Last week, we concluded our discussion on positives from the 1987 coup.
This time I got many more responses from readers than ever before. I think it had to do with the fact that I included that snippet about the “Guns of Lautoka”. Also, many wanted to know about the unnamed characters who featured so strongly in the aftermath of May 1987. Let me thus, begin with a bit more on those characters.
Enterprising characters
LET me start with the character who managed to procure the arms that finally landed on our shores. Rafik Khan had many other aliases. Ralph Khan, Ralph Conn, Rafik Conn and Ralph Kahan are just a few monikers that I have managed to confirm over the years. Also, I have not come across any clear profile on this guy, but let me try to present it here because my first encounter with one of his names goes back to 1975 when I was in Form 2 at what was then Wairiki Junior Secondary School.
One of our teachers was a Peace Corp volunteer called Master John Olson. Master John, as we fondly called him, would intersperse his classes with (what some of us used to refer to as) “knowledge” lessons. He would tell us about the two world wars, the American civil war, the American war of independence, the civil rights movement, the British monarchy and some of the more famous monarchs, etc. And he would later quiz us on what we learnt. These quizzes came unexpectedly. In an environment of keen inter-house competition, we waged war during those quizzes as that meant points for our houses.
One day, Master John told us about “Fiji’s Jesus Christ”. Of course, we were all rapt when he said this because our school was a catholic institution and we were keen learners of the Bible. Apparently, Ralph Conn was nabbed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police while on the run from authorities, expatriated to the US and presented in court for some of his many colourful deeds. There, he presented himself as the “Saviour” of the people of Raiwaqa. This connection with Raiwaqa needs a bit of winding back in this story.
You see, Ralph was a lad from Milverton Rd, Raiwaqa. His beginnings were just like any other from the lower rungs of society in that area. The difference with him was that he kept himself apart, presented himself as being special and always dreamed of hitting the big time. The only problem was that his plans always moved beyond the normal to the shady – often to the criminal. He was also gifted with the fresh innocent looks of a dreamy, starry-eyed aunty’s boy. This was enhanced by the fact that he was always clean shaven and neatly dressed.
His baby face and grandiose dreams took him to the Middle-East in the 1970s. There, his gift of the gab took him into the inner circles of an oil sheik. Anyone who knows about the culture of those desert people will have to marvel at this feat. Those guys used to have difficulty distinguishing the throat of a human from that of a sheep. Here was our very own Rafik Khan from Raiwaqa sitting in the court of an Arab Sheik and partaking of the hospitality therein. He was truly in Jannat (Muslim heaven)!
And in Jannat, our boy espied a likely damsel who would make a good wife; incidentally tying him up with an oil family. This is where a little bit more on how he endeared himself to the sheik comes to light. Apparently, he presented himself as the latest in a string of established and distinguished heirs to an estate in Suva, the capital of Fiji. He had photos to prove it and the most cherished of these was one of the truly distinguished Borron House. That, we would all have to agree, is an icon of Suva. Khan presented it as a family heritage. And the opulent sheik lapped it up.
The con job was to get even better. He delicately proposed for the hand of the sheik’s niece and jubilantly married her at the expense of numerous unlucky sheep and goats. For some unspecified reason, he decided to return with his trophy bride to Fiji. The first suspicion arose when there was no distinguished reception party at Nadi International Airport for an heir apparent to a prominent and connected local family. This was apparently brushed aside amid the adrenalin and novelty that befuddles anyone who travels from the deserts to a tropical paradise.
A taxi was reluctantly hailed and the couple travelled to Suva with Rafik in full blast as his bride attempted to imbibe the wonders of her illustrious husband’s country of birth. When they arrived at Milverton Rd as directed by our boy, the princess realised that the house before them was a “shack”. He said they had to pay their respects to his mother there. She asked him to take her to their real house so that she could freshen up and then visit his mother. He was having none of that. This is where suspicions began to creep in and I would love to have interviewed the bride to get her side of the picture.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, as Rafik was surrounded by a gaggle of family members who looked very much like paupers to the stunned bride, she decided she wanted clear crisp desert air to shrug off the cobwebs that appeared to be cloying at her very being. The sheik blood in her directed the driver back to Nadi from where she made her return to her familiar deserts with distant memories of the disaster that she had barely managed to escape from. Rafik was left looking at his banana trees as he began on his next scheme.
This time the idea was even more grandiose because it involved helping the people of Raiwaqa who were apparently being ripped off by the local supermarkets – B Kumar’s, Bajpai’s and Morris Hedstrom’s. Our man (now he had grown) concocted a grand business plan that involved selling shares in a proposed supermarket to the people of Raiwaqa. The purchase price of these shares was a pittance, but he still collected on it. More importantly, the idea resonated with community leaders, politicians and local wholesalers. Our man was suddenly being hailed as a hero while (we are told) many bearded Bedouins sharpened their knives in the deserts and looked balefully towards Fiji.
Anyway, the ever-enterprising businessman promptly stocked up his shop with merchandise obtained on credit from eager local wholesalers. Customers flocked in as business fired up briskly until one day Rafik suddenly disappeared into thin air as he abandoned the supermarket, its customers, shareholders and suppliers. Of course, he took the money bag with him. There is no information on where he went, but he next surfaced in the news in the US as he was presented in court with a raft of charges involving dishonest enterprise. This is where he talked about his failed attempt to “save” the people of Raiwaqa.
The handing over from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to US authorities is also obscure. What we do know is that Ralph Conn, as he was known then, did time in the US before being deported to Fiji. He popped up in Korovou Prison in 1981 and made the rounds through Naboro. The story I have presented so far comes from personal conversations with the man himself over an extended period of time, his acquaintances in jail and news items gleaned over the years. I will complete this story next week. In the meantime, let’s hope for the best in Cape Town. Toso Viti!
- DR SUBHASH APPANNA is a senior USP academic who has been writing regularly on issues of historical and national significance. The views expressed here are his alone and not necessarily shared by this newspaper or his employers subhash.appana@usp.ac.fj
