[1] Three years later, she became the first indigenous Fijian girl to pass the New Zealand University Entrance examination and upon graduating from the University of Auckland in 1963, the first Fijian woman to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree.
[3] She left the school to become a diplomat in 1980 and became the first indigenous Fijian woman appointed a deputy high commissioner.
[3] She was Minister of Education, Science and Technology from 1993 to 1995, but she was dismissed from her cabinet post in 1995 because, in contrast to the SVT's policies, she opposed French nuclear weapons testing in Moruroa Atoll in French Polynesia.
[3] Vakatale resigned from the SVT in 2000 in opposition to the coup d'état by i-Taukei nationalists which had removed then-Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry from power.
She was made an Officer of the Order of Fiji in 1996 and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the University of St Andrews in 2009.