December 30, 2024. Bayrou, visiting Mayotte following the passage of
Cyclone Chido, announces the "Mayotte debout" plan, which should already
be greeted with the greatest suspicion. Indeed, the new Prime Minister
refers to the issue of the right of the soil in Mayotte in these terms:
"Anyone who would claim that there is not a burning immigration problem
in Mayotte would be irresponsible" (1). The plan plans to increase
(again!) the number of police officers and to exempt (again!) companies
from all taxes, thus establishing Mayotte as a "global free zone" -
where the island's employers will continue in all frankness their
exploitation of the clandestine (or not) proletariat as they have been
doing for decades on construction sites, in the fields, in restaurants,
etc. (2). The "Mahorais" MP Estelle Youssouffa understood this well, who
launched on Facebook: "We must fight so that our artisans, our
entrepreneurs from Mayotte are given priority on (Re)construction
contracts" (Mayotte la 1ère, 6 Jan. 2025). In the process, the Mayotte
construction federation declared itself... "in battle order"
(mayottehebdo.com, 8 Jan.).
In this context, Marine Le Pen's (3) stay on the island from January 5
to 7, alongside the "Mahorais" RN MP Anchya Bamana, both validates the
reactionary enterprise of the government gang (urging that "the promises
made to the Mahorais not be forgotten", insofar as they would
"undeniably go in the right direction"), and redoubles it with an
escalation arguing that the Mayotte debout plan "does not go far enough"
(bfm, January 5). In addition to a mobilization of the National Navy,
advocated by Le Pen, Anchya Bamana invited Retailleau, Valls and Lecornu
on January 8 to amplify the migratory repression in Mayotte by using
start-ups specialized in AI... She also advocates for an outsourcing of
Administrative Detention Centers in Madagascar and Tanzania! As a bonus,
"prevent the importation of resin" to the Comoros, in order to hinder
the construction of kwassas, these fishing canoes used by illegal
immigrants from the three other islands of the Comoros archipelago. A
graduate in International Relations and Political Science in Quebec,
Estelle Youssouffa herself has been boasting for years of a program to
fight against "Comorian" immigration that is very undiplomatic: "We see
the kwassa factories operating in Anjouan; it takes 20 highly trained
sailors from the national navy; special forces, they will plasticize
these factories: in one night, the problem is solved"... (Mayotte la
1ère, Oct. 10, 2018). Now, Valls-the-menace as Minister of Overseas
Territories is preparing public opinion for it: "We must put an end to
these factories that illegally manufacture kwassa-kwassas" (Sud Radio,
Feb. 4).
Same strategy, same perspective, from the "Mahorais" elected officials
in their letter addressed to Bayrou dated January 4, 2025, where the
demand (very opportune for those with real estate ambitions) for
zero-interest loans for housing is linked to that of a "massive
deployment of the army", coupled with an easing of the return to the
island of the Mahorais cops and guards, as well as an inclusion of
municipal police officers in the training of gendarmes and auxiliary
police officers: enough to civil serviceize the militia tradition of the
sorodas (soldiers), supporters of French Mayotte in the early 1970s. Of
course, the grand-replacement rhetoric of the "pull factor" is repeated
with regard to nationals from the three other islands of the Comorian
archipelago, characterized as an "additional population often
sick[sic]and extremely poor". In this respect, the measures envisaged
have nothing to envy the RN program: "suspend compulsory schooling for
foreign students... initiate a massive operation of deportations of
illegal immigrants and... set a moratorium on the examination of asylum
applications, the issuing and renewal of titles, residence permits and
travel documents for foreigners in Mayotte". Enough to make Mayotte
"reborn" "on healthy bases"... A sinister imaginary of the purge.
And in fact, an "emergency law" already sounds like a real declaration
of war.
