See online: Comorian site: Muzdalifahouse ---- Following cyclone Chido,
which occurred in the Comoros archipelago, the story accelerates withthe words of the Other. Reality is transcribed live by the French
authorities, who claim to be the "sole master" of the Comorian drama
that is unfolding. The reactions, often astonishing, announce yet
another page to turn in the colonial drama. ---- "The Comorian
populations of Mayotte include the natives of all the islands of
the[Comoros]archipelago, whatever the promoters of French Mayotte say.
Social, family and economic interactions are such that nationality only
becomes a sorting operator for governance from the mainland and the
political games and speeches of activists" notes Daniel Gros[1].
One cyclone can hide another.
The desolation left by Cyclone Chido on December 14, 2024, the most
precarious populations of Mayotte, "illegal" or not, have been partly
suffering for several years: Shikandra (2019-2020), Wuambushu
(2023-2024), Place nette (2024), so many military-media operations of
"unhousing", dismantling of their material conditions of existence,
however rudimentary they may be, destruction of their domestic and local
spaces of sociability, however abandoned they may be to poverty, in
particular water supply and sanitation infrastructures.
The latest of these "operations" began with great fanfare on December 2,
and officially ended on December 11, while Chido was already in the
approach phase. The target? The Mavadzani district, in the commune of
Koungou: 465 homes listed, for a population of approximately 4,000
people, "the population of an average town"[2]. Visiting the island on
December 8, 2023, the then Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, had already
come to sniff out the poverty on the outskirts of Mavadzani... While the
inhabitants were literally surrounded by hordes of gendarmes who had
come "as reinforcements" from the mainland, the Mahoran press on
December 2 exulted: an "extraordinary operation." A destruction
represented as a real natural phenomenon, with implacable power: "This
morning, on land, in the air and even at sea, hundreds of law
enforcement officers will therefore begin to evacuate this shanty town"[3].
Dated December 5, an article in the Journal de Mayotte is worth a look.
While the operation is presented as "unprecedented," its effects seem to
arouse a sordid fascination: "The Mavadzani shantytown has become
unrecognizable... There is no longer a living soul" - a real cyclone, in
short. But it is undoubtedly the peroration, full of the quiet anger of
the executors, which provokes an immense retrospective disgust, at a
time when the island's population is surveying the rubble: "Other
operations to demolish illegal unsanitary neighborhoods are planned in
the coming weeks, such as in Mamoudzou, Dzoumogné, Tsararano, or the
Vigie neighborhood in Petite-Terre[Chido took charge of this]." It seems
that Mayotte is gradually finding a semblance of calm and peace[the
peace of the ruins!]Let's bet that this is not temporary and will
continue in the future[wish granted?]"[4].
In the midst of a pre-cyclone alert, the Prefecture hails its
"operation" as "an administrative success, a tactical success and a
marker of security for the population". Mavadzani, the day after? The
"biggest de-housing in the history of Mayotte"[5]is followed by "the
most serious natural disaster in the history of France" (Bayrou, 18
Dec.). A few hours after Chido's passage, another operation begins, that
of concealment: "At the entrance to the Mavadzani shanty town, the
residence where the residents[in fact, only a few families]of the
recently de-housing district were temporarily relocated only partially
stood[a "residence" therefore as unprotective as a tin hut?]But a good
number of the huts destroyed by cyclone Chido last Saturday[by the
Prefecture, in the days preceding]are standing again..."[6].
The fate reserved for this neighborhood - before, during and after Chido
- is emblematic of the only future that the French state and its
"Mahorais" auxiliaries promise to "foreigners", "illegal immigrants",
"Comorians" considered to be "in an irregular situation" (or not): the
pure and simple disappearance of the human landscape of Mayotte. Another
decassée declares: "No one has come to see us... Help has to get here,
we are human beings after all".
Dead people not to be seen.
