End of game in Mayotte?
From the Wuambushu police tornado (April 2023) to the destruction of Mayotte by the cyclone Chido (14 December 2024)
Since his election in 2017 and re-election in 2022, Emmanuel Macron, the head of the French state, has loved to strike the pose of a warmonger blusterer. Faced with the deep social discontent of the Kanak population of New Caledonia, the "little powdered marquis", accustomed to subduing the "boors" (yellow waistcoats in 2018-2019), sent his troops to put down the "poor bastards"[1] of the island (11 young Kanaks fell to the bullets of the gendarmes).
The little marquis, on the verge of seeing his Elysian throne overturned by the virtue of elections, continued the same brutal policy of repression in the volcanic archipelago of Mayotte, 8,700 km from Paris. Mayotte - a "French protectorate" (since 1841) - was detached from the Comoros archipelago, despite futile condemnations from the United Nations Assembly. In 2011, Mayotte became the 101st "department of the Republic". The same ethnic group has been split in two by imperialist confrontations (see below). Mayotte is the source of ongoing tensions between the Comoros (Anjouan) and France, as it has created a "call to air" for Comorians seeking a less intolerable level of survival. Old family ties have been broken by an artificial "republican" border. From one day to the next, the same families have been declared legally "illegal", with half of the people of Mayotte becoming mere outlaws by virtue of bourgeois law.
Mayotte has acquired the sad "privilege" of being the poorest department in France[2] . Its other "privilege" is to be a permanent hunting ground for "illegal immigration". This hounding by the henchmen of the capitalist state has taken the form of Operation Wuambushu ("taking back control" in Mahorese). Launched on 22 April 2023 by Gérard Darmanin, the "grandson of an immigrant", this operation is a violent manhunt, akin to the classic colonial expeditions of the past. The gunboats have been replaced by armoured vehicles and gendarmerie helicopters.
Supported by the Republican and Macronist right-wingers and their natural ally the Rassemblement national, the "decasage" operation[3] , aimed to destroy 10% of the tin housing and to expel the island's Comorian population by force of arms, as they had no real "papers made in France" and were treated as "delinquents"[4] .
The French government mobilised impressive police and military resources for this operation, including special anti-terrorist units...
The political and social devastation caused by the human rights police state was finally compounded by the devastation caused by Cyclone Chiro on 14 December 2024. The French authorities suspiciously put the death toll at less than 40, even though the hills of Grande-Terre were dead silent and the death toll was much higher in Mozambique, on the other side of the channel of the same name[5]
"It looks like Hiroshima", says a shocked mother from Anjouan (Comoros), as rumours swell of tens of thousands of missing persons. Nicknamed the "perfume island", Mayotte now has "a scent of death on its gaunt slopes"[6] . Disembarking from his gendarmerie helicopter, the irremovable "President Macron" responded to the pleas of victims who had lost everything - "we're thirsty", "we want water, food and electricity" - with his usual verbal provocations: "so that we can deport the migrants) more effectively to their countries of origin". - in the "unfiltered" French favoured by the little marquis, this should be translated as : ‘more deportations', 'more gendarmes' and more 'destruction of shanty towns', swelling the army of homeless people
And the ultimate provocation for these beggars of the tropics: "... you're happy to be in France! If it wasn't France, you'd be in 10,000 times more trouble! There's no place in the Indian Ocean where people get so much help. You can't want to be a French department and say it's not working". [7]
So much thick spittle from "President Macron" and his "friends" on the "republican" and Lepenist right against miserable homeless people
This policy continues with any government appointed by Macron, from Barnier to Bayrou. The prime ministers change almost every term, but the "top cop in France" remains right-wing. Bruno Retailleau from the Vendée is proud to be the "spiritual son" (sic) of Philippe de Villiers and therefore the spokesman for the most reactionary Catholic right. With the sole aim of "re-establishing order", the police officer designated by Macron and Bayrou, by name alone, is yet another spit in the ocean against the half of Mayotte's population considered to be undesirable ad vitam aeternam: "Abolition of state medical aid (AME), of the right of citizenship, of subsidies to associations helping migrants, introduction of the double penalty, limitation of visas and family reunification..." .[8]
French capital has become a desperate rump imperialist, with successive losses in the form of a domino game in Africa (from Mali to Chad), and is prepared to do anything to hold on to any of its former footholds in the face of the gluttonous appetites of other imperialisms (USA and India, Russia and China, but also Turkey).
The challenges of the Mozambique Channel[9]
Situated in a central region of the Indian Ocean and to the north of the Mozambique Channel, the Mayotte archipelago is a major stake for French capitalism, an outpost of its (fragile) domination in the region. As a means of asserting its "rights" in the Mozambique Channel and as a veritable strategic axis with Djibouti and the department of Réunion, Mayotte has, since the middle of the nineteenth century, ensured France's position as the "power of the Indian Ocean" in the face of other imperialisms - the most visible (and most tenacious) of which is now Chinese state hyper-capitalism - and neighbouring states (Mozambique and Madagascar, Tanzania, etc.). The French state must therefore maintain a form of stability at all costs through its military apparatus. This stability is highly precarious, given that the population of Mayotte has long been facing a critical socio-economic situation, which has been greatly exacerbated by the ruling class itself.
