Traveling from Savusavu to Labasa, the dusty and laid-back shopping centre at Natua is a place you won’t miss.
Here you might stop to grab a quick meal or a cold drink to beat the scorching Seaqaqa sun.
But don’t expect anything lavish or fancy because some things crawl at a snails’ pace in this sugarcane growing region.
Seaqaqa has not been incorporated into a town.
Yet, it has all the makings of an urban municipality – supermarkets, a few quaint shops, restaurants, gas station, bakery, a gaming centre, market and police station.
It even has a dedicated district officer to look after its interest and development needs.
There is no arguing that Seaqaqa has been a lifeline to thousands of people who were born, bred and had their schooling in this township of sorts before they moved on to make something of themselves.
Some decided to remain, preferring the rural outback and its leisurely lifestyle.
For the villages and settlements in and around Seaqaqa, the little township at Natua is a melting pot, where people converge daily to buy, sell and make a living.
It is a bustling space in Vanua Levu’s midlands that lacks modernity but makes up for it in the form of bula smiles, natural beauty and friendly conversations.
“Seaqaqa is a wonderful place because the people are friendly,” Gyan Deo told The Sunday Times team.
The food hawker lives with his brother on a cane farm a few kilometres away from the centre but catches a bus to ‘town’ every morning to sell “bean and peanuts”.
“Life here is slow but it has great potential. We just need financial support and infrastructure improvement.”
Adjacent to where the team met him between the Natua gas station and the police station, a space that looked like a bus bay had a few mud-splattered buses.
Nearby, a crude shelter housed a few vegetable stalls — Seaqaqa’s version of a market and at the end of it was a congested shed that had the semblance of a bus stop.
The market was abuzz with the lively chatter of vendors and customers as they gladly exchanged cash for vegetables. A gaping roof of torn tarpaulin peeped from above the table.
It had practically been in that condition since cyclone Ana in January 2021.
“Look at the torn tarpaulin roof. The rain comes right through during bad weather and our food and clothes get soaked,” one vendor said.
“We deserve a proper market to sell our produce.”
Another vendor complained about the toilet situation.
“As women vendors we need a decent toilet. It’s a pity we don’t have one,” she said, minding a baby in between sales.
“We handle food and cooked meals and we need to wash our hands every now and then but we don’t have a tap.”
Today, everyone who goes to Seaqaqa, for whatever reason, will have to get permission to use the toilet and tap at the police station or a nearby supermarket.
The vendors’ names have been withheld to prevent them from being victimised or stopped from selling.
In real terms, the women’s version of a market is a shelter erected on private land. They suffer but they do not show it. Their laughter and good nature belie the lack-lustre and dilapidated state of the business environment that surrounded them.
Seaqaqa rose to prominence from the dusty earth when it was chosen to host one of the biggest and most ambitious sugar expansion projects undertaken by industry after Fiji’s independence.
That project was called the Seaqaqa cane development scheme.
According to project records, government brought 5000 hectares of land in the area under sugarcane by 1980.
It cost $22 million and was supposed to accommodate 400 indigenous Fijian and 400 Fijians of Indian descent farmers. Funds were borrowed from the World Bank.
With a small plot per family, the primary target of the scheme was to produce 224,000 tonnes of cane per season.
Planting started in December 1973. About 800 hectares of sugarcane was supposed to have under cane by 1974, with an additional 1000 hectares planted from 1975 to 1978.
In the early years there was difficulty in finding an adequate number of indigenous Fijian to be part of the scheme.
To make up for the shortfall in the number of indigenous Fijian farmers, 36 blocks were allocated to the then Native Land Trust Board to run as an estate and another four farms were allocated to the Macuata District Council.
Poor soil quality, difficulties faced by farmers in accessing bank loans and resistance from land owning units or mataqali, contributed to the initial slow progress of the scheme.
Furthermore, Seaqaqa’s distance from the Labasa sugar mill, made transportation and fertiliser costs high. This was an added burden to farmers.
