Ialibu pioneers at UPNG

The National Weekender
HISTORY
“The first two Ialibu university students, Peter Paypool (Peipul) and Roy Yaki, organised the Ialibu Basin Association to protest against administrative measures and to mobilise a successful demand for the location of a sawmill in the Ialibu area,” noted Australian academic J A Ballard.

By KEVIN PAMBA
THE Australians as the United Nations-mandated colonial administrators of the Territory of Papua and New Guinea built and opened the purpose-built University of Papua New Guinea in 1967.
The university was established to prepare the human resources for the Territory of Papua and New Guinea in anticipation for a future independence of the territory. The UPNG was opened eight years before independence on Sept 16, 1975.
The pioneer students from each district and indigenous ethno-cultural group across the territory who were fortunate to enroll in the new university in the pioneering eight years (1967 to 1975) were part of a unique history. Those were exciting times for many and anxious moments for others as the territory was being prepared for self-determination and independence.
As it turned out, the pioneer students of the first eight years of UPNG were involved in political and administrative enlightenment of their people in the districts and at the national levels in one form or another.
Upon graduation, just about all of the early UPNG students would proceed onto localise the positions in the public service and private sector that the Australians were leaving behind as of independence in 1975 and in the immediate succeeding years.
The greater Ialibu region of Southern Highlands District (now province) was one of the ethno-cultural areas of the territory that was fortunate to have two pioneer students enrolled in UPNG in those early eight years as self-government and independence were being pursued.
The two pioneer students of the greater Ialibu area, today divided between Imbonggu and Ialibu-Pangia districts, were Peter Peipul and Roy Yaki who would go on to carve up niches in the public service and national politics afterwards.
Peipul was the first of the two Ialibu students to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science in 1973 and he quickly took up a position in the fledgling Department of Foreign Affairs.
Yaki graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (LLB), the following year in 1974 and also assumed a public service position in the provincial administration of his Southern Highlands District.
Dame Rachel Cleland in her 1984 book “Pathways to Independence” concerning PNG’s movement toward independence acknowledged the roles Peipul and Yaki had taken up in the public service as among the first generation of university graduates from the Southern Highlands.
“One day in 1978, I heard over the news that Peter Paypool (Anglicised for Peipul) of Mendi, who graduated from the university (UPNG) in 1973, had been appointed assistant secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, and Roya Yaki was administrative secretary (District Commissioner of SHD by 1976) of his own Provincial Government,” Dame Rachel wrote.
Peipul would go on to represent PNG overseas as Ambassador to the European Economic Commission or EEC (now European Union) in Brussels, Belgium and the United States and United Nations in New York.
Yaki remained as head of the Southern Highlands District administration up until the mid-1980s when he contested the 1987 National Elections and won his home seat of Ialibu-Pangia. He then served as MP for the district for three consecutive terms (1987-1992, 1992-1997 and 1997-2002) and held senior ministerial portfolios and also rose to being the Leader of the Opposition between 1995 and 1997.
Peipul returned from the foreign service and later contested the Imbonggu seat (which comprises two thirds of the ethnic Ialibu population) in 1997 and served for a term before he passed on.
Yaki and Peipul were among the very fortunate few Ialibu children who went through Christian mission education. Yaki was educated through the Lutheran mission schools in Ialibu, Raipinka near Kainantu and Asaroka High School in the Eastern Highlands before enrolling at the UPNG as I recounted recently.
Peipul went through the Evangelical Alliance movement starting out with the Evangelical Bible Mission (EMB) in Kaupena in the Ialibu part of Imbonggu and UFM’s (Unevangelised Field Mission) Awaba High School, Western Province before enrolling at the UPNG.
Being pioneer university students of Ialibu and the last frontier Southern Highlands District prior to independence was something special for Yaki and Peipul. They made it count in how they handled themselves as two pioneer students of their area.
Besides doing well in their studies, Yaki and Peipul quickly found a niche in politics and public administration matters at the Waigani campus and back in Ialibu and Southern Highlands.
They were attending UPNG in an era when budding intellectuals saw themselves as transformers and liberators of their people.
Historical records show Yaki and Peipul were active members of the student politics at the Waigani campus with Peipul rising to the role of President of the Student Representative Council at one stage and they were heavily involved in the Amene Association comprising SHD students.
The Amene Association at the Waigani campus found itself somewhat of a launch-pad for political ambition as well as administrative interest back in the Southern Highlands.
Peipul and Yaki on their part were involved in the formation and configuration of administrative, political and socio-economic savvy and order in Southern Highlands and their home region of Ialibu which only came into formal Australian administrative control in the early 1950s.
Peipul and Yaki also helped out with research in the Southern Highlands and the 1973 national census in the district. The two students are recorded as having called for better pay for local Ialibu labour used for building sections of the Highlands Highway passing through Ialibu territory between Kaugel River and Angule River in the early 1970s whilst being students at UPNG.
Peipul and Yaki were also instrumental in ensuring a sawmill was introduced in the Ialibu area.
They are also recognised as being involved in setting up the Ialibu political and socio-economic mouthpiece, Ialibu Basin Association. The work of Peipul and Yaki were recognised by Australian academic, J A Ballard in the review of the 1977 National Election in the SHD in the following words:
“During 1971 the intrusion of wage labour into Ialibu with the construction of the Highlands Highway brought about considerable dislocation and unrest. The first two Ialibu university students, Peter Paypool (Anglicised for Peipul) and Roy Yaki, organised the Ialibu Basin Association to protest against administrative measures and to mobilise a successful demand for the location of a sawmill in the Ialibu area.”
By and large, Peipul and Yaki made their privileged status as two pioneer students at the Waigani campus count and stand for something for their people of Ialibu. The pioneers set the pace and benchmark that future university students from the Ialibu area may follow.

  • Dr Kevin Pamba is based at Divine Word University.