Initially, the State assumes the right to expropriate before the owner
is even identified. The measure is finally removed by the Assembly -
before the text is validated on January 22. This is simply a polite
gesture of circumstance, on the part of a process of land colonization
that has been underway for a long time, with regard to the sacrosanct
bourgeois principle of individual property - an amicable arrangement, in
all endogamy... In this context, it is not uninteresting to point out
that the Association of Women Leaders of Mayotte denounced, in a press
release of January 20, the potentially dispossessing nature of such a
measure: "Our lands are not simple material goods. They embody our
culture, our history and our identity" (4). From this rather well-off
middle-class lobby, accustomed to anti-Comorian sallies in favor of
French Mayotte, such an assertion worthy of the anti-colonialist
tradition testifies to all the ideological ambivalence that
characterizes the social position of its members, subordinate with
regard to the coloniality of the relations that the metropolis maintains
with its overseas "department" (as with the Comoros archipelago as a
whole), and dominant with regard to the situation of the class of
"Mahoran" owners, caught between their land appetites (in a matrilocal
context, what's more) and the dread of downgrading, crystallized in the
scarecrow figure of the "Comorian" (5). Clearly, "large-scale power
relations are currently at play for access to land and the best-informed
and most influential families have been able to use their position to
enrich themselves" (Daniel Gros, blog médiapart, Jan. 27). We can
therefore understand why MP Estelle Youssouffa, concerned about her
electoral clientele, is asking the Senate to "also protect Mayotte
owners" (Mayotte la 1ère, 22 January).
Furthermore, a census is being considered, as the obsession with
"illegal immigration from neighbouring Comoros" haunts the false
conscience of the colonial power and its "Mayotte" auxiliaries, who
never stop fantasising about a "traffic" of paternity, while Valls
announces a "hardening" of the right of the soil (bfm, 7 January)
associated with not letting Mayotte "become a shantytown
island[sic]again" (mayottehebdo.com, 10 January).
Frustrated at not seeing "immigration" addressed by the emergency law to
the extent of its anti-Comorian resentment, a large part of the
"Mahoran" political class joins forces behind RN MP Anchya Bamana.
Mariam Saïd Kalam, departmental councillor and spokesperson for
Renaissance, declares for example: "The choice was made not to include
an immigration section... I can only regret this choice". In addition,
one cannot fail to wonder about the political meaning to be given to the
rather evasive remarks of Yasmina Aouny (6), spokesperson for France
Insoumise: "It is a shame that... the question of immigration and shanty
towns are not included." (Mayotte la 1ère, 22 January).
If the Emergency Counter-Plan for Mayotte proposed by LFI more clearly
contests the repeal of the right of the soil in Mayotte, as well as any
initiative derogating from the rights of foreigners (La France
Insoumise, 23 Jan. 2025, p. 38), it nevertheless remains at a distance
from any perspective that is in the least bit decolonial, insofar as the
immediate reconstruction that this counter-plan proposes in terms of
infrastructure, public services, social protection or economic activity,
is part of a logic of catching up which certainly overlaps with the
citizen demand for equality with the metropolis, but is nonetheless
formulated from within an order, that of the departmentalized colony of
Mayotte. As if this were about saving the retentionist Republic by
itself, an operation that can only be objectively carried out to the
detriment of the nationals originating from the three other islands of
the archipelago (the Comoros), in the iniquitous context of its imperial
balkanization - "Mayotte" and "Union of the Comoros" thus designating
only the two disfigured faces of the same counterfeit geopolitical
currency. A resolutely discriminatory and perfectly assumed logic, from
the extreme right to the "Mahorais" collectives via the latest
reactionary government, and which Le Journal de Mayotte distils day
after day: "Migratory pressure prevents the Mahorais from accessing
common law, since social rights there are half those at the national
level, for fear of 'pull factor'" (lejournaldemayotte.yt, Jan. 29). A
rancid and contagious sophism.
No matter: Retailleau presented to the Council of Ministers on January
22 a decree aimed at relaunching the Interministerial Committee for
Immigration Control, created under Sarkozy, with a view to dealing with
"sensitive issues such as state medical aid, social benefits or
expulsions" (linfokwezi.fr, January 23) - in short, this is the
strategic composition of a government front, structured in such a way as
to wage a total war on migrants, for whom Mayotte continues to be the
experimental battlefield.
Moreover, the Association of Mayors of Mayotte sent a letter dated
January 12, 2025 to the President of the National Assembly Yaël
Braun-Pivet, considering it an "offense" that she did not really say she
was in favor of the repeal of the right of the soil in Mayotte.
Correspondingly, the repeated demand for an "alignment of benefits and
social minima" attests once again to this pro-colonial tropism according
to which the demand for equality of rights (between Mayotte and the
mainland) intersects with discrimination and the expulsion of people
assimilated to "Comorians", the fictitious emancipation of some being
established on the very real eviction of others. In the same vein,
pleading in favor of indiscriminate care for disaster victims, whether
they are in an "irregular" situation or not, is, for MP Estelle
Youssouffa, an "obscenity that goes beyond the limits" (CNews, Jan. 13).