Where are the dead, all the dead? That is the question, which hides
another: where are the inhabitants of the now devastated shanty towns,
just like the thousands of "displaced" in recent months, particularly
those of Mavadzani?[7]On December 24, ten days after Chido, the
Prefecture announced 39 dead (and 4,230 injured). Retailleau, through
the voice of the Prefect of Mayotte, and Macron after them since his
visit to the island on December 19 and 20, have never stopped announcing
the implementation of a mission to search for and count the victims.
However, there are a few oblique precautions in the remarks: while the
Prefect was quick to point out the day after the cyclone that it would
be difficult to count the dead because of the relatively short time for
burial in the Muslim rite, an argument taken up by François-Noël Buffet,
the then resigning Minister for Overseas Territories[8], a member of the
judicial staff of the Mamoudzou court asserted - on condition of
anonymity - that "in the now bare shanty towns... people are being
buried left, right and centre[sic], so we will never have a count...
Whether they are people in a regular or irregular situation, it doesn't
matter, we will never know"[9]. In short, these people are burying
themselves "on the sly"[10]; there is no time to count them; let's move
on, there is nothing to see here. Macabre cynicism!
And in fact, whether they survive or die, the inhabitants of the poorest
neighborhoods are still and always abandoned to the radical anonymity of
those whom an exceptional regime can annihilate with complete impunity -
one only has to think of the silence surrounding the 20,000 shipwrecked
people who died at sea during the last 25 years between Anjouan and
Mayotte... The Prefect assumes: "For the moment, we have not yet gone up
there[into the shanty towns on the hillsides], for reasons of urgency on
vital matters"[11]; so true is it that the inhabitants of poor
neighborhoods have long been rejected outside the realm of vital
emergencies by the prefectural morgue[12].
Between denials and escalation, a most unhealthy media dance surrounds
the dead, the missing. In this context, LIOT MP Estelle Youssouffa seeks
to preempt, through tactical anticipation, the very space of discourse
on death: "We are faced with open-air mass graves... No one has come to
recover the bodies buried[under the rubble]"[13]. Which the prefect
denies, indicating "that there are very few graves" and that these "mass
graves" are "false information", the drone flights having revealed
nothing[14]. So what? Under the very unusual effect of circumstantial
empathy, the ethical and health concern that the alarm sounded by
Estelle Youssouffa may rightly include is perhaps already nothing more
than the continuation, by other rhetorical means, of a xenophobia[15]of
which the predominantly "Comorian" inhabitants of the shanty towns
remain tirelessly the target of "Mahorais" politicians and activists
under the colonial flag.
It is still a question of signifying how much the mere presence of these
undesirables is a factor of disaster. A sophism all the more devious
because it feigns concern for others: illegal immigrants populate the
shanty towns; the shanty towns are "open-air mass graves"; therefore,
illegal immigrants amplify the catastrophe - they are the catastrophe...
Thus, the falsely humanitarian appeals to fight against unsanitary
housing have as their fundamental aim, not the improvement of the
material living conditions of their inhabitants, but their expulsion.
"Being on the side of the victims relieves the executioner"[16].
If you don't listen, you die.
In this context, a particularly obscene mythology is circulating, from
Mayotte to Paris, according to which the inhabitants of the shanty towns
refused to join the accommodation provided during the cyclone, despite
the announced severity of the phenomenon. Let us listen for example to
Safina Soula, resolutely anti-"Comorian" leader of the Collectif des
Citoyens de Mayotte 2018: if "it is the people in the shanty towns[who
were the most victims of the cyclone]", it is because they "refused to
believe the authorities when they were asked to go and take shelter in
schools, or in the MJC... Those who did not listen to the instructions
pay the highest price"[17]. The symbolic violence of such a discourse is
based on abject guilt.
Presented as an "essayist", Barbara Lefebvre rants in these terms on the
set of RMC: "Half of the population of Mayotte are illegal immigrants,
and now they come and explain to us: "oh, we're going to hold a minute
of silence for the Mahorais"... It's not for the Mahorais! In my
opinion, most of the dead must be illegal Comorians who, in any case,
didn't even want to listen to the warnings when they were told to leave
their shanty town"[18]. There would therefore be the "Mahorais" dead who
are sufficiently dignified for funeral tributes to be paid to them, and
the "illegal" dead, good for the mass graves of abjection where the
bulldozers of Wuambushu force them day after day.
