Jeya has had an eclectic international career, leading significant global organisations and crossing paths with many world leaders. She has lived in Switzerland, Germany, Nigeria, Samoa, Sri Lanka, South Africa, the UK, and the US, worked for the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Development Programme, and been New Zealand Honorary Consul in South Africa, among other roles. She is now back in Aotearoa for good.

People Jeya has known have become household names—she interviewed MP Helen Clark for her thesis about women in parliament when she was newly elected, became President of the prestigious Oxford Union with Boris Johnson on her election ticket, and volunteered on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. She invited David Lange to the world-famous debate about nuclear weapons at the Oxford Union.

A hippie at heart

Born on Bastille Day, Jeya has led a life of political activism. As a secondary school exchange student in the United States in 1968 she was permanently influenced by the tumultuous events of that year: the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and protests against the war in Vietnam.

“It made me a hippie at heart for life,” she says. “I celebrated my 21st birthday outside Parliament on a cold and rainy day in Wellington, protesting French nuclear testing in the Pacific. I didn’t for one moment feel I should be doing anything else.”

During her first degree in political science at Victoria University of Wellington, Jeya studied Te Reo Māori, a more unusual choice in the early 1970s than it is now.

After graduating, she worked at the former Department of Trade and Industry, then Consumer magazine before returning to VUW to gain a first-class honours degree and earning a Commonwealth scholarship to study at Oxford.

“If I hadn’t won the scholarship, I would have stayed at Victoria. I didn’t want to go anywhere else, that’s how strongly I felt about it. I want to pay tribute to two outstanding teachers and mentors without whom I wouldn’t have got to Oxford—Professor Stephen Levine and Dame Margaret Clark.”

She recounts that Professor Levine’s feedback on one of her essays brought her to tears. When another lecturer questioned whether he was being too hard on her, he responded that he knew she was capable of better.

“I’m very grateful to him for that. He really pushed me.”

Debating at Oxford

Having arrived at Oxford as an Australasian debating champion, she gravitated towards the world-renowned Oxford Union, representing Oxford at the World Debating Championships where she was runner-up.

In 1985, Jeya was elected President of the Oxford Union, becoming only the second woman of colour to hold the presidency after the Pakistani Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto. She credits her debating skill, honed at VUW where she sparred with current Chancellor John Allen, as the deciding factor in becoming President without the usual family or school connections.

“Benazir won the Oxford presidency at her fourth attempt and her father was president of Pakistan. My father had been a school principal in Sāmoa. I didn’t have any money or social standing, I was a nobody. All I had was my debating—and my training ground was here in New Zealand.”

Most famously, it was Jeya who invited former Prime Minister Sir David Lange to speak with her on the motion that: ‘This House believes that nuclear weapons are morally indefensible’. She had got to know him when they had both been involved in the anti-apartheid movement.

The 1985 debate in which Sir David made his famous uranium quip was broadcast worldwide, and the Oxford Union rates it as one of the four most notable debates in its 200-year history. Jeya gives him credit for taking the risk of debating; other leaders had been reluctant to take part for fear of losing. David Lange called the debate the highlight of his career.

Apartheid and action against racial discrimination

Jeya says she first became conscious of racial discrimination as a child when she travelled to England by ship and a little blonde girl said, “don’t play with her—she’s dirty.” It stayed with her during an incredible trip travelling around South Africa with her partner at the height of apartheid, and the start of the 1981 Springbok tour. They wrote of their experiences as a mixed-race couple in a book, Babes in Verwoerds: Two New Zealanders in South Africa.

Returning to South Africa in 1989 with apartheid in its twilight years, Jeya encountered the complexities of a changing nation. While her husband got a visa to work as a university professor, Jeya’s designation was “housewife.” To add insult to injury, Jeya could not be a joint owner of their house in a white area unless she accepted the status of “honorary white” which, of course, she refused.

“I’ve had to cope with race all my life, as have countless others. I’m glad that with the help of Dame Margaret Clark and Professor Stephen Levine, the Jeya Wilson Prize for the best essay on race relations is still being awarded 25 years later”.

In 2023 the prize was awarded to Tess Mortimer for her essay about indigenous self-governance.

“It was especially meaningful to receive the Jeya Wilson prize as I have become increasingly aware of Jeya’s contributions towards justice through anti-apartheid and nuclear-free advocacy.

“I see Jeya as someone who could have become disillusioned by the world of politics but persevered with boldness and hope. Her contributions, especially to race relations, are proof it was all worth it.”

Despite experiencing racism and bullying at times, Jeya says she also encountered supportive friends and had wonderful experiences which have helped her remain positive.

“I want to say to young people ‘just remember, for every person who might pick on you for whatever reason—because you’re disabled, because you’re gay— there are thousands of others who support you and are there with you. And that’s what has kept me going.”

“My country is Aotearoa”

Now back in New Zealand, Jeya finds it disturbing and even hurtful to be asked “where are you from?” or hear “go back to your own country”.

“My country is Aotearoa. Usually when people ask where you come from, I say ‘planet earth’ because I’ve always believed that. I chose Aotearoa as my country, and I hope I’ve served the country well wherever I’ve been.”

In her view, Jeya’s most important contribution was the work she did on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa when she was CEO of Africa’s largest chamber of commerce and industry in Durban. Distressed by hearing the experiences of people with AIDS, and the number of young people dying from it, she set up an HIV/AIDS centre for business. After convincing business leaders that the epidemic was affecting their bottom line, she helped raise $72 million USD for HIV work.

“It’s the kind of thing that New Zealand prepares one for. If you want to do something you just go and do it.”

After a peripatetic life, Jeya returned to New Zealand with her husband in late 2021.

“I always said I would come back to Aotearoa to die.”

Of course, she is still actively contributing to making the world a better place through several governance roles, including for the web-based political campaigning organisation Avaaz which has over 65 million members worldwide, a Nigerian foundation transforming the public sector in Africa, and as chair of the Commonwealth Sport Foundation.

Jeya is now living in Whanganui, happy to be next to Te Awa Tupua, the first river in the world to be granted legal personhood.

“A simple life, appreciating all that New Zealand offers, I wouldn’t be anywhere else”.