An internal psychodrama in the post-Chido "Mahorese" political scene
proves to be symptomatic of this outraged virtue of the pro-colonial
auxiliaries in the mirror of their split fiction. Senator Said Omar Oili
is at the origin of it. As a reminder, the same one who contributed
alongside Thani Mohamed Soilihi to toughening the Asylum & Immigration
2024 law with an amendment aimed at penalizing allegedly fraudulent
recognitions of paternity, is also the one who pointed out a few days
after the cyclone the police harassment suffered daily by illegal (or
not) nationals of the three other islands of the Comoros archipelago
(marianne.net, Dec. 17) - before leaving the Macronist RDPI group to
which he belonged until then (lemonde.fr, Jan. 24). To the point that
the senator does not assume the anti-Comorian hatred that the deputy
Estelle Youssouffa has been increasing since Chido, from Mayotte to
Paris. He therefore comes to declare during an interview given to the
online media Kweli: "I have a culture of the 4 islands, I cannot deny
it... My mother is Mahoran, my father came from Anjouan, he fell in love
with my mother... You want to force me to hate my father and love my
mother. No, I love them both... I have never hidden the fact that I was
against[the departmentalization of Mayotte]... I knew that there was
going to be a huge gap with the neighboring countries that surround
us..." (4 Feb.). A real coming out that transgresses the structural
taboo of departmentalism: namely that not one, not one of the "Mahorais"
can claim to have no links - marital or cultural, familial or
linguistic, commercial or spiritual, historical or simply romantic -
with the three other Comorian islands - when it is not with Madagascar.
To take just one example among many others, the former LR MP Mansour
Kamardine, a notorious provocateur and grand replacement, not only has a
property in Grande Comore, but also has family in Anjouan, where he
celebrated his customary grand wedding... But it is precisely because of
this identity foreclosure that has been working from within the
"Mahorais" discourse since the 1950s that the departmental councillor
Soula Said-Souffou, stung to the quick by this great politically
organised island denial, reproaches the senator for saying, simply
saying his "Comorian origins", thus justifying "in a veiled manner,
illegal immigration to Mayotte", and thus calling into question "the
very existence of a Mahorais identity".
However reactive it may be - the advisor cries "betrayal" and demands
"public apologies" (linfokwezi.fr, 6 Feb.) - such a defensive posture
unwittingly states the truth that it claims to contest: in fact, there
is no "Mahoran identity"; no more than there are Anjouan, Mohélian or
Grand Comorian identities. There are only localized inflections of the
same repertoire of exchanges, material, symbolic, affective; the
situated variations of the same constantly reworked regime of
relationships in the making. There are only the dynamics declined from
the same set of relationships, whether they are reciprocal but also
forces, classes, always transversal to these four islands in the world,
and which form an archipelago, despite the cuts, through the limits
(border and mental) that the "States that ally themselves against the
interests of the inhabitants of this space" invent and inflict on them
(Soeuf Elbadawi, Paris, April 15, 2023). We understand from then on that
the one whose mother is a metropolitan mzungu, the one who is also of
Grand Comorian ancestry on the paternal side - name: Youssouffa, first
name: Estelle - is the most fierce in defending tooth and nail her
status, her character, her autofiction as a "Mahorese" deputy. By
insulting, and in a hybrid language, Saïd Omar Oili saw himself accused
of "assumed Serrelamé gnombism" (Mayotte la 1ère, 6 Feb.) - from nyombe
/ cow, zebu, with a double connotation of beast and stupidity...;
Serrelamé / shake hands, an expression used in the 1970s to designate
the supporters (demonized by the MPM) of independence for the four
islands of the Comoros archipelago...
As early as January, the LR group in the Assembly proposed to grant the
right of the soil to children born in Mayotte only if both parents have
regular and uninterrupted residence for at least one year in the
territory - instead of three months for one of the two parents according
to the 2018 law. On February 6, the text (concocted by the sinister
Gosselin) was of course adopted, with the blessing of the Bayrou
government and the RN. He even validates an amendment from the Ciottist
gang, extending the duration of parental residence to three years -
left-wing MPs having voted for it by mistake... Unsurprisingly, MP
Estelle Youssouffa, who advocates for a pure and simple repeal of the
dual right of the soil in Mayotte and for whom decolonization rhymes
with "racism"[sic], considers that this law "does not go far enough",
when Darmanin, as his Minister of Justice, puts forward the idea of a
"public debate" on the right of the soil on a national scale (bfm, 6
Feb.). No problem! Wauquiez, leader of the LR, goes one better: "The
profound questioning of the right of the soil that we have obtained is a
prerequisite for all the measures that we can take in the future to
fight against the flow of illegal immigration to Mayotte... We clearly
assume that the subject of limiting the right of the soil, and more
broadly of the fight against illegal immigration, is a reflection that
we must have on the scale of the national territory" (mayottehebdo.com,
7 Feb.). He assumes...
In short, migratory and demographic engineering (7), framed by French
armored vehicles, under the Trumpian cover of the neo-fascist
billionaire Elon Musk (8) ...
