RETIRED civil servant Kelepi Gucake is a firm believer in the iTaukei concept of solesolevaki. There is a belief in the iTaukei culture that considers people, not money, as the substance that defines “wealth”. Wealth creation iTaukei style is when a leader, a chief, looks after his or her people well that in times of need, the people respond as per their traditional role.
The better you know your people and have them on side, the greater the success to activate this age-old concept which loosely translates to mean “working together to achieve a common goal”.
“The solesolevaki concept is a good concept for us iTaukei living today because it contributes back to the communal way that we live in,” Mr Gucake said in an interview with this newspaper.
“Back in the villages, the structure is already there – the people, so it’s easier to do solesolevaki, where we just give a few dollars each and a big amount is collected.
“But the bottom line is leadership. That’s important. We need people with wisdom, who are visionaries and who can mastermind the management of the resources and maximise resource management effectively.”
Mr Gucake is the man on the ground behind Batiniwai Co-operative, a bakery and dairy shop business on Tubou Village in Lakeba, Lau, collectively owned by Mr Gucake’s extended family, descendants of Komai Batiniwai.
It’s a project aimed at absorbing members of his family branch that have turned 55, where skills and knowledge built up from their working years could be put into spawning other businesses in areas such as agriculture and tourism to help expand the co-operative, provide employment and grow the local economy.
“Leadership ought to be us who are in the workforce today,” Mr Gucake said.
He himself had spent some 30 years in the civil service.
“We are the think tanks because we have the knowledge, the experience, the know-how, the right attitude, so we need to impart that to our younger generation.
“It is now our time to lead and we can’t blame the past generation that they did not teach us anything. “We already have our plans – our individual plans, our community plans…the only thing left is implementation and for us iTaukei, solesolevaki is the way to go.”
As a member of the chiefly yavusa Vuanirewa, (tokatoka Vatuwaqa) home clan of the Tui Nayau, paramount chief of Lau, Mr Gucake is a guardian of sorts for all things iTaukei and in Batiniwai Cooperative’s fledgling business, the application of the solesolevaki concept to benefit the Batiniwai extended family – before it is rolled out into the community, the village and ultimately the vanua – is in its infancy.
“Just because times have changed, doesn’t mean we have to throw that concept away, no,” said the former army officer and police superintendent.
He believes it’s only a matter of inculcating good governance values in iTaukei business leadership.
“In the olden days, we had the veivosovosoti system when it was easy for us to forgive anyone who did wrong.
“But now that we have the legal system, no one should be above the law. If you break the law, you get punished by the law, whether it’s your relative, your father or your sister.
“That is part of what we are doing in Batiniwai Co-operative, properly aligning a legal framework and leadership framework onto what’s already there so that there is clarity in what need to be done and what should not be done,” Mr Gucake said.
In September last year, Batiniwai Co-operative was one of the 12 recipients of the Business Ready Support Scheme (BRSS), a grant scheme offered by the iTaukei Trust Fund Board for iTaukei-owned businesses that were already operating.
The micro-business is now into its second year and the $10,000 grant it was awarded is being used to purchase a second oven for the bakery and to construct a separate room to house the business, which is still being operated from home in the village.
“We need to separate that operation from our household, where it’s in a separate building on its own to house the bakery and the dairy shop,” Mr Gucake said.
“In the long term, we plan to expand to also include a coffee shop, an Internet shop, etc because the Tui Nayau (seat currently vacant) will be installed in July, so developments will start happening within the Lau province because once the Tui Nayau is installed, then the vanua will be functioning properly.”
Picture: SUPPLIED
