of various types, has been said to have taken place. In one case, Ba players allegedly “gifted” Nadi two goals in a 7 - 0 win so that Nadi, rather than Lautoka, could win the 1982 national-league (now Fiji Premier League) title. In that case, an extended essay by a Nadi legend, central-midfielder, Mark Bayliss (name changed), describes events from his perspective. This writing was based on an intensive one-on-one semi-structured interview with the author and is used here, with permission, as part of an oral history approach. In a more contemporary case, a short piece by Bayliss is reproduced here where he criticizes Nadi “playing dead” so as to exclude Lautoka from progressing out of its group-of-four in the 2015 Inter-district Championship (IDC). It is interesting to see that Bayliss’s strong opposition to game throwing in regards the 2015 case doesn’t seem to carry over to his commentary on the 1982 match. The shared understandings between the indigenous players on both teams back then seem to trump in his mind all other considerations. On another occasion, later in his playing career, after he had returned to Nadi after a stint with Lautoka (the story probably dates to 1988-1994), he refuses to be arrested by police in the Nadi playing shirt, while warming up on Lautoka’s Churchill Park, as it would, in his mind, expose his team, his teammates and the green Nadi shirt to dishonour. Hence he climbs the high fence on Churchill Park’s outer wing to evade capture.
The article attempts to address and answer the following research questions:
RESEARCH QUESTION 1: Based on a small sample of elite Fiji soccer players who played after 1975, what episodes of criminality or borderline criminality took place?
RESEARCH QUESTION 2: How can these incidents be classified in terms of on-field and off-field and further within these two categories?
RESEARCH QUESTION 3: What ethical worldviews do the interview data reveal as ex-players, years later, reflect upon their own actions and responses?
RESEARCH QUESTION 4: How do race and class issues, even at the margins and subtly, influence either the criminality, perceptions of criminality or the ways in which the stories are later retold and/or rationalized?
RESEARCH QUESTION 5: What does the data reveal about the uneasy and ambiguous relationship between village rules/customary authority and criminal laws/legal authority?
2. Critical Criminology
Critical criminologists oppose mainstream criminology, including the classicist and positivist approaches, on many grounds (Ugwudike, 2015). An important one is that the critical criminologists are anti-essentialists who aim to highlight the problems in the essentialist approach. Essentialism is the worldview that categories in the social world are inherent in nature, fixed, obvious, and knowable to everyone via logic and observation (ibid., pp. 26-29). The categories, such as deviant, sane-insane, race/ethnicity, sexuality, criminal-noncriminal, are thought to be static properties of the natural world or at least of the social world (Young, 2009: p. 7). Anti-essentialism opposes this view by arguing that such categories are incomplete, fluid, overlapping, subjective or unknowable. If they are presented as fixed, this is part of an ideology designed to protect the ruling-class and capital (Chambliss, 1975: p. 151; Quinney, 1974: p. 54). The essentialist regards deviance as part of the constitution of the self, whereas the anti-essentialist points to problems in social, economic and political systems including institutions, which create, promulgate and enforce categories and hierarchies—the reification of difference in the interests of power (Patel & Tyner, 2011: pp. 117-118; Thomas, 1907; Ugwudike, 2015: p. 137). The anti-essentialist is akin to an existentialist who believes that she (or he) creates herself through her actions, defying trends and conformity, so as to become a unique individual, rather than an occupier of a category. But she is still a product of her society and her socialization.