A department on acid.
February 12, 2025,
Gamal Oya.
(1) Already toughened in Mayotte by the Asylum & Immigration law of
2018, the right of the soil is being called into question by Darmanin in
the context of Wuambushu (2023-2024). A project to repeal the right of
the soil in Mayotte was launched in May 2024, before being temporarily
suspended by the dissolution of June. But in September, Estelle
Youssouffa tabled a constitutional bill aimed at "repealing the right of
the soil and the double right of the soil in Mayotte".
(2) Let us also mention the exploitation of African refugees "in an
irregular situation", in the informal but omnipresent field of
motorcycle taxis in Mayotte, which they find themselves having to rent
from private companies... (lejournaldemayotte.yt, October 27, 2023).
(3) "She is the mother of Mayotte, she is the one who will save us,"
said a "Mahorais" sympathizer (Mayotte la 1ère, January 5). A colonial
Oedipus complex that has its rhetorical roots in the departmentalist
movement. President of the Mahorais Popular Movement during the 1970s,
Zéna M'Déré declared: "France... is our father and our mother... We ask
to return to her" (Cf. Mamaye Idriss, "The ticklers' movement: gender
and violence in political action in Mayotte (1966-1976)", Le Mouvement
Social, 2016, no. 255, pp. 57-70).
(4) During a demonstration that brought together several dozen women
leaders on January 25 in Mamoudzou against the expropriation of land,
while the proposal had already been withdrawn from the emergency law, a
participant declared: "It is the flesh of our flesh that is affected...
Mayotte belongs to the Mahorais first" (Mayotte la 1ère, January 25).
Performative rhetoric of an island blut und boden.
(5) To go further, see the ethnographic investigation conducted during
the 2010s by Myriam Hachimi Alaoui, Élise Lemercier & Élise Palomares,
"Les unes contre les autres. Ethnographie intersectionnelle du mouvement
des "femmes leaders" à Mayotte", 2020[canal-u.tv/chaines/ehess]; see
also Gamal Oya, "Mayotte / Archipel des Comores. "A procolonial
feminism", Casse-Rôles, n°31, February-April 2025.
(6) Author of La Chatouilleuse (Éditions du Signe, 2022). The story,
under the guise of female emancipation (Rose, the heroine, challenges
the weight of traditions related to arranged marriage, polygamy, etc.),
is a departmentalist apology for the Mahorais Popular Movement (MPM) of
the 1960s-1970s through its female militias, the ticklers, then at the
initiator of campaigns of intimidation, ostracism and harassment against
anyone committed to the principle of national independence uniting the
four islands of the Comorian archipelago. The "Mahorais" activists,
members of the collectives who have been radicalizing the exclusion
policies implemented against the "Comorias" in Mayotte for years, are,
so to speak, their compulsive heirs.
(7) Already, within the framework of Wuambushu, Darmanin launched in
2023: "We are going to reverse the demographic curve in Mayotte"...
(Mayotte la 1ère June 25). At the beginning of January 2025, Valls
hallucinates - in unison with elected officials, politicians and
"Mahorais" collectives - "not far from 500,000 inhabitants" in Mayotte,
implying mainly "Comorians", the latter constituting for Estelle
Youssouffa a "demographic machine" (lcp.fr, Jan. 29). Mythology that is
doused by the Director General of INSEE who maintains the figure of
321,000 inhabitants (liberation.fr, Jan. 11).
(8) Prime Minister, Bayrou announces on December 30, 2024 the deployment
of approximately "200 Starlink antennas" in Mayotte.
P.S.
