The redeemed gangster helping others to escape poverty

Tuesday, 10 September 2019

The causes of poverty are complex and solutions often elusive. But across New Zealand's biggest city, people are seeking new ways to break the cycle of dependency and empower others to lead better lives. John Weekes reports.

At his lowest moment, Tai walked bloodied and alone down the road, one bag in hand, snot dripping from his nose.

'I was worse than a baby. I don't wish that upon no one.'

Tai had been jumped – it took four attackers to get him down – and, badly injured, he dragged himself to a bus stop and went to hospital.

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It was the latest setback in a chequered history that included a lack of qualifications, gang membership and a prison stint.

Four years later, Tai, now 35, figures out his future as he sits in the cafe at the sprawling VisionWest site in Auckland's Glen Eden.

The NGO offers housing, a food bank and training services for people with a patchwork of challenges and troubled histories.

Tai says if he wasn't here, he'd be dead.

He left school at age 14 with what he calls his 'NSC' degree – No School Certificate. After a stint sitting at home doing nothing as a teenager, he 'met the wrong crowd'.

Around the time the rest of the country was welcoming in the new millennium, Tai was immersing himself in the world of crime. The new crowd became his family.

Life was violent, run-ins with the cops frequent, but perks hard to resist. There were women, nice houses, motorbikes.

But Tai's attachment to the criminal subculture ran deeper than the trappings. There was camaraderie, brotherhood, loyalty.

'My intentions were to stay forever. They were my family,' he says.

People in the rest of the world were like dirt to be scraped off the bottom of his shoes.

'I was a really angry person, a really aggressive person. I was very troubled.'

In the late 2000s, legislators were polishing off the Criminal Proceeds Recovery Act – a new law aimed at stripping crooks of assets gained from 'significant criminal activity'.

For Tai, the law meant he lost his property, bikes, money and everything else he'd accumulated. His girlfriend left him too. 

He was charged with multiple violent criminal offences, including aggravated robbery and kidnapping, and jailed in 2011.

Prison wasn't too bad, thanks partly to his underworld connections. And he took programmes inside to speed up his release, taking part in Corrections' Māori Focus Unit, which helped him connect with tikanga Māori. Tai says he persuaded the Parole Board to give him a chance in 2012.

Once paroled, Tai gradually reconnected with his home and embarked on a spiritual transformation, fuelled by the tikanga Māori he'd been able to connect with in prison.

But he was still straddling two worlds in 2015 when he was attacked and hospitalised, left alone and bloodied.

Tai says his in-laws gave him an ultimatum: if he didn't fully untangle himself from the old ways, he could forget about ever seeing his nieces or nephews.

Near the end of 2015, he met an elder and master carver living close to his Bay of Plenty hometown.

'I told him about my situation … he helped change me.'

From violence and hedonism, Tai started finding peace through what he calls a personal connection with God. 

But carving a new path away from gang life was complex. 'I don't know if you can fully ever get out,' he says. 'I don't associate with them no longer. It doesn't necessarily mean I won't go see them or greet them.'

As the journey continued, Tai spent time sleeping rough, seeking help, going from place to place, agency to agency.

He says when he went to Work and Income they'd send him somewhere else. At agencies he visited, casual racism was always close by.

'It really hurts when you're faced with that, and it runs rampant through society. Even a blind person can see it.'

When he arrived at VisionWest in October, the obvious problem Tai faced was homelessness. He'd been living in his car, anywhere he could find to park up. It turns out that getting references for potential new landlords can be tricky when you've spent several years in jail.

He says the obvious problems people arrive with, like poverty or drug addiction, are 'superficial' products of much older stories.

The deeper reasons for his homelessness took longer to emerge, only surfacing when the ex-con found someone of Māori descent he could trust enough to talk to.

'I came here looking for a lawyer for something else. I asked them about the housing. They were actually willing to listen to my story, what I wanted to say. I wasn't just another statistic.'

​Tai worries some people use government welfare as excuses not to sort their own lives out. A goal for him and for VisionWest is to build sustainable futures, where people go from seeking help to being qualified and empowered enough to help others.

He believes VisionWest offers realistic answers to poverty in Auckland by treating clients as individuals and giving them the tools and credentials to succeed out in the world.

Tai wants to support his peers and engage with troubled youth, to redirect those staring into the abyss. He plans to run his own business and maybe buy a house for his parents one day. 

He says he's still capable of engaging in violence, but chooses not to. The 'old school fellas' in the gang are dead, mostly from bad health, he says.

And even some still wedded to the old lifestyle recognise the next generation might be better off doing something different. 

'They're trying to help their members get into work and do something with their lives, instead of just being a gangbanger and causing trouble.'

On his own journey, Tai carries with him a symbol of his transformation – his Mataora moko. The facial tattoo replaced the old jailhouse-style tears and other tatts.

What it represents, he says, is 'my kaitiaki, my guardian, my green card for the next part' of life.

Along with his personal faith, he says he'll take that guardian with him to the next world.

'No-one ever dies.'