3. Research Method
The author arrived in Fiji in May 2013 to take up an academic job in the island nation. Soon I began following the local Premier League soccer team, Lautoka Blues, and watched their home games at Churchill Park right adjacent to the city-centre. A few times I attended away games in neighbouring towns, and learned that a fundamental rule of Fiji soccer is that it is very difficult to beat Ba on its home turf, the feared Govind Park. Ba is famous for its soccer successes, including six IDC title wins in a row from 1975-1980 and for its huge and passionate support base, which includes all ethnic groups, ages and genders. The Soccer Ball Café features a six or seven feet tall replica soccer ball near the roadside, which serves as its kitchen, and, more importantly, as a way to market and promote Ba as the only town in Fiji where soccer is the number one sport. Clearly, as Gaffney (2008: p. 203) writes, “clubs and stadiums function as sites and symbols of social memory, representation and meaning”. However, in Ba, places in the town itself beyond the stadium, such as the Soccer Ball Café; the Ba Museum, with its dedicated Ba Soccer section; and the Ba River, where parties extending several days would occur after Ba title triumphs, share in and transmit these meanings, and are a further source of collective memory. The wife of ex-Ba and Fiji player, Julie Sami, told the author how shopkeepers in Ba would open up their shops to let players take away free goods and then let their wives do the same a few hours later as a reward for bringing immense pride to Ba by winning IDC titles.
I met Bayliss by chance at a local Nadi pub, famous for its working-class ambience and local indigenous crowd, near the end of 2013. Soon we agreed that I would help write his memoirs and that I had his permission to publish any academic journal articles which might result from the project. We met on Thursday afternoons in various Nadi town-centre venues over the period May 2014 to April 2015. Altogether, we met officially for interviews on 20 occasions, and interviews took an average time of 3 hours each. This excludes times we met for purely social purposes. After this, I was introduced to four ex-Ba players and two ex-Nadi players and we interviewed them during the period from June to October 2015. One of the ex-Ba players is Indo-Fijian, while the others are indigenous Fijians. I accessed Bayliss’s network of contacts to find these players, and he was present at each interview, so I classify the sampling method as snowball sampling (on snowball sampling, see Biernacki & Waldorf, 1981).
Our procedure was to go to Ba town and visit the ex-players’ homes, take down their phone numbers, and then return at a mutually-agreed-upon day and time for the actual interview. The actual interviews were of the semi-structured type, veering towards the unstructured side of the spectrum (on semi-structured interviews, see Barriball & While, 1994). As the four ex-Ba players were all well known in Ba town (population around 15,000), sometimes we asked taxi-drivers or people waiting at the bus station where the ex-players lived. Within the Fiji cultural context, this is not an unusual way to do things. Interviews were either conducted at the players’ homes, or at the Ba River foreshore, and they took an average time of 3 hours each. Wives were present at three of the interviews and they contributed fully to the discussions with our support.
Participant-observation included attending a drinks session with ex-players prior to and then attending a FFA Veterans’ Dinner held in Nadi in October 2014. I also attended various matches and village functions with Bayliss during the period of the fieldwork. Fieldwork concluded in December 2015, when I departed Fiji, although I received updates from study participants and others when I visited Fiji for short, week-long trips in 2017 and 2019.
Oral history emerged as a part of “history from below”, where there was a movement away from stories of great men in the public sphere (politicians, kings, and other famous men) (Cowman, 2016: p. 85) to lives lived in relative or total anonymity by working-class women and men whose lives had escaped public record and the attentions of traditional historians. Part of the agenda here was on empowering marginalized individuals and hearing marginalized stories so as to get a more complete and balanced understanding of history. Feminist and socialist authors (e.g., Caine, 1986; Cowman, 2007; Hannam & Hunt, 2002; Harrison, 1987; Holton, 1987; Levine, 1990) led the way here and they frequently used techniques of individual or collective biography (Cowman, 2016: p. 85). Where the persons were still alive then oral history interviews were often used as the primary data source and not just as a second-best supplement to written records. Diaries, letters, school reports and photographs were also viewed as aiding historians to get a better understanding of lives and events (Cowman, 2016: p. 91). Oral history is vital for Fiji where the book publishing industry is small and poverty-stricken; the internet footprint is small (not much exists outside social media and bland corporate websites); and, until recently, education levels were low. Fiji soccer, even to Premier League level, in the 1980s was effectively amateur with payments to players in cash being zero or minimal—in this environment, payments-in-kind (including beer cartons) from team management, shop owners, and sponsors played an important role. Due to their status today, the indigenous ex-players, tend to work as subsistence farmers in the Fiji villages, and are excluded from the public record. Although soccer has a passionate following, and these ex-players remain well known today among fans of a certain generation, this does not translate into monetary support. Therefore, they are marginalized individuals of the type often studied in “history from below” and oral history.