On Mayotte in Courant Alternatif, recently:
Genealogy of a policy of the worst , CA 331 June 2023
Mayotte, towards a genocidal drift?, CA 333 October 2023
Of an abjection , February 2024
An assessment of Operation Wuambushu , February 2024
Blood, soil, etc. , February 2024
WHO SOWS THE PLAGUE REAPS CHOLERA , June 2024
Chido a colonial cyclone article , December 2024
http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4384
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Cyclone Chido, announces the "Mayotte debout" plan, which should already
be greeted with the greatest suspicion. Indeed, the new Prime Minister
refers to the issue of the right of the soil in Mayotte in these terms:
"Anyone who would claim that there is not a burning immigration problem
in Mayotte would be irresponsible" (1). The plan plans to increase
(again!) the number of police officers and to exempt (again!) companies
from all taxes, thus establishing Mayotte as a "global free zone" -
where the island's employers will continue in all frankness their
exploitation of the clandestine (or not) proletariat as they have been
doing for decades on construction sites, in the fields, in restaurants,
etc. (2). The "Mahorais" MP Estelle Youssouffa understood this well, who
launched on Facebook: "We must fight so that our artisans, our
entrepreneurs from Mayotte are given priority on (Re)construction
contracts" (Mayotte la 1ère, 6 Jan. 2025). In the process, the Mayotte
construction federation declared itself... "in battle order"
(mayottehebdo.com, 8 Jan.).
In this context, Marine Le Pen's (3) stay on the island from January 5
to 7, alongside the "Mahorais" RN MP Anchya Bamana, both validates the
reactionary enterprise of the government gang (urging that "the promises
made to the Mahorais not be forgotten", insofar as they would
"undeniably go in the right direction"), and redoubles it with an
escalation arguing that the Mayotte debout plan "does not go far enough"
(bfm, January 5). In addition to a mobilization of the National Navy,
advocated by Le Pen, Anchya Bamana invited Retailleau, Valls and Lecornu
on January 8 to amplify the migratory repression in Mayotte by using
start-ups specialized in AI... She also advocates for an outsourcing of
Administrative Detention Centers in Madagascar and Tanzania! As a bonus,
"prevent the importation of resin" to the Comoros, in order to hinder
the construction of kwassas, these fishing canoes used by illegal
immigrants from the three other islands of the Comoros archipelago. A
graduate in International Relations and Political Science in Quebec,
Estelle Youssouffa herself has been boasting for years of a program to
fight against "Comorian" immigration that is very undiplomatic: "We see
the kwassa factories operating in Anjouan; it takes 20 highly trained
sailors from the national navy; special forces, they will plasticize
these factories: in one night, the problem is solved"... (Mayotte la
1ère, Oct. 10, 2018). Now, Valls-the-menace as Minister of Overseas
Territories is preparing public opinion for it: "We must put an end to
these factories that illegally manufacture kwassa-kwassas" (Sud Radio,
Feb. 4).
Same strategy, same perspective, from the "Mahorais" elected officials
in their letter addressed to Bayrou dated January 4, 2025, where the
demand (very opportune for those with real estate ambitions) for
zero-interest loans for housing is linked to that of a "massive
deployment of the army", coupled with an easing of the return to the
island of the Mahorais cops and guards, as well as an inclusion of
municipal police officers in the training of gendarmes and auxiliary
police officers: enough to civil serviceize the militia tradition of the
sorodas (soldiers), supporters of French Mayotte in the early 1970s. Of
course, the grand-replacement rhetoric of the "pull factor" is repeated
with regard to nationals from the three other islands of the Comorian
archipelago, characterized as an "additional population often
sick[sic]and extremely poor". In this respect, the measures envisaged
have nothing to envy the RN program: "suspend compulsory schooling for
foreign students... initiate a massive operation of deportations of
illegal immigrants and... set a moratorium on the examination of asylum
applications, the issuing and renewal of titles, residence permits and
travel documents for foreigners in Mayotte". Enough to make Mayotte
"reborn" "on healthy bases"... A sinister imaginary of the purge.
And in fact, an "emergency law" already sounds like a real declaration
of war.