In the run-up to a third world war, the Mozambique Channel plays a strategic role: 30% of the world's oil exports pass through it. Major gas deposits (3.7 billion m3 of natural gas) have attracted the covetous interest of France and the Total group, which is already involved in development projects in Mozambique (on hold because of Islamist guerrillas...). The Mozambique Channel contains of the Indian Ocean's coral reefs, i.e. of the world's coral reefs, and of the world's mangrove forests. All these last vestiges of biodiversity are in danger of disappearing rapidly as we hunt for the last fossil reserves.
Because of its key position in the Mozambique Channel, Mayotte is a French outpost. The Foreign Legion is present on the island, but it must above all rely on the Armed Forces of the Indian Ocean Zone (FAZSOI), made up of 1,700 men based on Reunion Island. The aim is above all to control strategic islands such as Madagascar, the Seychelles and Mauritius, as well as the intense traffic in trading boats (including illegal products), fishing boats (militarised) and even freebooters.
Between the bases at Dzaoudzi (Petite-Terre in Mayotte) and the Port de la Pointe des Galets (Réunion), France has built a geostrategic axis (with Djibouti) over a large part of the Indian Ocean. This position is particularly important given the current geopolitical tensions between the USA (and India) and China, with Madagascar and the Canal playing a key role the Middle Kingdom's irreversible penetration of the African continent. Aspiring to serve as a rear base for Western interests in the Indo-Pacific, Macron's megalomaniac France soon suffered a complete humiliation: not only was it unable to sell 12 submarines to Australia, but it was firmly excluded from the Aukus alliance by the United States and the United Kingdom .[10]
The only role that can be conceded to the "France of freedoms" is one of simple policing against all forms of "illegal immigration" and illicit drug trafficking. As we can see in New Caledonia and Mayotte, the "Republic" has tried and tested means of repression, police and military, to continue to control its last colonial confetti with an iron fist.
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Whether in New Caledonia or Mayotte, or even in the overseas departments (French Guiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe), the working classes, always humiliated, repressed and subjected to police vindictiveness, have nothing to expect from the "Republic", be it right-wing and/or left-wing. A class-based response against the capitalist state, supported by the workers of metropolitan France, remains the only possible solution. But there is still complete social silence, just like in the aftermath of the hurricane. For how much longer, when war is threatening on every continent?
For the proletarians, the beggars and all the damned of the earth, it's time to wake up from too long a slumber.
Pantopolis, 23 December 2024.
[1] "Poor bastards" is the famous invective uttered by the character Grangil (played by the French actor Jean Gabin) in Claude Autant-Lara's film La Traversée de Paris (1956), adapted from a short story by Marcel Aymé. This line, which evokes the Petainist atmosphere under the Occupation, has long been taken literally by significant sections of the "middle classes": in their media rags (Bolloré galaxy) or on their "social networks", it is claimed that the unemployed are out of work because "they don't want it", and that the minimum social benefits encourage them to "slack off", that the aid granted to families takes away their sense of "the dignity of work" (sic), etc. Cf. Hubert Huertas: "Pourquoi les Français adhèrent au "Salauds de pauvres", Mediapart, 21 Sept. 2014.
[2] 37 p. 100% of the working population is unemployed, 40% of Mahorais live on less than 100% of Mahorais live on less than 160 euros a month, and there is only one hospital (for a population of 400,000). With no connection to a proper drinking water network, the "department of the republic" since 2011) is threatened by recurring cholera epidemics.
[3] This is the name given by the inhabitants of the Comorian island to the expeditions carried out by xenophobic and violent Mahoran groups against the inhabitants of the bangas (traditional houses). Usually on Sundays, these "collectives" invade areas populated by people from other islands in the archipelago, shouting "Nawa lawé" ("Let them go", in Shimaoré) and "France for the French" (L'Humanité, 14 June 2016).
[4] France 24, 21 April 2023.
[5] Le Monde, 21 December 2024: https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2024/12/21/cyclone-chido-au-mozambique-au-moins-76-morts_6458663_3213.html
[6] Le Point, Friday 20 December 2024.
[7] Le Monde, 22 & 23 December 2024: "Sur place, Macron cible l'immigration clandestine".
[9] See Tristan Coloma & Quentin René François Ygorra, "Le canal du Mozambique : un espace de compétition crisogène", Ifri Notes, Ifri, Sub-Saharan Africa Centre, June 2022.
[10] See the article in Le Monde: www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2023/03/14/alliance-aukus-la-france-a-mis-du-temps-a-digerer-l-affront_6165419_3210.html.