4. Oral History I, by Mark Bayliss, Ex-Nadi, Lautoka and Fiji Midfielder
4.1. Nadi 7, Ba 0 (1982 National-League Match)
In this national-league match at Prince Charles Park, Ba had most of their star players, including Bale Raniga as goalkeeper. It was on a hot sunny afternoon and before half-time we had already put in four goals. The year was probably 1982. At this match, Ba had nothing to lose and nothing to win for. They were already out of the running for the national-league title.
In the second half, we scored the fifth goal. We then started to fool around because of the goal margin. Nadi needed to win by five goals to get the league title over Lautoka. We asked ourselves (because most of the players from Ba were our mates in the Fiji team): “Should we leave the score-line as it is or ask them to assist us to widen the margin?” They said they would give us another two.
As we scored these last two goals we were playing constructive soccer but the spectators did not know that Ba was already giving in and we were also not playing wholeheartedly because of our western region and national-team comradeship. Most of the Ba players were from Nadroga so we were western region comrades as well as national-team comrades. Our relations were very intact. The people did not understand this. When the indigenous Fijians get together, that creates its own new and different reality. Even the people who lived with us every day would not know what was happening. When the day is over the damage is done. This is to show that Fijians (indigenous Fijians) are always intact. If there is a big game, such as Farebrother’s Rugby Challenge from two vanuas (from different provinces, say Nadi and Naitasiri) (a vanua means that there is only one paramount chief in that area) the emotion gets intensified and they could kill each other in the nightclub after the game. However, after this has happened, because of the links of our ancestors (the first Fijians), we both declare that we were wrong and that the violence should not have happened. We accept our oneness and unity. This is what the Fiji military force is all about. All in all, the Fijians are very particular and sensitive and aware. The Indian players on both sides (Ba versus Nadi) were with us but I don’t think they would have really understood what was happening between the indigenous Fijian players. I think until today it is still the same.
4.2. Police Arriving to Arrest Me at Churchill Park, Lautoka (Circa. 1988-94, Post-1987 Coup)
We were about to play this match in Lautoka against Lautoka. It was during the Sugar Festival, the Jimmy Ram Pratap Trophy. I was playing for Nadi. I think I was captaining the side that day. It was really funny when the management walked up to us while we were warming up towards the hospital end of Churchill Park. They mentioned that the police had come to them and told them that they had a bench warrant for me because I had not turned up to court. I really had just muddled up the dates so I was waiting for a time to go up to court to find the date again and clear myself. Then I asked the management to ask the cops if they would let me play the game first and then arrest me later after the game so I could go and clear myself at the court later. The management said: “no, they are going to take you now.” So I said to myself that it would be very embarrassing to the team for me to be taken with the Nadi uniform on. I said to the boys: “OK, there is only one thing I can do now. I’m going to escape from Churchill Park and go later to clear my name”. I was not going to give in to be arrested with the uniform on.
This was my second time around with Nadi. It was after the 1987 coup. Maybe they did not give me a chance to come in after the game because I had escaped from prison and I had two other cases. So I asked the boys for us to do a warm-up run near to where there is an embankment now at the hospital end. I asked one of the players to fetch my bag which had my change of clothes in and to train along with us but bring the bag along. This was done after we had been warming up for about half-an-hour. After running back to the end of the long wooden grandstand (on the side opposite the main grandstand), I walked behind the grandstand and jumped the fence over to Ground No. 2 where there was a line of food stalls for the Sugar Festival. By this time the Nadi players were warming up near the end of the long wooden grandstand waiting for me to pass the uniform back. I threw the uniform back over the fence and one player came over and picked it up.
