Four South Aucklanders overcoming the odds and leading the way

by Mariner Fagaiava-Muller

There’s a lot of sad juju around South Auckland at the mo, so let’s pick up the energy by shining light on some already bright Southside superstars.

I’m a bit biassed as a resident of the hood for all 21 years of my life.

There truly ain’t no better side than the Southside.

Blazes trailed, praises sung, paths paved. Not despite, but because it’s just how South Auckland rolls.

Here’s just four South Aucklanders carving up excellence in their respective fields:

Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, current Blues and former NRL player

Entering only his ninth union game for the Auckland Blues, after some nine years spent at the Sydney Roosters and New Zealand Warriors - you could say RTS is just getting started. He moved to South Auckland from Samoa, attending Ōtāhuhu College. Something about that water in Õtāhuhu breeding champions…

Roger is a Dally M Medalist (2018), Captain of the Year (2020), Winger of the Year (2013) and  Premiership Winner (Roosters, 2013). He brought Fresh into his world in 2016, telling our Freshies it was good to be back in the streets where he grew up.

Jaycee Tanuvasa, NZ ballroom vogue pioneer

Make no mistake. Fa’afafine artist, activist and performer Jaycee Tanuvasa is SA loud and proud. “Born and raised in the underrated, infamous place that continues to put NZ on the map in sports, arts and dance. The tahi, the one and only, South Auckland,” she told Ensemble.

Ballroom vogue is a highly stylised form of dance born out of the LGBTQIA+ community, from their love of pageantry and performance. Tanuvasa along with Falencie Filipo and Moe Laga (other South Auckland figureheads) brought ballroom to Aotearoa. She has provided many a safe space for rainbow peoples to be free in today’s age.

Soana Moala, first Tongan judge in NZ

Before Judge Soana Moala was sworn into the Manukau District Court as the first New Zealand judge of Tongan descent, she was a young immigrant raised in a family of 11 children. She graduated with a law degree in 2001, became a solicitor for the country’s biggest litigation firm, and then set-up her own practice with fellow Tongan Chris Merrick.

“I am guided and grounded by a piece of advice my father gave me when I was young: do the right thing even if it is hard, because having to live with doing the wrong thing is much harder.”

Fa’anana Efeso Collins, Auckland mayoral candidate

You probably know his face or the sound of his voice. If we’re taking it back, he was elected as the first Polynesian student body president of Auckland University in the late 1990s. For the last six years, he’s been a councillor representing Manukau.

Now Fa’anana is running for mayor. If successful at October’s local body election, he will be the first Pasifika mayor of our largest city. "It gives me a sense of pride. But it's a reminder, foremost, that the journey that our parents have been on - this is part of us realising the dream,” he told NZ Herald.

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