Initially, the State assumes the right to expropriate before the owner
is even identified. The measure is finally removed by the Assembly -
before the text is validated on January 22. This is simply a polite
gesture of circumstance, on the part of a process of land colonization
that has been underway for a long time, with regard to the sacrosanct
bourgeois principle of individual property - an amicable arrangement, in
all endogamy... In this context, it is not uninteresting to point out
that the Association of Women Leaders of Mayotte denounced, in a press
release of January 20, the potentially dispossessing nature of such a
measure: "Our lands are not simple material goods. They embody our
culture, our history and our identity" (4). From this rather well-off
middle-class lobby, accustomed to anti-Comorian sallies in favor of
French Mayotte, such an assertion worthy of the anti-colonialist
tradition testifies to all the ideological ambivalence that
characterizes the social position of its members, subordinate with
regard to the coloniality of the relations that the metropolis maintains
with its overseas "department" (as with the Comoros archipelago as a
whole), and dominant with regard to the situation of the class of
"Mahoran" owners, caught between their land appetites (in a matrilocal
context, what's more) and the dread of downgrading, crystallized in the
scarecrow figure of the "Comorian" (5). Clearly, "large-scale power
relations are currently at play for access to land and the best-informed
and most influential families have been able to use their position to
enrich themselves" (Daniel Gros, blog médiapart, Jan. 27). We can
therefore understand why MP Estelle Youssouffa, concerned about her
electoral clientele, is asking the Senate to "also protect Mayotte
owners" (Mayotte la 1ère, 22 January).
Furthermore, a census is being considered, as the obsession with
"illegal immigration from neighbouring Comoros" haunts the false
conscience of the colonial power and its "Mayotte" auxiliaries, who
never stop fantasising about a "traffic" of paternity, while Valls
announces a "hardening" of the right of the soil (bfm, 7 January)
associated with not letting Mayotte "become a shantytown
island[sic]again" (mayottehebdo.com, 10 January).
Frustrated at not seeing "immigration" addressed by the emergency law to
the extent of its anti-Comorian resentment, a large part of the
"Mahoran" political class joins forces behind RN MP Anchya Bamana.
Mariam Saïd Kalam, departmental councillor and spokesperson for
Renaissance, declares for example: "The choice was made not to include
an immigration section... I can only regret this choice". In addition,
one cannot fail to wonder about the political meaning to be given to the
rather evasive remarks of Yasmina Aouny (6), spokesperson for France
Insoumise: "It is a shame that... the question of immigration and shanty
towns are not included." (Mayotte la 1ère, 22 January).
If the Emergency Counter-Plan for Mayotte proposed by LFI more clearly
contests the repeal of the right of the soil in Mayotte, as well as any
initiative derogating from the rights of foreigners (La France
Insoumise, 23 Jan. 2025, p. 38), it nevertheless remains at a distance
from any perspective that is in the least bit decolonial, insofar as the
immediate reconstruction that this counter-plan proposes in terms of
infrastructure, public services, social protection or economic activity,
is part of a logic of catching up which certainly overlaps with the
citizen demand for equality with the metropolis, but is nonetheless
formulated from within an order, that of the departmentalized colony of
Mayotte. As if this were about saving the retentionist Republic by
itself, an operation that can only be objectively carried out to the
detriment of the nationals originating from the three other islands of
the archipelago (the Comoros), in the iniquitous context of its imperial
balkanization - "Mayotte" and "Union of the Comoros" thus designating
only the two disfigured faces of the same counterfeit geopolitical
currency. A resolutely discriminatory and perfectly assumed logic, from
the extreme right to the "Mahorais" collectives via the latest
reactionary government, and which Le Journal de Mayotte distils day
after day: "Migratory pressure prevents the Mahorais from accessing
common law, since social rights there are half those at the national
level, for fear of 'pull factor'" (lejournaldemayotte.yt, Jan. 29). A
rancid and contagious sophism.
No matter: Retailleau presented to the Council of Ministers on January
22 a decree aimed at relaunching the Interministerial Committee for
Immigration Control, created under Sarkozy, with a view to dealing with
"sensitive issues such as state medical aid, social benefits or
expulsions" (linfokwezi.fr, January 23) - in short, this is the
strategic composition of a government front, structured in such a way as
to wage a total war on migrants, for whom Mayotte continues to be the
experimental battlefield.
Moreover, the Association of Mayors of Mayotte sent a letter dated
January 12, 2025 to the President of the National Assembly Yaël
Braun-Pivet, considering it an "offense" that she did not really say she
was in favor of the repeal of the right of the soil in Mayotte.
Correspondingly, the repeated demand for an "alignment of benefits and
social minima" attests once again to this pro-colonial tropism according
to which the demand for equality of rights (between Mayotte and the
mainland) intersects with discrimination and the expulsion of people
assimilated to "Comorians", the fictitious emancipation of some being
established on the very real eviction of others. In the same vein,
pleading in favor of indiscriminate care for disaster victims, whether
they are in an "irregular" situation or not, is, for MP Estelle
Youssouffa, an "obscenity that goes beyond the limits" (CNews, Jan. 13).