I got away and changed without them knowing that I had disappeared. They (the police) only knew when they came closer to the playing group and they found out that I had disappeared. Even the management did not know that I had jumped the fence. I had only done this because my conscience told me that it would look bad for me to be arrested with the uniform on. This would have made the team’s morale go down. I did it in such a way that the game could carry on without me making a disturbance for the team. I wished the boys the best of luck and asked them to forgive me for what had happened. They said farewell and that they forgave me and we parted in a good way. An attempted arrest at the ground could still happen now for anyone with a bench warrant. It depends on how much trust they have in you and how they look at you. I got back to the Nadi Magistrates’ Court on the following day and cleared myself of my bench warrant and luckily I was not arrested by the cops at Lautoka’s Churchill Park. Otherwise I would have had an additional charge of escaping from police at the ground.
I did go through a bit of mischief during my time as a player. However, that was me and how I grew up. I would like to advise the young boys now that if you have a talent in any sport try to make the most of your talent to become one of the best or greatest and make a name for yourself. Today nearly every sport has financial remuneration so don’t fall into any mischief. At that time we didn’t even get $10 a match. We played for the pride. We were just given cartons of beer after the match to say thank-you and to wipe the sweat away. The Fijian saying is: Na qusi ni buno meaning “to wipe the sweat away” or “to cool you down”.
4.3. Was There Match-Fixing against Lautoka in the 2015 Inter-District Championship (IDC)? Article by Mark Bayliss, 15 October 2015
The comments we received from the fans and the public suggested that no-one is happy about the alleged match-fixing as Nadi is such a big district in Fiji. If it really happened, this is unsportsmanlike and the people who are responsible are killing the game of soccer. They should not have bothered to go as low especially as it was an IDC and Lautoka is a neighbour. Lautoka has always been good to Nadi and I can’t understand how Nadi could accept such a negative situation. In return the whole of Nadi and the nation went against the Nadi team just by listening to the public opinion. If it is true then Fiji Football should put a stop to it. The interest in the sport and the passion for the sport will continue to decline if these events occur even though soccer is slowly starting to rise again (as evidenced by the 10,000 crowd at the IDC Final).
To have a fixed match at the IDC tournament would be very unusual, surprising, and unsportsmanlike (if it really did occur). These comments are based on my discussions with the fans at the grog bowl, at the market, at the funeral, at the bars, and wherever. The conclusion of all these discussions was the words: “It is unbelievable for this to happen to Nadi”. This is what people have been saying. If there was a fixed match, perhaps this could have put a curse upon Nadi in the final (a game in which Nadi did not function at all)? [By Mark Bayliss, 15 October 2015, written at the Ba Central Club, Ba town, Ba province].
5. Discussion
In the previous section, Bayliss explains how “game throwing”, of various types, has allegedly taken place. In one case, Ba players allegedly “gifted” Nadi two goals in a 7 - 0 win so as to help Nadi win the 1982 national-league (now Fiji Premier League) title over Lautoka. At the time of the match, Ba was out of the running for the league title. Bayliss claims that indigenous players on both teams communicated these understandings to one another and that their Indo-Fijian teammates were largely excluded. He claims that the crowd and managements would not have known or presumed how close the relations were between the indigenous players on both sides. They assumed that these were arm’s-length relationships. There was a closeness between Ba and Nadi’s indigenous players as many of the Ba players came from Nadroga province, not far from Nadi town, while a number of them were comrades due to shared Fiji team membership. (Note: The ex-Nadi player, Peter Dean, confirmed the 7 - 0 scoreline and this was communicated by an online message sent to the author by Bobby Tikaram on 12 February 2022.)
After discussing the 7 - 0 game, and the “gifting” of the two goals, Bayliss explains how, in his mind, indigenous Fijian masculinity works. He says that if two rugby teams are vying for the trophy in an important final, and each team is from a different vanua (a province with its own paramount chief), they may fight each other in the nightclub after the game, but they are usually quick to forgive and reconcile, because they recognize their common ancestral ties to the first Fijians who arrived in the islands. In this way, Bayliss claims, the Fijians are always “intact”, and he cites the indigenous-dominated military as an example.