In fact, such a perverse and infamous accusation deliberately makes
invisible the absolute distrust that decades of harassment and police
ambushes arouse among "foreigners" in so-called "irregular" situations,
emblematic of a policy of tracking down illegal immigrants; which is why
many people in the process of regularization (or not) stayed away from
accommodation centers during the cyclone, hoping to avoid arrest and,
ultimately, expulsion.
Let the survivors clear out.
From the outset, the cyclone seemed like a windfall for the French
state and for most members of the "Mahoran" political class, including
groups, who were already trying to exploit material deprivation and
general distress in the direction of a genuine policy of migratory
eradication. The omnipresent Safina Soula persisted and insisted: "It is
imperative, urgently, to prevent the resettlement of these
people..."[19]. Then it was Retailleau's turn: "We will not be able to
rebuild Mayotte without dealing with the migratory issue with the
greatest determination"[20]. According to him, the Union of the Comoros,
towards which it would be necessary to be "much tougher", would be
waging "a form of hybrid war... by pushing populations towards Mayotte
for a sort of clandestine occupation"[21].
The entire imaginary and rhetorical arsenal of the extreme right[22]as
well as of the "Mahorais" politicians and collectives regarding the
three other islands of the archipelago, is mobilized here. Upon his
arrival in Mayotte on December 19, one of Macron's first announcements
aimed to increase the number of deportations of "illegal foreigners"
from 25,000 to 40,000 per year! This is what he means by "rebuilding
Mayotte" with new "criteria", namely "strengthening the fight against
illegal immigration, at the same time as we obviously restore schools,
rebuild housing, rebuild the hospital, etc." The complicit resonance
with the purifying rhetoric of Darmanin, visiting Mayotte in June 2023,
is obvious. For him, the expulsion of undesirables is the Solution:
"Things will be better at school, things will be better at the hospital,
things will be better for consuming water, things will be better for all
public services"[23]. Same dangerous demagogy, same eradicating doctrine.
Necropolitics of a "reconstruction".
This is why the seemingly virtuous calls for "reconstruction" have a
dark side, inclined to capitalize on the cyclone in the sense of an even
more radical destruction, stamped with the definitive and fantasized
seal of irreversibility. Barely three days after Chido's passage, MP
Estelle Youssouffa stated: "This tragedy is for Mayotte the tragic
opportunity to be able to build itself"[24]. The one who pretended to be
indignant as early as the evening of December 14 at these "#carrion
already at work for their contemptible politicking[while]#Mayotte has
not even counted its dead yet", is only propagating a despicable
narrative, which the vilest commentators never cease to relay. To the
CNews presenter who deliberately suggests: "It will be the role of the
gendarmerie to prevent the reconstruction of[the]shanty towns", General
Cavallier suggests sinuously: "it could be an opportunity to support the
return of certain populations to the Comoros"[25].
In fact, the "reconstruction" aims at the destruction of the very
conditions of possibility of an effective existence in the Department of
all those whose simple presence contradicts the pro-colonial fiction,
reveals in broad daylight its ugly birthmarks, its equivocal chimeras,
its morbid dead ends: a presence crystallized in the invented figure of
a "Comorian" otherness, always already suspected of irregularity, of
clandestinity, that the false "Mahoran" consciousness has been trying to
repress since the 1960s... Thus, when Estelle Youssouffa recalls that
"Wuambushu... demanded the destruction of the shanty towns for the very
protection of the inhabitants who live there", she exploits the
clandestine (or not) against themselves, hastening to affect an air of
offended stupor: "When we see that the shanty towns are starting to be
rebuilt when they are open-air cemeteries".