An internal psychodrama in the post-Chido "Mahorese" political scene
proves to be symptomatic of this outraged virtue of the pro-colonial
auxiliaries in the mirror of their split fiction. Senator Said Omar Oili
is at the origin of it. As a reminder, the same one who contributed
alongside Thani Mohamed Soilihi to toughening the Asylum & Immigration
2024 law with an amendment aimed at penalizing allegedly fraudulent
recognitions of paternity, is also the one who pointed out a few days
after the cyclone the police harassment suffered daily by illegal (or
not) nationals of the three other islands of the Comoros archipelago
(marianne.net, Dec. 17) - before leaving the Macronist RDPI group to
which he belonged until then (lemonde.fr, Jan. 24). To the point that
the senator does not assume the anti-Comorian hatred that the deputy
Estelle Youssouffa has been increasing since Chido, from Mayotte to
Paris. He therefore comes to declare during an interview given to the
online media Kweli: "I have a culture of the 4 islands, I cannot deny
it... My mother is Mahoran, my father came from Anjouan, he fell in love
with my mother... You want to force me to hate my father and love my
mother. No, I love them both... I have never hidden the fact that I was
against[the departmentalization of Mayotte]... I knew that there was
going to be a huge gap with the neighboring countries that surround
us..." (4 Feb.). A real coming out that transgresses the structural
taboo of departmentalism: namely that not one, not one of the "Mahorais"
can claim to have no links - marital or cultural, familial or
linguistic, commercial or spiritual, historical or simply romantic -
with the three other Comorian islands - when it is not with Madagascar.
To take just one example among many others, the former LR MP Mansour
Kamardine, a notorious provocateur and grand replacement, not only has a
property in Grande Comore, but also has family in Anjouan, where he
celebrated his customary grand wedding... But it is precisely because of
this identity foreclosure that has been working from within the
"Mahorais" discourse since the 1950s that the departmental councillor
Soula Said-Souffou, stung to the quick by this great politically
organised island denial, reproaches the senator for saying, simply
saying his "Comorian origins", thus justifying "in a veiled manner,
illegal immigration to Mayotte", and thus calling into question "the
very existence of a Mahorais identity".
However reactive it may be - the advisor cries "betrayal" and demands
"public apologies" (linfokwezi.fr, 6 Feb.) - such a defensive posture
unwittingly states the truth that it claims to contest: in fact, there
is no "Mahoran identity"; no more than there are Anjouan, Mohélian or
Grand Comorian identities. There are only localized inflections of the
same repertoire of exchanges, material, symbolic, affective; the
situated variations of the same constantly reworked regime of
relationships in the making. There are only the dynamics declined from
the same set of relationships, whether they are reciprocal but also
forces, classes, always transversal to these four islands in the world,
and which form an archipelago, despite the cuts, through the limits
(border and mental) that the "States that ally themselves against the
interests of the inhabitants of this space" invent and inflict on them
(Soeuf Elbadawi, Paris, April 15, 2023). We understand from then on that
the one whose mother is a metropolitan mzungu, the one who is also of
Grand Comorian ancestry on the paternal side - name: Youssouffa, first
name: Estelle - is the most fierce in defending tooth and nail her
status, her character, her autofiction as a "Mahorese" deputy. By
insulting, and in a hybrid language, Saïd Omar Oili saw himself accused
of "assumed Serrelamé gnombism" (Mayotte la 1ère, 6 Feb.) - from nyombe
/ cow, zebu, with a double connotation of beast and stupidity...;
Serrelamé / shake hands, an expression used in the 1970s to designate
the supporters (demonized by the MPM) of independence for the four
islands of the Comoros archipelago...
As early as January, the LR group in the Assembly proposed to grant the
right of the soil to children born in Mayotte only if both parents have
regular and uninterrupted residence for at least one year in the
territory - instead of three months for one of the two parents according
to the 2018 law. On February 6, the text (concocted by the sinister
Gosselin) was of course adopted, with the blessing of the Bayrou
government and the RN. He even validates an amendment from the Ciottist
gang, extending the duration of parental residence to three years -
left-wing MPs having voted for it by mistake... Unsurprisingly, MP
Estelle Youssouffa, who advocates for a pure and simple repeal of the
dual right of the soil in Mayotte and for whom decolonization rhymes
with "racism"[sic], considers that this law "does not go far enough",
when Darmanin, as his Minister of Justice, puts forward the idea of a
"public debate" on the right of the soil on a national scale (bfm, 6
Feb.). No problem! Wauquiez, leader of the LR, goes one better: "The
profound questioning of the right of the soil that we have obtained is a
prerequisite for all the measures that we can take in the future to
fight against the flow of illegal immigration to Mayotte... We clearly
assume that the subject of limiting the right of the soil, and more
broadly of the fight against illegal immigration, is a reflection that
we must have on the scale of the national territory" (mayottehebdo.com,
7 Feb.). He assumes...
In short, migratory and demographic engineering (7), framed by French
armored vehicles, under the Trumpian cover of the neo-fascist
billionaire Elon Musk (8) ...