In a more contemporary case, a short piece by Bayliss criticizes Nadi “playing dead” so as to exclude Lautoka from progressing out of its group-of-four in the 2015 IDC tournament. The idea was to “gift” a win to a team which looked ultimately less threatening to Nadi’s title hopes than Lautoka. Apparently, the radio broadcasters switched off their live broadcast once they realized what was happening, and many Nadi fans condemned the unsportsmanlike behaviour. Here, we see Bayliss’s internal existential ethics where he criticizes poor sportsmanship by Nadi and claims that neighbouring team, Lautoka, has never been a rival or enemy of Nadi, but is viewed as a friendly competitor. It is interesting to see that Bayliss’s strong opposition to “game-throwing” in regards the 2015 case doesn’t seem to carry over to his commentary on the 1982 match. The shared understandings between the indigenous players on both teams back then seem to trump in his mind all other considerations. Bayliss’s existential ethics are also demonstrated when he refuses to be arrested by police in the Nadi playing shirt, while warming up on Lautoka’s Churchill Park, as it would, in his mind, expose his team, his teammates, and the green Nadi shirt to dishonour. Hence he climbs the high fence on Churchill Park’s outer wing to evade immediate capture. Bayliss played several seasons for Lautoka in between his two Nadi stints. He explained to the author in July 2019 that he drifted into crime, after signing for Lautoka in the mid-1980s, because he continued to live thirty kilometers away in Nadi and felt depressed by the Nadi fans’ reaction.
Cowman (2016: p. 98) writes that “[g]ood collective biography does not attempt to divorce individuals’ own views of their experience from the social and political contexts in which these experiences were situated.” The lives and identities of Bayliss and my other six interviewees are inextricably caught up in and influenced by the transition from colonialism to postcolonialism in Fiji and the first two military coups of 1987. For example, Bayliss started at Lautoka’s Drasa Avenue School (formerly the Lautoka European School) in 1969, and his cohort was one of the first “postcolonial” year groups after the school was first opened up to non-white students. In regards the military coups, it is worth noting that Bayliss spent the year 1987 in prison, at the age of 25. This put the brakes on his soccer career, at an inopportune time, and he was never as big an influence when he returned to the game. As Miller, Humphrey, and Zdravomyslova (2003: p. 2) claim, “[w]hen genuinely important historical transitions happen to coincide with one’s entry into young adulthood, personal and historical significance interact and intensify”.
Overall, we see Bayliss maintaining and expressing his own internal ethics, in the face of corruption and illegal or immoral acts, some of which are endemic to the cultural and historical context, while others seem to be of Bayliss’s own making. His ethics reflects Foucault’s understanding of ethics as “the constant training of oneself by oneself” (Oksala, 2007: p. 96) and how “one forms oneself as a subject of morality acting in reference to its prescriptive elements” (Oksala, 2007: p. 94). However, it can also be argued that Bayliss has in mind a Kantian ethical approach—what is right for one person is right for all, or act as if the principle through which you act should become a universal law. Bayliss created his own ethics to the extent that he was in the situation first (no other player had had to face the case of being arrested during warm-up on the field), but he may have imagined that the principle should apply to everyone. His current role as assistant village headman means that he has much authority in Nadi-area indigenous concerns, but his humility suggests that he is more concerned with his own actions and inspiring others to follow a positive lead. We should bear in mind that the interview date was 20 years or more after the date of the events recounted. With oral history data, we need to be aware of three dates—the date of the event, the interview date, and the present date (Thomson, 2016: pp. 112-113). Because of his assistant headman position, Bayliss now speaks with a customary authority, about indigenous matters to indigenous people, which didn’t exist to the same extent back in 1988-1994. Once, as we were walking through Lautoka city-centre, the author asked Bayliss why there were indigenous men sleeping rough on the streets when, in theory at least, each indigenous person has a home village. With a sad expression, and minus any judgemental attitude, Bayliss answered that, because of the rules, policies and cultural requirements associated with village life, not everyone can or wants to adhere to these standards. In this article, we see two different sets of ethics or laws emerge—the mores of the village and those of the criminal courts. It is interesting that Bayliss’s robberies were of Indo-Fijian jewelry stores after-hours, and these offences have little or zero direct impact upon an indigenous Fijian village where all the inhabitants are indigenous persons or non-Indians.