To help, government brought the railway system closer to Seaqaqa, as well as providing agriculture extension and loan services available through the Fiji Development Bank.
As the scheme progressed, authorities noticed the desperate need to set up a business centre somewhere among the blocks of sprawling cane fields to accommodate the needs of a growing farming population.
It took one and a half hours by bus to reach the main government offices and public amenities located in Labasa.
Hence, the process of establishing a township in Seaqaqa started and by mid-1978, ‘a store, a garage and vehicle repair shop, and a few offices’ were built.
The scheme has often been hailed a mixed success. Many families whose livelihoods relied on cane farming in Seaqaqa had scaled to greater heights and economic returns from the cane scheme had contributed to Fiji’s progress.
Yet, the rustic township at Natua of the late 1970s is still evolving towards finding its true voice and place in Fiji’s family of modern municipalities.
Seaqaqa’s place in history did not unfold entirely as a result of the brazen political and economic desires of the 1970s.
In the 1800s, the area was notorious for its fierce political resistance, resulting in what is sometimes referred to as the ‘Seaqaqa War’ of 1894.
In that war Seaqaqa engaged in the last known open confrontation between villagers and colonial authorities. Close to 10 people were supposedly killed.
The war took place close to 20 years after Cession and almost 60 years after the arrival of the first missionaries.
While little is available in local history literature to document the Seaqaqa War, J.Deering was one who highlighted it while delivering an addressing at Suva’s Fijian Society meetings.
Deering had stated that the Seaqaqa War was distinct for two reasons. One was the reaction of the Governor and his officials and second was the swiftness with which indigenous rebels were dealt with and punished.
While the exact date of the war is not known, Deering said it appeared to be June 15, 1894, adding that the most probable reason why the conflict happened was the inception of the provincial system by Sir Arthur Gordon.
“The troubles were virtually over by the opening of the Great Council of Chiefs on June 26, 1894, and by July 3, the Governor, Sir Arthur Gordon was able to report to the Secretary of State that the men has been apprehended,” The Fiji Times of Thursday, July 11, 1963 quoted Deering as saying.
The leaders behind the uprising in Seaqaqa were banished to other parts of Fiji while the people of Volivoli were rounded up as prisoners and sent to Naduri.
The villages of Delaiviti, Navakaiteqe, Vuna, Watidratagane, Nukuseva, Naisogolato, Calalevu and Savuratoka were all combined with Natua.
Sunibakeva, Saivou, Lomaloma, Vunibituvatu and Namulo were joined together.
Thus the last known uprising in Fiji against the government and the new Christian religion ended, and the district of Seaqaqa found its name recorded down in history.
While we recognise that the development of the area is long overdue, we do know that plans to redevelop Seaqaqa had been a priority in the Northern Division’s Development Plan for some time.
And because Seaqaqa was often exposed to periods of dry spells resulting in water supply problems, upgrading the township’s water supply had been high on the division’s development agenda.
In 2017, the media reported that a $30 million sports complex was promised for Seaqaqa.
The arena would have enhanced football at the grassroots, especially Seaqaqa, the power base of the country’s second division football club, Seaqaqa F.C.
However, nothing has eventuated.
It was once claimed that the sporting complex would only go ahead after the boundary for a Seaqaqa Town was drawn up, which has obviously been delayed due economic hardships Fiji faced in the past two years.
Prior to the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic government through the Commissioner Northern’s office had worked closely with the United Nations Development Programme’s Pacific Risk Resilience programme to guide the development of Seaqaqa into a resilient town of the future.
This was to ensure that potential climate and disaster risks were considered in choosing the location and design of infrastructure and individual municipal facilities needed for the redevelopment.
Until then Fijians in the sugarcane growing belt can only hope and pray that Seaqaqa will soon emerge strong from the fields where it once took shape during Fiji’s quest for growth and greatness following independence.
