Francis Hagai

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Francis Hagai (about 1940 – 7 July 1974) was the leader of the Hahalis Welfare Society (HWS) on Buka Island, Bougainville, in what is now Papua New Guinea. He was educated as a Catholic but later tried to start an alternative church and revive traditional customs.

The HWS was founded in 1959 and grew to about 3,500 members by 1963, across eight villages and 50 kilometres of coast. Hagai and his brother-in-law John Teosin led the group, with Teosin as president and Hagai in charge of public relations and other duties. The HWS ran like a commune, pooling resources and sharing profits, and they also sought to establish a new church with syncretic elements. Worship often took place in open areas near cemeteries, where prayers and rituals were meant to bring in a new world of modern goods. Some people called it a cargo cult, but the leaders rejected that label. The HWS also practiced free love and communal child-rearing. Hagai kept some Catholic elements, producing liturgies in the Halia language and proposing a version of the Eucharist that involved sharing sliced banana. He said they prayed to God in their own way.

Hagai attempted a political career but was unsuccessful in the 1964 and 1968 elections, receiving only local votes and little campaigning outside HWS villages.

In 1962 Hagai led a protest against a head tax used to fund a local Australian-administration council. This led to clashes with police, with hundreds arrested and dozens injured. Hagai and Teosin were jailed in Port Moresby, but their sentences were overturned on appeal by administrator Donald Cleland. Afterward, authorities conducted tours to show the benefits of Australian rule.

Hagai traveled to Australia in 1966 to study at Tranby Aboriginal College in Sydney, on a scholarship. Some people alleged his trip was funded by the Communist Party or its sympathizers, and officials debated whether to stop him, though it was considered politically unwise to do so.

He died in a car accident on 7 July 1974, after a crash the previous day near Basbi; he was a passenger in a car that collided with a stationary truck. The driver and two other passengers were seriously injured. In 1975, the driver faced charges related to the crash.

An obituary noted that Hagai’s work helped bring more government aid and attention to Buka. The Australian Dictionary of Biography describes him as a strong leader who tried to reconcile liberation from custom with traditional communal life, leading an autochthonous movement toward modernization and self-rule.