If we look at Kant’s categorical imperative, it has two aspects. The first is “[a]ct only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” (Shaw, 2010: p. 453). In other words, “a person should choose to act if and only if she or he would be willing to have every person on earth, in that same situation, act exactly that way” (Weiss, 2009: p. 107). Then the second aspect claims that “a person should act in a way that respects and treats all others involved as ends as well as means to an end”, but not as mere means (Dierksmeier, 2013: p. 603; Weiss, 2009: p. 107). The categorical imperative thus, contrary to its contemporary critics’ view (Dierksmeier, 2013), provides for a “kingdom of ends” (Korsgaard, 1996), to be understood as a symbol for a morally united humanity (Nelson, 2008). Weiss (2009: p. 108) puts forward an interesting test, based on the first aspect of the categorical imperative, if it is applied to stakeholder analysis, as follows: “Ask if individuals in a similar situation would repeat the designated action or policy as a principle. If not, why not? And would they continue to employ the designated action?” These questions were probably at the forefront of Bayliss’s mind as he discussed the Churchill Park case in 2014. He was thinking of how his teammates would respond, and was trying to set a positive example, despite the distressing context. When retelling the story in 2014, his mind had probably shifted to readers of the story, such as young village people and soccer players. The following idea of freedom proposed by Kant seems pertinent to the position which Bayliss was striving to reach and possibly had reached by 2014: “Kantian freedom is that which we encounter within ourselves when we are morally autonomous and make moral decisions” (Shaw, 2016: p. 610). In particular, and controversially, the concept “relates to the individual person and has nothing necessarily to do with others or society” (ibid.). Others are invariably affected though, and do affect the subject, as I think Bayliss’s 2014 “ending point” reflects. Kant’s (1991: p. 256) comment, from the Kantian perspective on morality, reason and freedom, seems very pertinent here: “To be willing to accept, and engage in, the public use of reason is a sign of a mature, or rather a maturing, attitude of mind”.
The common concept of human autonomy is largely Kant’s (2002 [1785]) work. It develops initially in the Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals and contains three notions about how people make decisions: 1) Independence, self-rule, personal-liberty: “He emphasises the capacity for self-determination or ‘autonomy’ that is located within the individual human being” (Timmermann, 2009: p. 1); 2) The rational determination of a course of action (“goals”) and the means to act (Bird, 2006: p. 256). Such reasons will take priority over reasons based on “desire” (Reath, 2006: p. 275); and 3) The strength of will, determination, necessary to implement rational decision (Shaw, 2016: pp. 610-611). Kant’s understanding of the use of reason to calculate moral decisions follows:
The field of morality is either affected by inclinations or not. In either case there is a power of free choice. For here we also still have the freedom to act according to the understanding. The intellectual power of choice is when we act independently of inclinations, though we still have them. And now we can consider whether we should follow them or not. We are free only in order to follow the laws of morality. For otherwise we would not need reason (Kant, 1997 [1782-1783]: p. 267).
These ideas equate to the concepts of humankind and progress which emerged during the Enlightenment in Western Europe. Foucault (1984) wrote as follows on the Enlightenment:
We must never forget that the Enlightenment is an event, or a set of events and complex historical processes, that is located at a certain point in the development of European societies. As such, it includes elements of social transformation, types of political institution, forms of knowledge, projects of rationalisation of knowledge and practices, technological mutations that are very difficult to sum up in a word, even if many of these phenomena remain important today (Foucault, 1984: p. 43).
Being a direct descendent of nineteenth century sandalwood traders from Yorkshire, England, the Bayliss family, and having been trained at what was the Lautoka European School saw Bayliss incorporate these ideas into his worldview in the immediate postcolonial context. These ideas are mixed with indigenous Fijian understandings of the world.