The political perspective of such duplicity remains nonetheless
tangible: it is quite simply that of a clean slate, aspiring to produce
in the still devastated shadow of Chido a programmed disappearance of
the "Comorian" alter ego: "We are not going to rebuild ourselves, we are
simply going to build ourselves"[26]. Shortly before giving way to
Manuel Valls, the vengeful fanatic who succeeded him on 23 December in
the Bayrou government, François-Noël Buffet, then resigning Minister of
Overseas Territories, considers that "reconstruction" requires... a
modification of the right of the soil: "There is the moment when we
protect everyone and we treat everyone...[and]the moment when we say,
no, it's over, we have to accompany them back"[27]. Chilling.
Getting into line.
Pursuing such a reset - however delusional it may be - of the human
landscape of the island requires prioritizing above all the sovereign
instruments of social pacification. It is necessary to ensure, even in
the ruins, the continuum of a colonial order to which certain elements
of preventive counter-insurgency, implemented immediately after the
passage of Chido, contribute from the outset. Nothing better than the
spectacular motif of looting - less real than imagined, moreover - to
make the maneuver acceptable... On France Inter, Estelle Youssouffa can
thus pour out her heart between emotion and propaganda: "Since the first
evening of the cyclone, we have seen the population that survived in the
shanty towns looting houses, and schools, and public buildings, to go
and rebuild the shanty towns which are open-air cemeteries... I ask that
the army be sent in to try to prevent us from falling into anarchy"[28].
If this speech is not new in the mouth of the "Mahorais" deputy, it is
recharged here with the tragic circumstances of Chido, in the sense of a
stigmatization all the more obscene as she progresses, so to speak,
among the dead...
The government anticipates: from December 17, the Prefect - in favor,
like Ben Issa Ousseini, President of the Departmental Council of
Mayotte, of establishing a state of emergency - has extensive powers; a
curfew is decreed from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., as in Guadeloupe, Martinique
and Kanaky during the year 2024. In this context, it is not surprising
that the special bill to rebuild Mayotte is inspired by the repressive
system implemented in the context of the June 2023 revolts following the
assassination of Nahel by the police.
Already rationed, the population will be kept in check, not to say at
gunpoint.
Gamal Oya, December 25, 24.
Find our latest texts about Mayotte and the Comoros using the keyword
"Mayotte-Comoros" on the site
Notes
[1]blogmediapart, Dec. 2 2024.
[2][Mayotte la 1ère, 2 Dec.
[3]cf. Mayotte the 1st.
[4]lejournaldemayotte.yt.
[5]Mayotte 1st, December 2.
[6]mayottehebdo.com, Dec. 19.
[7]According to Mayotte la 1ère, most official statistics estimate that
around 100,000 people live in these shanty towns, representing a third
of the homes on the island - without mentioning the uncounted families
living in the heart of the forest. "At the same time, the authorities
report 10,000 people taking refuge in emergency shelters. Where have all
the others gone?"
[8]Mayotte la 1ère, December 22.
[9]AFP, Dec. 18.
[10]Mayotte la 1ère, December 16.
[11]Le Figaro News, December 19.
[12]Cf. Rémi Carayol, "In Mayotte, the suspicion of lives sacrificed
after cyclone Chido", Médiapart, December 23.
[13]AFP, Dec. 19.
[14]mayottehebdo.com, Dec. 23.
[15]A "paradoxical xenophobia exerted first on members of the sibling
group", as Dénètem Touam Bona rightly writes about the relationship that
Mayotte has with the three other islands of the Comoros archipelago
(Uropve, n°3, March 2016).
[16]Soeuf Elbadawi, "This is not selling out" in Histoire(s) en chemin,
4 étoiles éditions, 2024: p. 51.
[17]lepoint.fr / Dec. 17
[18]Rmc, 18 Dec.
[19]lepoint.fr, Dec. 17.
[20]liberation.fr / Dec. 17
[21]Rmc, 18 Dec.
[22]Visiting the island on April 20 and 21, 2024, Marine Le Pen called
for "twisting the arm of the Comoros[in order to]force them to take back
their nationals" (Ouest-france.fr, April 20, 2024).
[23]Mayotte la 1ère, June 25, 2023.
[24]franceinfo evening, December 17.
[25]Dec 15
[26]CNews, Dec. 15.
[27]Mayotte la 1ère, December 22.
[28]Dec 23
https://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4328
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