Youths need leadership

The Manukau groups involved in the violence are looser than "card-carrying" gangs. Picture / Reuters

For two years now, Roger Fowler has worked alongside a battle zone.

His Mangere East Community Learning Centre, next to the new glass-encased Mangere East library in Massey Rd, overlooks a "village green" in Walter Massey Park which has become an after-school meeting ground for students from nearby Southern Cross Campus and Aorere, De La Salle and Otahuhu Colleges.

Sometimes the kids just mill around and nothing happens. Other times, the mood sours.

"You'd just notice there might be a group of, say, five girls very busy texting and looking anxiously over their shoulders," Fowler says.

"Then another group would turn up. Then there would be name-calling, and then they go for each other with weapons - anything they can find.

"Sometimes they rampage through the library with metal bars and sticks and all sorts.

"At one stage it was really bad. Very large congregations of up to 100 would turn up and it got really quite ugly, to the extent that other people wouldn't want to come to the library or to our services.

"Mostly it's boys, but there was a period last summer when there was quite a flurry of girls. There are still girls that get involved."

Fowler and the librarians have tried to intervene, but often merely shifted the scene of battle.

He says the fighting is often between schools. Sometimes it spills over from defeats in rugby or at cultural events.

Fowler says the groups involved are looser than "card-carrying" gangs. But already these youngsters are wearing scarves and other clothing in the "colours" of their groups.

Two weeks ago, the fighting seems to have become much more vicious. Police allege that on October 14 a dozen youths including 17-year-old George Meaole Naea attacked a 16-year-old schoolboy in nearby Aorere Park, leaving him paralysed down one side of his body and unable to speak. Two other teenagers were also injured.

Then at 1.45 am last Sunday, Naea allegedly led eight carloads of youths to Flat Bush and attacked a rival gang. He faces two charges of attempted murder for hitting two teenagers with a baseball bat.

Later on the same day, Naea's father, Iulio Naea Kilepoa, was found dead in his Flat Bush home with a knife in his chest.

Otara youth workers Sully Paea and Allan Va'a, who have both worked with youth for more than 20 years, are shocked by a new tone in the street battles.

"There's no sense of values, no sense of morals. It's scary," says Va'a.

Paea agrees. "There's no sense of fellowship. You feel that coldness."

In some ways the community has responded in kind. Security fences have gone up around most Manukau schools. Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate principal Robin Staples says his fence cost $50,000-$60,000 - money that could have gone to his students' education.

This week Counties-Manukau Police imposed an "always-arrest" policy on anyone caught carrying weapons or committing acts of violence.

Community leaders such as Otara Community Board member Mele Heketoa are bewildered and sad. She came home on Labour Day to find youths gathered in Hills Rd, Otara, where 18-year-old Santana Robyn Shortland had driven his car into a bridge and died.

"In the past few days they have been gathering there with scarves - yellow colours, navy blue colours. They have tied the scarves round that accident site. That is a message - clearly there is status to belong to this gang."

Niuean community worker Heketoa says Otara parents "have tried their best to raise and educate their children and support them".

"We have more churches in Otara than anywhere else, and these kids that are committing these crimes are from churchgoing families," she says. "So where does it go wrong?"

No one has any easy answers. But for young people to turn to violence on the scale seen in Manukau this month requires two things - opportunity and motivation.

The opportunities are relatively plain. Va'a points to parents forced to work odd hours in several casual jobs to pay the rent, leaving young children to be looked after by older siblings after school.

Otara-based city councillor Su'a William Sio worries about schools which expel disruptive students.

"What happens to them if their parents are both working?" he asks.

Youth worker Bill Peace, who also captains the Otara Rugby League Club, says work pressures make volunteer coaches much harder to find.

Another Otara Community Board member, Aloese Lefono, says there is a shortage of youth recreational facilities - and those that do exist, such as the Otara Leisure Centre, charge admission fees.

The "solutions" to these problems are also plain, if not always easy to implement. More secure, well-paid work that can free up parents to spend time with their children is an obvious goal.

But all these opportunities to congregate on the streets do not explain why unguided young people should become violent.

All humans, of course, have the capacity for violence. Our long history of wars, rugby brawls and family violence, not to mention violent TV shows and computer games, hardly sets a good example.

But people do not usually attack one another unless they are either angry or afraid. To wield the first blow they must also be angry.

Emeline Afeaki of Papatoetoe-based youth mentoring agency Affirming Works says the Manukau youngsters joining gangs are angry, frustrated and hungry.

"These kids go to school and respond to some of the attitudes, the way they are treated, and at home they are like angels - do all the housework, just incredible respect. I don't know why it switches," she says.

Peace says many teachers at Manukau schools don't live in the area, don't understand the culture, and break their students' trust when they move on.

"Our cultural dynamic is about that long-term stuff. If they don't see the commitment of the teachers, they are not going to show commitment back."

Va'a talks of a similar sense of betrayal by parents.

"Kids are looking for stability," he says. "This young kid was totally devastated by the breakup of his Mum and Dad. He's 9 or 10."

Kids in Remuera or the North Shore have these traumas too, and Mangere social worker Peter Sykes notes that they simply express their emotions differently, in "boy racing" for example.

The difference is that most Remuera kids are financially secure and do well at school. Many kids in Mangere and Otara are less secure, and when they see friends failing in school, they side with them.

"Our kids are so collective. They feel so well-supported in groups," says Afeaki, who wrote a thesis on the effects of official policy on the Tongan family.

"Our entire [NZ] system and policies are so individualistic. It's totally foreign to the wairua [spirit], to our whole way of being collective and collaborative and communal.

"When you see a bro in trouble, you are going to get involved. If a bro is not going to go to class, you are not going to go to class, either."

VA'A and Afeaki run anger management courses for high school students and other youngsters. But to treat the causes, rather than just the symptoms of anger, clearly requires more basic changes in both schools and families.

"Affirming Works has an ethic of collectivism," Afeaki says.

"We have already got 275 to 300 15- to 17-year-olds being mentored through high school. Kids that are going to leave, we get in early."

Manurewa People's Centre youth worker Mike Davis says schools should tap senior sportspeople and others who will inspire Manukau kids.

Sykes suggests that non-academic young people should be able to leave school and start apprenticeships at 14, rather than waiting until 16 when modern apprenticeships now start.

"The reality is that whether they are legally allowed to leave or not, there are people leaving school and they just fall into a hole," he says.

Va'a says the key thing is that adults need to commit themselves to young people for the long haul.

"If they see you making a commitment to them and investing in their life, they are going to remember that for the rest of their lives," he says.

"We have people who have come back and said, 'Do you remember me? I just want to say thank you'. Those words make it worth doing this, taking that extra time."