Returning to the categorical imperative, Shaw (2010: p. 445) aims to “show how people construct themselves as moral beings through their styles of reasoning in situations where they are doing ethics”. One interpretation of the second aspect of the categorical imperative might be that the Nadi teammates, fans and association administrators were treated as a mere means, while Bayliss’s escape from police at Churchill Park, or indeed, the revenues from his criminal activities, were his ends. A more charitable interpretation, and my preferred one, is that on the day of the planned arrest on the pitch, Bayliss treated the association team, his teammates and fans as the end and the police and the stadium fence as the mere means to ensure that, at least in his eyes, the team was not dishonoured by him being arrested on the pitch wearing the green playing strip. This interpretation relies on the understanding that the police were never going to allow him to play the game, and so the fans weren’t a mere means. As Kantian business ethics scholar Dierksmeier (2013: p. 602) says, “[t]he question, following Kant, should not be whether a company is acting from pure motives but whether its actions are morally reasonable.” Dierksmeier (2013: p. 604) emphasis original) makes another strong point in terms of it being suspect to judge another’s moral choices within Kant’s framework:
The moral perfection of others is likewise not for us to advance. We are neither capable of exerting causality upon the innermost realms and the morality of others, nor would we be entitled to override their moral freedom. Hence, the integration of the worthiness and the factuality of being happy can only be consistently furthered by perfecting oneself and promoting the happiness of others.
Dierksmeier (2013: p. 605) also maintains that “[a] cheerful disposition toward good acts indicates that one has already accomplished a substantial moral self-transformation and takes pleasure in the good for its own sake”. This statement shows that the hypothesis that Kant was only a promulgator of mechanical ethical rules is a misunderstanding (Ward, 1971: p. 337). It seems that by 2014, if not by the time of the Churchill Park incident, Bayliss had maneuvered himself into this aforementioned position, but only after much struggle and a year in prison.
I must mention here the unofficial balance of power between the sugarcane belt in Fiji’s west (from Sigatoka to Rakiraki), which includes the Nadi tourist industry and the international airport, and the political and administrative centre in the southeast (centred on Suva) (Norton, 1977: p. 4). Even more interesting is the history which even today fuels a sense of independence and grievance in Nadi. In 1874, when Bau chief Seru Epenisa Cakobau (1815?-1883) ceded Fiji to the British, he did not have the support of the Nadi paramount chief, or the hill tribes, which had drifted down from the hills to take over the Nadi region (Turner, 2005: p. 379). There is the feeling in Nadi that their political and customary authority and legitimacy still exists in an untrammeled and pure state, since their land was never voluntarily ceded to the British. This fuels a sense of independence, self-confidence and grievance directed both locally and to other Fijian provinces outside the western region. It is the opposite of inherited guilt—more like an inherited pure conscience, which can border on self-righteousness. It adds to the perceived moral authority of a customary leader like Bayliss as well as how he perceives his own role.
6. Conclusion
Although a diverse range of influences are present in Fiji life, customary authority still has moral force since an individual village remains a self-sustaining unit, with its own rhythm and direction of life, imbued with indigenous moral and religious standards. Customary authority is potent in daily life through repeated practices, the use and control of physical space, the shows of deference and via the art of storytelling. The village exists discursively within the network of villages and stands opposed to its ideological and discursive nemesis, the “town”, with its revenue-earning opportunities and its corrupting influences. Bayliss’s customary authority and legitimacy in his Nadi village, mixed with his soccer hero status, mean that his existential ethics now arguably acquire a Kantian moral force. His robberies were committed in a “town” context and against Indo-Fijian shop owners. Hence, they don’t detract from his village authority.
In terms of future research, given the writings of peacemaking criminologists (Pepinsky, 2013), it might be worth studying indigenous Fijian villages to assess to what extent rule infringements are treated according to restorative justice or retributive justice, and how this might vary according to age and gender of alleged offender and the type of offence.