A department on acid.
February 12, 2025,
Gamal Oya.
(1) Already toughened in Mayotte by the Asylum & Immigration law of
2018, the right of the soil is being called into question by Darmanin in
the context of Wuambushu (2023-2024). A project to repeal the right of
the soil in Mayotte was launched in May 2024, before being temporarily
suspended by the dissolution of June. But in September, Estelle
Youssouffa tabled a constitutional bill aimed at "repealing the right of
the soil and the double right of the soil in Mayotte".
(2) Let us also mention the exploitation of African refugees "in an
irregular situation", in the informal but omnipresent field of
motorcycle taxis in Mayotte, which they find themselves having to rent
from private companies... (lejournaldemayotte.yt, October 27, 2023).
(3) "She is the mother of Mayotte, she is the one who will save us,"
said a "Mahorais" sympathizer (Mayotte la 1ère, January 5). A colonial
Oedipus complex that has its rhetorical roots in the departmentalist
movement. President of the Mahorais Popular Movement during the 1970s,
Zéna M'Déré declared: "France... is our father and our mother... We ask
to return to her" (Cf. Mamaye Idriss, "The ticklers' movement: gender
and violence in political action in Mayotte (1966-1976)", Le Mouvement
Social, 2016, no. 255, pp. 57-70).
(4) During a demonstration that brought together several dozen women
leaders on January 25 in Mamoudzou against the expropriation of land,
while the proposal had already been withdrawn from the emergency law, a
participant declared: "It is the flesh of our flesh that is affected...
Mayotte belongs to the Mahorais first" (Mayotte la 1ère, January 25).
Performative rhetoric of an island blut und boden.
(5) To go further, see the ethnographic investigation conducted during
the 2010s by Myriam Hachimi Alaoui, Élise Lemercier & Élise Palomares,
"Les unes contre les autres. Ethnographie intersectionnelle du mouvement
des "femmes leaders" à Mayotte", 2020[canal-u.tv/chaines/ehess]; see
also Gamal Oya, "Mayotte / Archipel des Comores. "A procolonial
feminism", Casse-Rôles, n°31, February-April 2025.
(6) Author of La Chatouilleuse (Éditions du Signe, 2022). The story,
under the guise of female emancipation (Rose, the heroine, challenges
the weight of traditions related to arranged marriage, polygamy, etc.),
is a departmentalist apology for the Mahorais Popular Movement (MPM) of
the 1960s-1970s through its female militias, the ticklers, then at the
initiator of campaigns of intimidation, ostracism and harassment against
anyone committed to the principle of national independence uniting the
four islands of the Comorian archipelago. The "Mahorais" activists,
members of the collectives who have been radicalizing the exclusion
policies implemented against the "Comorias" in Mayotte for years, are,
so to speak, their compulsive heirs.
(7) Already, within the framework of Wuambushu, Darmanin launched in
2023: "We are going to reverse the demographic curve in Mayotte"...
(Mayotte la 1ère June 25). At the beginning of January 2025, Valls
hallucinates - in unison with elected officials, politicians and
"Mahorais" collectives - "not far from 500,000 inhabitants" in Mayotte,
implying mainly "Comorians", the latter constituting for Estelle
Youssouffa a "demographic machine" (lcp.fr, Jan. 29). Mythology that is
doused by the Director General of INSEE who maintains the figure of
321,000 inhabitants (liberation.fr, Jan. 11).
(8) Prime Minister, Bayrou announces on December 30, 2024 the deployment
of approximately "200 Starlink antennas" in Mayotte.
P.S.
On Mayotte in Courant Alternatif, recently:
Genealogy of a policy of the worst , CA 331 June 2023
Mayotte, towards a genocidal drift?, CA 333 October 2023
Of an abjection , February 2024
An assessment of Operation Wuambushu , February 2024
Blood, soil, etc. , February 2024
WHO SOWS THE PLAGUE REAPS CHOLERA , June 2024
Chido a colonial cyclone article , December 2024
http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4384
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